IAPE Evidence Blog

USA TODAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 13A
BYLINE: Kevin Johnson

Dal­las, TX

High num­ber of wrongly con­victed peo­ple freed because of Dal­las archive spurs national push to retain DNA tied to crimes

DALLAS — The exon­er­a­tion of Cor­nelius DuPree Jr. after three decades in prison began in a cramped local lab­o­ra­tory, where an unusual repos­i­tory of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence from thou­sands of crimes is lib­er­at­ing more wrongly con­victed inmates than any in the country.

The lab was born in the after­math of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion here to fill a void: When Kennedy was shot in 1963, there was no foren­sic sci­ence cen­ter in Dal­las County to store and ana­lyze evi­dence needed to solve crimes. Today, as DNA analy­sis has matured, old sam­ples of blood, hair, dried saliva and other bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial pre­served at the lab have trans­formed it into an archive of hope for pris­on­ers held in error.

Crime-solving remains the lab’s pri­mary mis­sion, and the old DNA sam­ples have helped ana­lysts iden­tify crim­i­nals who have eluded inves­ti­ga­tors for years. Exon­er­a­tions have emerged as a by-product of that mis­sion. Since 2001, the lab’s DNA archive has secured free­dom for 21 pris­on­ers serv­ing up to life in prison — the most exon­er­a­tions in any county. 

As more hor­rific mis­takes of the past are exposed, the Insti­tute of Foren­sic Sci­ences has become Exhibit A in a national push by some law­mak­ers, civil rights advo­cates, pros­e­cu­tors and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for more uni­form stan­dards reg­u­lat­ing how bio­log­i­cal evi­dence should be retained in crim­i­nal cases.

Dupree, 51, was freed in Jan­u­ary when DNA lifted from strands of hair stored at the lab more than 30 years ago cleared him in the rape and rob­bery of a Dal­las woman and her male com­pan­ion. James Woodard, 57, was freed in 2008 after evi­dence filed at the lab more than 27 years ago wiped out his con­vic­tion in the slay­ing of his girl­friend. Charles Chat­man, 49, was freed in 2008 because evi­dence ware­housed more than 26 years ago cleared him in the rape and rob­bery of a neighbor.

For all three men, tech­nol­ogy was just devel­op­ing or did not exist to test the evi­dence col­lected at the time of their arrests. The first exon­er­a­tion using DNA evi­dence occurred in 1989; the years since have pro­duced advances in sci­ence and the law.

In Dal­las County, the wrongs are being righted because “the evi­dence — decades after it was col­lected — was there to test,” Dis­trict Attor­ney Craig Watkins says. The county has been retain­ing evi­dence for decades, some sam­ples since 1978.

But in many places, the sam­ples that ulti­mately freed DuPree, Woodard and Chat­man would not have been saved. Only about half the states — includ­ing Texas — now require the auto­matic preser­va­tion of DNA evi­dence after con­vic­tion, accord­ing to The Inno­cence Project, which uses DNA evi­dence to assist inmates’ claims of inno­cence. Six­teen states have no preser­va­tion laws.

As new cases of wrong­ful con­vic­tions con­tinue to emerge based on DNA tests, the cam­paign for con­sis­tent preser­va­tion stan­dards is gain­ing momen­tum across the coun­try. Among recent developments:

* The National Insti­tute of Jus­tice, the research arm of the Jus­tice Depart­ment, is fund­ing the devel­op­ment of con­sis­tent guide­lines for evi­dence reten­tion across the coun­try. The work, orga­nized by the Com­merce Department’s National Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Tech­nol­ogy, began last year and is expected to be com­plete by 2012, says Melissa Tay­lor, an ana­lyst in the institute’s law enforce­ment stan­dards office.

* Penn­syl­va­nia Repub­li­can state Sen. Stew­art Green­leaf says a four-year study com­mis­sioned by the state’s Gen­eral Assem­bly, planned for release as early as April, is expected to rec­om­mend a pack­age of bills requir­ing the reten­tion of evi­dence and the cre­ation of a foren­sic advi­sory board to over­see crime lab oper­a­tions. Penn­syl­va­nia has no cur­rent preser­va­tion laws.

