IAPE Evidence Blog

DETROIT FREE PRESS, freep.com
BYLINE: TRESA BALDAS, DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Link to Article

Detroit, MI

Evi­dence destroyed in unsolved ’72 slaying

Merry Wil­son, 50, of Detroit holds a photo of her sis­ter Laura Wil­son, 16, who was raped and mur­dered in 1972. / August photo by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free

It was Nov. 10, 1972. Laura Wil­son, a shy teenager from the Her­man Gar­dens hous­ing project on Detroit’s west side, walked to a nearby con­ve­nience store to buy a car­ton of Oleo and two bot­tles of Pepsi for her mother.

She had pleaded to go alone.

Nine days later, her body was found in some bushes just blocks away from home. She’d been raped and beaten. Her head was smashed in with a brick.

Nearly four decades later, her fam­ily still has no answers.

Short of a con­fes­sion, it’s likely they’ll never know who killed the 16-year-old because all of the evi­dence was destroyed or lost.

Her blood­stained cloth­ing was ordered destroyed in 1977; the Pepsi bot­tle fol­lowed in 1978. A brick and a chunk of con­crete marked with blood and hair strands were destroyed in 1984. The fin­ger­nail scrap­ings and rape evi­dence — swabs taken dur­ing the autopsy — are nowhere to be found.

Her story illus­trates what legal experts say is a per­va­sive prob­lem nation­wide — the mis­han­dling of crim­i­nal evi­dence largely because of a lack of uni­form stan­dards for retain­ing evidence.

Law enforce­ment doesn’t track how often evi­dence gets lost or destroyed, but experts con­cede it’s not uncommon.

“It hap­pens,” said Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, who helps over­see 18,000 police depart­ments nation­wide. “I track all the head­lines. Miss­ing guns, money and nar­cotics. If it’s your son or daugh­ter, it’s a huge deal.”

A con­fes­sion is family’s only hope in solv­ing a 1972 mur­der after evi­dence was destroyed

Merry Wil­son was just 11 years old when her sis­ter was mur­dered in Detroit in 1972 — one of more than 600 homi­cide vic­tims in the city that year.

It was 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1972, when 16-year-old Laura Wil­son left her home in the projects to walk to a nearby con­ve­nience store. She was wear­ing her flared, blue-and-brown-striped Wran­gler jeans, a tan coat with fur trim, pur­ple turtle­neck and white sneak­ers with her name writ­ten in the soles.

She had 63 cents in food stamps with her.

She never returned.

Her case is among more than 19,000 unsolved homi­cides in the city, dat­ing to 1917. In the past decade, the city’s homi­cide clear­ance rate has aver­aged from 35% to 45%, but climbed to 54% in 2010.

Short of a con­fes­sion, the Wilsons will likely never find Laura’s killer because the evi­dence was ordered destroyed and some remains missing.

Experts say that’s a com­mon prob­lem, espe­cially among big city depart­ments han­dling large vol­umes of evi­dence. They say no national stan­dards exist, leav­ing it up to police depart­ments to decide how to store key items that could make the dif­fer­ence in solv­ing a case.

A nee­dle in a haystack

Legal experts say no laws exist that man­date evi­dence in unsolved mur­ders be pre­served indef­i­nitely. A fed­eral law requires bio­log­i­cal evi­dence be pre­served in a mur­der case where there’s been a con­vic­tion, should the defen­dant wish to pur­sue an appeal. And 33 states, includ­ing Michi­gan, have sim­i­lar laws.

But when it comes to pre­serv­ing evi­dence in unsolved cases, that’s up to police departments.

“Stan­dards are hit and miss from depart­ment to depart­ment,” said Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan law pro­fes­sor Dave Moran, who runs an inno­cence clinic. “We’re often look­ing for old evi­dence, and it’s very hard to find.”

Detroit police offi­cials would not talk about their evi­dence reten­tion poli­cies. Offi­cials directed the Free Press to file a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, which is pending.

Over the last decade, crime lab scan­dals involv­ing lost, destroyed or tainted evi­dence have sur­faced in cities nation­wide, includ­ing Hous­ton, Den­ver, Boston, Bal­ti­more, New Orleans and New York.

