Crime Lab problems “Serious and Pervasive” says Inspector
I’ve reported here regularly about the many post-conviction exonerations that have followed questionable convictions originally based on junk science. A lot of them have happened in Texas. So many so, that even the Houston City Council decided to hire a professional investigator to come in and take a look at their crime labs and assess the situation.
So when former US Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich was hired for the job, he laid out a plan to do random samplings of cases involving serology (blood) and DNA analysis. Unfortunately, what he learned was that things were a lot worse than expected and errors were turning up in 1 out of 3 cases sampled. This disturbing preliminary result caused him to change tactics:
“The rate of error is so high, little would be accomplished by doing a representative, or random, sampling as originally (planned),” he said.
Calling the problems “serious and pervasive”, Bromwich is taking a wider look at the problem and seeking broader authority including subpoena power in order to compel the cooperation from lab workers who apparently are resisting his efforts. Sadly, he’s not sure he’s going to be given the power to get the job done.
Among his other findings: failures to turn over exculpatory evidence to defense counsel; DNA testing errors in 3 (and possibly 4) of the 18 Texas inmates currently on death row; attempts by the crime lab itself to discipline sloppy workers only to have them re-instated by the City’s Civil Service Commission, including in one case a woman whose mistakes resulted in erroneous convictions which were later discovered, leading to the release of men wrongly convicted.
Is this one independent study done in a single state an isolated incident, or representative of a national problem? That’s the question that everyone reading this story should be asking.
RP