Green­leaf, who has con­sulted with Dal­las offi­cials about their lab­o­ra­tory prac­tices, fears his state’s pris­ons may hold as many — or more — wrongly con­victed pris­on­ers as those in Texas. “I believe there may be more cases nation­ally and in Penn­syl­va­nia that we are not aware of in part because of the lack of (evi­dence) super­vi­sion and preser­va­tion,” he says.

* Mass­a­chu­setts state Sen. Cyn­thia Creem, a Demo­c­rat, is spon­sor­ing a pro­posal that would increase inmates’ access to test­ing after con­vic­tion and set stan­dards for retain­ing the evi­dence in a state where no guide­lines exist. Creem’s bill, filed in Jan­u­ary, calls for all bio­log­i­cal evi­dence to be retained as long as the con­victed pris­oner remains in cus­tody or on pro­ba­tion or parole.

While many law­mak­ers agree new state mea­sures are needed to guard cru­cial evi­dence for pos­si­ble future test­ing, not all believe their states need or can afford the stan­dard fol­lowed in Dal­las County, where much of the bio­log­i­cal evi­dence is never discarded.

“At some point you have to be prac­ti­cal,” Mon­tana Repub­li­can state Sen. James Shock­ley says. He sup­ports a bill in which pros­e­cu­tors can request that evi­dence be destroyed after con­victed felons’ appeals are exhausted, even if time remains on their prison sen­tences. In cases where there is no sus­pect, the evi­dence would be pre­served for 30 years.

“The prob­lem is stor­age,” Shock­ley says of costly ware­house space that would have to be expanded if evi­dence were stored indef­i­nitely. “I can’t imag­ine any sci­ence” that would war­rant longer reten­tion to pre­serve the option for future test­ing. “That’s just not real world.”

Yet when DuPree was sen­tenced to 75 years in prison in 1980, Watkins says nobody fore­saw the value of DNA analy­sis in iden­ti­fy­ing errors in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem today, either.

Barry Scheck, co-director of The Inno­cence Project, says there is a sim­ple expla­na­tion for why so many wrong­fully con­victed pris­on­ers have walked out of Dal­las County court­rooms as free men: “What makes Dal­las unique is that they have saved more evi­dence,” Scheck says. “That’s the rea­son. End of story.”

100,000 pieces of DNA

There is only one view to the out­side world from one of the exam­i­na­tion rooms at the Insti­tute of Foren­sic Sciences.

Framed by a bay win­dow on one wall is the drive-up emer­gency room entrance at Park­land Hos­pi­tal, the spot where Pres­i­dent Kennedy was brought nearly 48 years earlier.

The lab­o­ra­tory owes its very exis­tence in large part to law enforce­ment weak­nesses exposed by the president’s assas­si­na­tion, says Tim­o­thy Sliter, the institute’s evi­dence sec­tion chief. Sliter says the assas­si­na­tion and the result­ing inves­ti­ga­tions under­scored the county’s lack of sci­en­tific exper­tise and abil­ity to ana­lyze evi­dence in crim­i­nal probes.

Although con­ceived in the post-assassination 1960s, the lab did not open until the late 1970s, when the ear­li­est stan­dards for the stor­age of evi­dence empha­sized preser­va­tion, Sliter says.

Some, includ­ing Watkins, say the strict evi­dence reten­tion prac­tices were first encour­aged by leg­endary Dal­las Dis­trict Attor­ney Henry Wade, who wanted the evi­dence pre­served to guard against defen­dants’ appeals. But Sliter believes sci­ence set the tone for an archive that now holds about 100,000 pieces of bio­log­i­cal material.

Much of the evi­dence is stored in 17 freez­ers, all set to 0 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sam­ples — on stained fab­ric swatches, in small plas­tic tubes and on cot­ton swabs con­tain­ing all forms of bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial — are pack­aged in plas­tic, assigned a num­ber and filed in blue plas­tic bins, resem­bling a library in deep freeze.

New evi­dence pour­ing in from about 100 law enforce­ment agen­cies in the area requires the addi­tion of one new freezer every year. Each is equipped with an alarm sys­tem to guard against fluc­tu­at­ing tem­per­a­tures and pos­si­ble machine malfunctions.