The scan­dals can prove costly.

In New York City, for exam­ple, a Bronx man last year won an $18.5-million jury award after a rape kit in his case finally sur­faced in a ware­house — 10 years after he asked for it. The man had served two decades in prison, but DNA evi­dence ana­lyzed from the rape kit exon­er­ated him.

Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, who has helped train Detroit police on evidence-handling meth­ods, said it’s not unusual for large police depart­ments to be clut­tered and unor­ga­nized, mak­ing find­ing items extremely difficult.

“Think of Costco. They’re that size,” he said of evi­dence rooms. “And if you’re look­ing for some­thing that’s the size of an iPhone or the tag came off or it’s under­neath some­thing … the stuff could be there.”

Evi­dence but no solid leads

Nine days after she dis­ap­peared, Laura’s par­tially nude body was found in some bushes at 8426 Met­te­tal St. on the city’s far west side. She had been raped, and her head was smashed with a brick, almost beyond recog­ni­tion. Her body was found by a group of boys play­ing football.

“It didn’t look real,” recalled Low­ell Mur­doch, who was 15 when he, his brother and a friend found Laura’s body. “It was shock­ing. At first we were scared. Luck­ily, we knew the guy who lived next door, and he got help.”

Police col­lected evi­dence: a brick and a chunk of con­crete that had blood stains and hair strands on it; a prayer book that was found near Laura’s body, also stained with blood, and her cloth­ing. They also recov­ered the items she got at the store — mar­garine, a bot­tle of pop and the receipt.

They had numer­ous tips, includ­ing sev­eral reports that Laura got into a red car. And police had suspects.

Accord­ing to a 183-page police file on Laura’s case, which the Free Press obtained from the fam­ily, one man was arrested fol­low­ing a traf­fic stop, but was released when his alibi was confirmed.

Laura’s boyfriend also came under sus­pi­cion, but police never ques­tioned him. Accord­ing to police records, the boyfriend, who drove a maroon car, was arrested on the morn­ing that Laura went miss­ing for dri­ving with­out a license. He was jailed overnight.

“This would kind of negate him as the assailant,” police wrote in their report. “How­ever, our inter­est was in the maroon car (could have let a friend use it while he was incarcerated).”

Police ulti­mately went to the boyfriend’s apart­ment. They found it had been vacated. They inter­viewed his fam­ily mem­bers and ruled him out.

The case went cold.

For years, Merry Wil­son and Linda Pat­ter­son, the eldest of the Wil­son sis­ters, called police to check on their sister’s case. Each time, they got the same response: no new leads.

Since Laura’s death, at least two of the offi­cers who inves­ti­gated the case have died. So have her parents.

One of the detec­tives told the Free Press he couldn’t recall the case, but that’s not so for retired Police Offi­cer Ronald Atkin­son, who nearly 40 years later still remem­bers the details. “It star­tled me,” Atkin­son, now 68, recalled. “I’m kind of a softie, and it may have shook me up a lit­tle bit dis­cov­er­ing that it was a young person.”

Atkin­skon, who was among the first on the scene, said he never knew that the evi­dence was destroyed.

“I’m sorry the chain of evi­dence is bro­ken, and my con­do­lences prob­a­bly have lit­tle mean­ing for the fam­ily,” he said, unable to offer an expla­na­tion. “It’s a shame that this happened.”

He added: “I don’t think this would hap­pen nowadays.”

Still search­ing for answers

Merry Wil­son has tried for years to put her sister’s death behind her.

But every time she learns of a cold case get­ting solved or hears about crime lab scan­dals and evi­dence get­ting lost, she gets fired up again and asks questions.

“I get con­sumed in it,” she said of her sister’s death. “It doesn’t let me go.”

In 2006, she started ask­ing about the evi­dence after wak­ing up from a dream in the mid­dle of the night. She had seen Laura, just star­ing at her and say­ing nothing.