Stacy McDon­ald, Sliter’s chief deputy, says the steady vol­ume of work has pro­duced a back­log of about 450 tests, result­ing in aver­age wait times of two to three months for results. The requests come from police, pros­e­cu­tors and pris­on­ers. Emer­gency requests, she says, can be turned around in about three days.

McDon­ald says the $33 cost per sam­ple includes the “life­time” stor­age fee.

Sliter says expenses to test and main­tain the lab are far more sub­stan­tial — about $5 mil­lion per year. Yet he dis­putes the idea that long-term stor­age is too costly.

“It’s all a mat­ter of whether you think it’s impor­tant enough to do,” he says. “For years, peo­ple lived with the delu­sion that the jus­tice sys­tem was free from error. In the 1990s, that delu­sion began to be shat­tered largely because of DNA evidence.”

Sliter, McDon­ald and the lab’s 17 ana­lysts know their work has led to dra­matic exon­er­a­tions, but they have never met the men who have won their freedom.

“We try to treat every­thing we do here with the same sense of seri­ous­ness,” McDon­ald says. “Some­body could be exe­cuted based on what we do here.”

“The pros­e­cu­tors may love us today,” Sliter adds. “Tomor­row, maybe not so much.”

Archive miss­ing material

For all of the Dal­las laboratory’s suc­cesses, the institute’s record isn’t per­fect, says Michael Ware, chief of Dal­las County’s Con­vic­tion Integrity Unit.

Evi­dence in some cases dat­ing to the late 1970s and early 1980s can­not be located, says Ware, whose unit was cre­ated in 2007 to review hun­dreds of con­vic­tions in which ques­tions were raised about pris­on­ers’ pos­si­ble innocence.

“You are not going to find what you’re look­ing for in some of those cases,” Ware says. “And that’s under the best of cir­cum­stances. Think about what that means in other lab­o­ra­to­ries” that do not always pre­serve evidence.

McDon­ald acknowl­edges there are miss­ing pieces from the archive’s ear­li­est years, from about 1978 to 1983. From 1983 on, she says, the evi­dence is intact.

About 30% of requests for archived evi­dence go unfilled because the mate­r­ial is not avail­able, McDon­ald says. In some of those cases, includ­ing con­vic­tions based on con­fes­sions or plea agree­ments, the evi­dence was never sub­mit­ted by the inves­ti­gat­ing agency. In oth­ers, the mate­r­ial may have been returned to the agen­cies at their request.

Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, says prob­lems with miss­ing and mis­han­dled evi­dence plague the industry.

“The vast major­ity (of police agen­cies and crime labs) have a hard time tak­ing care of what we call ‘the stuff,’ ” says Latta, one of 23 mem­bers of the fed­eral panel that is devel­op­ing national guide­lines for evi­dence retention.

He says many evi­dence ware­houses are run by police or other law enforce­ment offi­cials who have no back­ground over­see­ing those oper­a­tions. Civil­ian sci­en­tists, not police, main­tain the bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in the Dal­las lab.

“Police chase bad guys,” Latta says. “We have no expe­ri­ence what­so­ever tak­ing care of warehouses.”

The Dal­las lab’s work has given DuPree a chance to reclaim the life he lost 30 years ago.

He mar­ried after his release from prison. As an intern for Demo­c­ra­tic Texas state Sen. Rod­ney Ellis, a strong sup­porter of the inno­cence move­ment, DuPree is advo­cat­ing for new laws to help inno­cent pris­on­ers gain their freedom.

Among the pro­pos­als being drafted is a bill to adopt uni­form stan­dards for how evi­dence is retained across the state.

“With­out that evi­dence being in that lab, there is no way I’m here,” DuPree says. “I would still be in prison.” 

No law on DNA preservation

Six­teen states have no laws requir­ing the preser­va­tion of DNA evi­dence:
* Alabama
* Idaho
* Indi­ana
* Kansas
* Mass­a­chu­setts
* New Jer­sey
* New York
* North Dakota
* Penn­syl­va­nia
* South Dakota
* Ten­nessee
* Utah
* Ver­mont
* Wash­ing­ton¹
* West Vir­ginia
* Wyoming
1 — Note: Wash­ing­ton does not require preser­va­tion but does have a pro­vi­sion in state law that allows judges to order the preser­va­tion of evidence.

Source: The Inno­cence Project 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Mari­etta Times, mariettatimes.com
BYLINE: Brad Bauer, bbauer@mariettatimes.com

Wash­ing­ton County, OH

Charges could be filed against a for­mer Wash­ing­ton County Jail admin­is­tra­tor, fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into miss­ing med­ica­tion at the jail and a rec­om­men­da­tion of charges later for­warded to the county prosecutor’s office.

For­mer sheriff’s Capt. Dean Ketelsen, a 26-year vet­eran offi­cer, was placed on leave Dec. 15 after an audit revealed as many as 1,400 pain killers could not be accounted for. He resigned Jan. 28, ask­ing to keep his commission.

Sher­iff Larry Mincks said the res­ig­na­tion did not stop the inves­ti­ga­tion into the miss­ing Tra­madol, a non-narcotic pre­scrip­tion drug, from con­tin­u­ing. He said Ketelsen’s com­mis­sion as an offi­cer was revoked as a result of the ongo­ing investigation.

“We had con­ducted an audit and over a two-year period we found some­thing like 1,400 pills were miss­ing dur­ing that time. After an inves­ti­ga­tion we sent a grand jury brief to the prosecutor’s office,” Mincks said. “The mere fact that we did that means we rec­om­mend cer­tain charges. At this point it is up to the pros­e­cu­tor to review the case and decide if it will be pre­sented to a grand jury.”

Mincks declined to say what charges were rec­om­mended. He said any charges should be left to the pros­e­cu­tor and a grand jury to decide.

Wash­ing­ton County Pros­e­cu­tor Jim Schnei­der said he did receive the file but that he has not reviewed the case.

“Of course I’ve had an oppor­tu­nity to review it … I’ve got files that are brought into this office every day from the sheriff’s office, Mari­etta (Police Depart­ment), Bel­pre (Police Depart­ment) and the (Ohio) high­way patrol,” Schnei­der said. “There are 400 files here and I’ve had an oppor­tu­nity to review them all. But just because a file is brought here doesn’t mean I review it immediately.”

Mincks said the Ketelsen case would have been deliv­ered to the prosecutor’s office about six weeks ago.

The inves­ti­ga­tion did not include a search of Ketelsen’s res­i­dence and exactly what hap­pened is “not clear cut,” accord­ing to Mincks.

“There were no searches of his home just because there was noth­ing there to lead us to believe there would be any items there per­tain­ing to what we were look­ing for,” Mincks said.

A phone num­ber for Ketelsen could not be located Tuesday.

Mincks said he did not want to dis­cuss specifics of the case.

“We con­ducted an inves­ti­ga­tion and we sent that to the pros­e­cu­tor,” he said. “It is my opin­ion that this needs to go before a grand jury to let them decide if a vio­la­tion of any kind occurred. It’s not a clear cut matter.”

Mincks said the jail con­tracts with a com­pany to bring drugs to the jail when inmates are issued pre­scrip­tions while incar­cer­ated. When an inmate leaves the facil­ity, the com­pany comes back and takes pos­ses­sion of any unused drugs. It is some of those drugs that were des­tined for dis­posal that have come into question.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Orlando Sen­tinel, orlandosentinel.com
BYLINE: Henry Pier­son Cur­tis, Orlando Sentinel

Win­der­mere, FL

Photo of the Win­der­mere evi­dence room. Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment, Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment / March 22, 2011

Evi­dence lock­ers, where guns, money and drugs are stored, were in dis­ar­ray, state finds.

Guns, drugs and money rou­tinely dis­ap­peared in recent years from the evi­dence locker at Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment, a Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment audit has found.

The exten­sive, sys­tem­atic loss of evi­dence is the lat­est devel­op­ment in a cor­rup­tion scan­dal that has soiled Cen­tral Florida’s wealth­i­est com­mu­nity since Police Chief Daniel Saylor’s arrest in Jan­u­ary on charges of block­ing a child rape investigation.