“It just froze me,” she said. “I thought, ‘I gotta do something.’ ”

Wil­son learned in 2006 that much of the evi­dence was destroyed in the late 1970s. On Oct. 22, 2008, Wil­son received a let­ter from Wayne County Exec­u­tive Robert Ficano’s office stat­ing: “After a com­plete search of all files, it has been deter­mined that no slides or tis­sue sam­ples exist. I offer my most sin­cere con­do­lences for your loss.”

Detroit police would not dis­cuss Wilson’s case and would say only that they are review­ing the matter.

Pat­ter­son, who had to iden­tify her sister’s body when she was 22, is baf­fled and outraged.

“I always assumed that if it’s an open mur­der case, you can­not destroy the evi­dence,” said Pat­ter­son, who now lives in Tennessee.

The Wil­son fam­ily is plead­ing for a more thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion. They don’t blame the Police Depart­ment for past mis­takes, but they say they deserve a more thor­ough review of the case — and an apology.

“I want them to explain why this stuff was destroyed. Some­body has to answer for that,” said Merry Wil­son, who still lives in the city.

“Some­where along the line this shouldn’t have to hap­pen to any­one else.”

Pat­ter­son said she won’t stop look­ing for her sister’s killer.

“I loved her so much that I want peo­ple to know that she was loved and cared about,” Pat­ter­son said. “I’ll never give up because there is always some­body out there who knows something.”

Merry Wil­son, 50, of Detroit holds a photo of her sis­ter Laura Wil­son, who was raped and mur­dered in 1972. Laura was 16 years old. The case has never been solved, and Wil­son learned in 2006 that much of the evi­dence in the case was ordered destroyed by police in the late 1970s. August pho­tos by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wil­son sits at home look­ing over doc­u­ments about her sister’s mur­der that she has col­lected from Detroit Police through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. The Police Depart­ment would not dis­cuss Wilson’s case. pho­tos by KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free
 

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

The Las Vegas Sun, lasvegassun.com
BYLINE: Jackie Valley

Las Vegas, NV

Sher­iff Doug Gille­spie speaks dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at Metro Police offices July 7, 2011. Steve Mar­cus

A DNA mix-up caused by human error that led to the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of a man has prompted Metro Police to rean­a­lyze more than 200 cases han­dled by a foren­sic sci­en­tist, offi­cials announced Thursday.

Police said an acci­den­tal sam­ple switch in Metro’s foren­sic lab incor­rectly iden­ti­fied then-18-year-old Dwayne Jack­son as the sus­pect in a 2001 rob­bery in the south­east val­ley. He served nearly four years in prison before his release in 2006.

“To say this error is regret­table would be an under­state­ment,” Sher­iff Doug Gille­spie said at a news con­fer­ence Thurs­day. “It’s unac­cept­able and not to our stan­dards at the (Metro Police). There are no words I could say that will give back the time Mr. Jack­son spent incarcerated.”

The error came to light in Novem­ber when the Cal­i­for­nia Jus­tice Depart­ment con­tacted Metro to say that an offender in its sys­tem matched the DNA pro­file of foren­sic evi­dence col­lected from a blue, hooded sweat­shirt the sus­pect wore dur­ing the rob­bery. A national DNA data­base used by law enforce­ment agen­cies iden­ti­fied the match.

Police said that infor­ma­tion trig­gered a seven-month process of eval­u­at­ing the case and re-examining DNA evi­dence to con­firm that a mis­take had occurred.

The DNA from the sweat­shirt matched Jackson’s cousin, Howard Gris­som, who also was con­sid­ered a sus­pect imme­di­ately after the rob­bery, author­i­ties said.

The crime occurred Nov. 6, 2001, when a masked rob­ber entered a south­east val­ley home occu­pied by a woman and her two daugh­ters, police said. The sus­pect, who was wear­ing a blue, hooded sweat­shirt and ski mask and car­ry­ing a base­ball bat, took cash and credit cards from the woman’s purse.

He forced the woman and chil­dren into the family’s vehi­cle and made her drive him to her bank to obtain money, police said. Mean­while, the woman’s hus­band and son returned home to find an empty house with doors open and a vehi­cle missing.

The hus­band began scout­ing the neigh­bor­hood and found his wife dri­ving back with the man still in the vehi­cle, police said. The man fled, but police later appre­hended two men — Jack­son and Gris­som — who fit the descrip­tion that was given, while they were rid­ing bicy­cles in the neigh­bor­hood, police said.