“We are doing every­thing we can to assist the Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment in locat­ing the guns that are unac­counted for,” FDLE Assis­tant Spe­cial Agent in Charge Danny Banks said Tues­day after­noon. “The extreme num­ber of miss­ing items is almost unheard of – we have frankly never seen any­thing this fla­grant before.”

Within hours of the audit’s release Tues­day, Say­lor was charged with six new felonies unre­lated to the miss­ing evi­dence. The charges — which include bribery of a pub­lic ser­vant and solic­i­ta­tion to tam­per with evi­dence — accuse Say­lor of tak­ing added mea­sures to cover up the blocked rape inves­ti­ga­tion. Say­lor was not re-arrested; but he must be arraigned on the new charges.

The total num­ber of miss­ing guns remains under inves­ti­ga­tion. But records show 43 guns were miss­ing along with at least $3,771 in cash, small amounts of cocaine and mar­i­juana and more than 100 pills of oxy­codone, a widely abused painkiller.

The audit was done at the request of Win­der­mere Police Chief Mike McCoy, who dis­cov­ered the mess in the evi­dence room after he was hired last month to replace Saylor.

McCoy on Tues­day told the Orlando Sen­tinel that the audit is another step in rebuild­ing the police department’s reputation.

“Some offi­cers have already decided to leave and I am quite pleased with the qual­ity of the appli­cant pool we’re start­ing to see,” he said. “The next step is to rebuild the esprit de corps that gives the town the pro­fes­sional, reli­able ser­vice they can count on.”

In a let­ter to McCoy dated Mon­day, FDLE Spe­cial Agent in Charge Joyce Daw­ley said that her agency’s audit uncov­ered major prob­lems with how Win­der­mere police han­dle evi­dence, and that FDLE inves­ti­ga­tors found sev­eral items of evi­dence that “can­not be accounted for” at this time.

“Prob­lems involv­ing basic doc­u­men­ta­tion, stor­age facil­i­ties, and secu­rity of sen­si­tive evi­dence have led to a lack of account­abil­ity,” Daw­ley wrote.

All items seized by police agen­cies are sup­posed to be bagged, tagged and cat­a­logued in locked stor­age as evi­dence until destroyed or returned by court order.

Ear­lier this month, Win­der­mere offi­cials acknowl­edged that town records in gen­eral were poorly stored and orga­nized. Three per­son­nel files, for instance, dis­ap­peared last year from the for­mer police chief’s locked office.

Nei­ther Say­lor nor his lawyer, Mark NeJame of Orlando, could be reached for com­ment Tuesday.

Agents con­duct­ing the audit con­cluded Win­der­mere police did not fol­low basic pro­ce­dures for stor­ing, doc­u­ment­ing and secur­ing evi­dence. Besides dis­cov­er­ing miss­ing items, the agents found more than 150 pieces of evi­dence includ­ing a semi-automatic machine pis­tol and four more guns in the evi­dence locker with­out any paper­work link­ing them to a crime, record show.

Records were so shoddy that in double-checking their audit, FDLE con­tacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and found Win­der­mere turned over about 20 of the 43 miss­ing guns for destruc­tion with­out any paperwork.

That leaves about 20 miss­ing guns that may be on the street.

“This report shows the com­plete lack of over­sight, account­abil­ity and man­age­ment of our for­mer police chief,” Win­der­mere Mayor Gary Bruhn said after read­ing FDLE’s descrip­tion of the record-keeping nightmare.

The biggest con­cern is that some­one in the police depart­ment stole the guns, sold them on the street where they may turn up in rob­beries or murders.

“That’s what scares me,” Bruhn said. “We will never know.”

FDLE is check­ing statewide to deter­mine if any of the miss­ing weapons has been recov­ered at crime scenes. Banks appealed for help, say­ing, “if any­one in the com­mu­nity has infor­ma­tion on recov­er­ing some of these guns, please con­tact FDLE.”

Windermere’s evi­dence room is a con­verted closet mea­sur­ing 9-feet-long by 4-feet-wide.

Some­how, offi­cers packed it from floor to ceil­ing with dozens of con­fis­cated firearms, lap­tops, swords, clubs, beer kegs, bongs and car­tons of evi­dence logged in crim­i­nal cases. Unlike proper evi­dence vaults, Win­der­mere did not have sep­a­rate safes for stor­ing guns, drugs and cash.

“I ordered the locks changed today,” said McCoy, who is issu­ing just one key and restrict­ing access to one sergeant. “I’m ren­der­ing our prop­erty and evi­dence room inac­tive for the next six months.”

Win­ter Gar­den police have agreed to store evi­dence col­lected by Win­der­mere in the next six months while the agency straight­ens out its operations.

While the evi­dence room had three keys in recent years, McCoy pointed out that any­one could climb into the evi­dence room by remov­ing a hang­ing ceil­ing tile from an adja­cent hallway.

If the miss­ing items turn out to be stolen, cur­rent or for­mer police offi­cers would be the likely sus­pects as only they and one or two non-sworn employ­ees had access to the police offices. Turnover of dis­grun­tled offi­cers dur­ing Saylor’s tenure became so com­mon he said he installed an elec­tronic lock­ing sys­tem to keep from replac­ing the department’s key locks.

FDLE offi­cer cer­ti­fi­ca­tion records show more than 40 offi­cers joined and left the police depart­ment dur­ing Saylor’s nine years as police chief.

Win­der­mere police first came under scrutiny in Novem­ber 2009 fol­low­ing Tiger Woods’ crash in the nearby gated com­mu­nity of Isle­worth. While not within Windermere’s juris­dic­tion, two town police offi­cers arrived first at the crash scene and one was accused later of sell­ing pho­tos of the golfer’s dam­aged SUV to a celebrity website.

In May 2010, the Orlando Sen­tinel reported that Win­der­mere was known through­out Cen­tral Florida law enforce­ment for hir­ing “second-chance” offi­cers fired or forced to resign from other police agen­cies. Nearly half of Windermere’s 24 offi­cers, includ­ing Say­lor, joined the depart­ment under those circumstances.

Since Saylor’s arrest in Jan­u­ary and sub­se­quent fir­ing, three other Win­der­mere offi­cers have resigned or been dis­missed. More offi­cers are expected to leave in com­ing weeks after FDLE com­pletes its inves­ti­ga­tion of the depart­ment, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer officers.

Say­lor was charged on Jan. 12 with unlaw­ful com­pen­sa­tion for offi­cial behav­ior and offi­cial mis­con­duct. He is accused of shut­ting down rape inves­ti­ga­tions involv­ing two girls to help Scott Bush, 50, of Win­der­mere, who was charged the same day with cap­i­tal sex­ual bat­tery of a per­son under 12 and sex­ual touch­ing of a per­son under 12 years of age.

Windermere’s Cor­rup­tion Scandal

Jan. 12: Win­der­mere Police Chief Daniel Say­lor arrested on charges of unlaw­ful com­pen­sa­tion for offi­cial behav­ior and offi­cial mis­con­duct related to an accused cover-up of a rape inves­ti­ga­tion of two Win­der­mere girls.

His friend, Scott Bush of Win­der­mere, is charged with cap­i­tal sex­ual bat­tery of a per­son under 12 and sex­ual touch­ing of a per­son under 12 years of age.

Jan. 25: Say­lor fired after the Orlando Sen­tinel reports he had tried to cover-up his forced res­ig­na­tion from the Florida Police Chiefs Asso­ci­a­tion a year ear­lier with­out telling Win­der­mere officials.

Feb. 7: For­mer Orlando Police Chief Mike McCoy hired to replace Saylor.

Feb. 11: Lt. Paul Con­way, Saylor’s top aide, resigns and promises to tes­tify against Saylor.

Feb. 17: McCoy orders all offi­cers to undergo new crim­i­nal back­ground checks.

Mar. 9: Say­lor accused of accept­ing $1,000 bribe to hire a police offi­cer fac­ing loss of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, accord­ing to FDLE records.

Mar. 15: McCoy offers to re-investigate any cases res­i­dents think were mis­han­dled by Saylor.

March 21: FDLE audit of evi­dence room at Win­der­mere Police Depart­ment finds dozens of guns unac­counted for as well as cash and drugs.

hcurtis@tribune.com or 407 – 420-5257

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org