Gris­som will remain in a Cal­i­for­nia prison, where he is serv­ing a lengthy sen­tence for an unre­lated crime, police said.

Metro offi­cials said they haven’t per­son­ally spo­ken with Jack­son, but they have been han­dling the sit­u­a­tion with his attor­neys — a course of action Gille­spie said was “appro­pri­ate” for the circumstances.

The depart­ment and Jackson’s attor­neys have reached a set­tle­ment, pend­ing final approval by Metro’s fis­cal affairs com­mit­tee, Gille­spie said. Police wouldn’t release its terms.

The process of clear­ing Jackson’s name is under way at the dis­trict attorney’s office, Gille­spie added.

Linda Krueger, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Metro’s Crim­i­nal­is­tics Bureau, said the department’s review deter­mined the DNA sam­ple switch hap­pened some­time dur­ing the later stages of tech­ni­cal pro­cess­ing, either dur­ing the setup of ampli­fi­ca­tion or the load­ing of a genetic analyzer.

“This was not a sci­en­tific error or a tech­ni­cal error, but a human error,” Gille­spie said.

The foren­sic sci­en­tist who han­dled the case, Terry Cook, has been placed on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave while the depart­ment con­ducts an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, police said. Metro hired Cook in 1983.

Police said it’s unlikely other errors occurred, but the depart­ment is eval­u­at­ing 225 to 250 DNA cases han­dled by Cook. The cases will be reviewed and sub­mit­ted for retest­ing if they include a per­son and DNA sam­ple from evi­dence, Krueger said.

“We expect com­ple­tion of reanaly­sis (of the cases) within two to three months,” said Assis­tant Sher­iff Ray Flynn, who over­sees the department’s crim­i­nal­is­tics and inter­nal affairs bureaus. “This is not quick work.”

Linda Krueger, left, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Metro Police Crim­i­nal­is­tics Bureau, speaks to Sher­iff Doug Gille­spie before a news con­fer­ence at Metro offices July 7, 2011. Steve Mar­cus

Metro’s Crim­i­nal­is­tics Bureau became accred­ited in 2003 after meet­ing a series of require­ments and was reac­cred­ited in 2008, Flynn said. When police con­firmed the DNA mis­take, depart­ment offi­cials con­tacted the accred­i­ta­tion body, the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Crime Lab Direc­tors, to make it aware of the situation.

Attor­ney David Ches­noff, who is rep­re­sent­ing Jack­son along with his attor­ney Richard Schon­feld, said Jack­son has declined inter­view requests but is look­ing for­ward to a resolution.

“Every­body under­stands that the impris­on­ment of some­one who is inno­cent is a ter­ri­ble event, but Mr. Jack­son appre­ci­ates the quick response once it was dis­cov­ered,” Ches­noff said.

Police said they are review­ing their qual­ity assur­ance stan­dards in the foren­sic lab.

Police, how­ever, noted that tech­nol­ogy changes since 2001 have led to more automa­tion and less reliance on humans when han­dling DNA samples.

For instance, DNA sam­ples are placed in larger tubes with bet­ter label­ing and loaded in plate for­mats, elim­i­nat­ing the need for mul­ti­ple human trans­fers, Krueger said.

Since Metro began ana­lyz­ing DNA in 1997, the depart­ment has processed about 8,900 cases, police said. About 44,000 con­victed offend­ers’ DNA sam­ples have been added to the national data­base, result­ing in 1,185 “hits” — or DNA matches — since the depart­ment started using the data­base in 2000.

Krueger said Metro encoun­tered another DNA mis­take in 2002, but it was an admin­is­tra­tive error con­vert­ing DNA infor­ma­tion to a report for­mat, which did not result in a wrong­ful conviction.

Gille­spie said the depart­ment real­izes what he described as the “power we have to take away some­one else’s free­dom,” adding that Metro is try­ing to rec­tify the mis­takes made.

“When there are (mis­takes), I will be stand­ing right here at this podium and admit­ting them,” he said.

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

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