IAPE Evidence Blog

greenvilleonline.com
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Greenville, SC

More over­sight and stan­dard­ized pro­ce­dures would help clerks of courts bet­ter serve state res­i­dents and could help pre­vent a recur­rence of recent events in Spar­tan­burg County in which Clerk of Court Mar­cus Kitchens is accused of tak­ing drugs from an evi­dence room and con­spir­ing to sell them.

The clerk of court plays a major role in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The office’s duties include han­dling evi­dence, help­ing pick juries, col­lect­ing fines and dis­trib­ut­ing child sup­port pay­ments. How­ever, not every clerk of court office is run the same way. That in itself is a problem.

Offices like the one in Greenville County oper­ate effi­ciently and leave lit­tle room for the sort of malfea­sance that has allegedly occurred in Spar­tan­burg County. Oth­ers oper­ate less effi­ciently whether because of tight bud­gets, the inex­pe­ri­ence of those elected to serve or for other reasons.

All new clerks are given a state man­ual on how to per­form their duties. How­ever, Greenville County Clerk of Court Paul Wick­en­simer said in an inter­view that there’s lit­tle in the man­ual about han­dling evi­dence. The State Law Enforce­ment Divi­sion offers guide­lines for evi­dence han­dling, but clerks are not required to fol­low them and not all clerks do, he said.

State Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice Jean Toal is tak­ing the pru­dent step of begin­ning to develop stan­dards for inven­to­ry­ing, audit­ing and cross-checking evi­dence rooms. A good step would be to require all clerks to adopt SLED guide­lines for han­dling evidence.

In addi­tion, the state Clerks of Court and Reg­is­ters of Deeds Asso­ci­a­tion is work­ing to ensure every clerk under­stands the grav­ity of the job and ways they can ensure their offices are being as respon­si­ble and account­able as possible.

The asso­ci­a­tion meets twice a year and is plan­ning train­ing for its upcom­ing meet­ing that will address some of the issues that came up in the Spar­tan­burg County case, Wick­en­simer said.

Such train­ing is ben­e­fi­cial and should be manda­tory for all clerks of court.

Finally, the vot­ers have the final say. If a clerk — or any elected offi­cial — is not liv­ing up to expec­ta­tions, it’s up to vot­ers to send the right mes­sage by vot­ing him or her out of office. Clerk of court is an impor­tant fidu­ciary posi­tion and should be taken seri­ously. Vot­ers should ensure the peo­ple they elect are trust­wor­thy and qual­i­fied to admin­is­ter a large staff within an essen­tial office.

Cer­tainly there are seri­ous ques­tions to answer about any increased state scrutiny over a locally elected office. South Car­olina already is in a dif­fi­cult finan­cial posi­tion, so adding respon­si­bil­i­ties to any agency to more closely scru­ti­nize elected offi­cials would be costly and dif­fi­cult. Already, clerks of courts are sub­ject to var­i­ous audits that track their per­for­mance; and they’re respon­si­ble to county coun­cils for fund­ing and, again, to the vot­ers. All that said, it’s dif­fi­cult to argue against another layer of over­sight if it’s mean­ing­ful and the state can find a way to pay for it.

Short of that, the best way for tax­pay­ers to have con­fi­dence in their clerks of court is for there to be clear stan­dards, and sup­port from the state and other clerks in under­stand­ing those stan­dards. An informed elec­torate also is essen­tial to ensur­ing ade­quate oversight.

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

United States Depart­ment of Jus­tice
Link to Article

More than 2,000 state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies responded to a sur­vey [1] to:

1. Esti­mate the num­ber of unsolved homi­cide, rape and prop­erty cases [2] nation­wide that con­tain foren­sic evi­dence that has not been sub­mit­ted to a crime lab­o­ra­tory for analysis.

2. Deter­mine the exis­tence of poli­cies and pro­ce­dures regard­ing the pro­cess­ing, sub­mis­sion to a lab and reten­tion of foren­sic evidence.

The sur­vey showed that agen­cies had not sub­mit­ted foren­sic evi­dence (includ­ing DNA, fin­ger­prints, firearms and tool­marks) to a crime lab in:

* Four­teen per­cent of open, unsolved homi­cides.
* Eigh­teen per­cent of open, unsolved rapes.
* Twenty-three per­cent of open, unsolved prop­erty crimes.

There are rea­sons why a law enforce­ment agency may not sub­mit foren­sic evi­dence to a lab. The evi­dence may be con­sid­ered not pro­ba­tive, charges may have been dropped or a guilty plea entered. How­ever, the researchers who con­ducted the NIJ-funded sur­vey also con­cluded that some law enforce­ment agen­cies may not fully under­stand the value of evi­dence in devel­op­ing new inves­tiga­tive leads.

Learn more about why evi­dence may not have been submitted.

The sur­vey also revealed that:

* Only four out of 10 law enforce­ment agen­cies have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem for track­ing foren­sic evi­dence either in their inven­tory or after it is sent to the crime lab. Learn more about the use of com­put­er­ized systems.

* Poli­cies and prac­tices for evi­dence reten­tion var­ied widely from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion. Learn more about poli­cies and practice.

* There are steps that law enforce­ment agen­cies, foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries and pros­e­cu­tors can take to improve the use of foren­sic evi­dence. Read a sum­mary of the study recommendations.

The sur­vey did not determine:

* How many of the open cases would be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence in them were to be sent to the lab.

* The num­ber of cases in which evi­dence was ana­lyzed in the past, but which now, with more advanced tech­nol­ogy, might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads. Read more about the poten­tial value of the evidence.

Why Evi­dence May Not Be Sent to a Lab
There are many rea­sons why evi­dence col­lected from a crime may not be sub­mit­ted to a lab­o­ra­tory for analy­sis. Sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion may have shown that the evi­dence would not be pro­ba­tive, charges against an alleged per­pe­tra­tor may have been dropped, the sus­pect may have pled guilty, or, in a rape case, the issue may be “con­sent” and, there­fore, analy­sis of the evi­dence may have been con­sid­ered not probative.

How­ever, the study showed that some law enforce­ment agen­cies do not fully under­stand the poten­tial value of foren­sic evi­dence in devel­op­ing new leads in a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion; for example:

* Forty-four per­cent said one of the rea­sons they did not send evi­dence to the lab was because a sus­pect had not been identified,

* Fif­teen per­cent said they did not sub­mit evi­dence because analy­sis had not been requested by a prosecutor.

We know that DNA evi­dence can iden­tify a sus­pect in a “no sus­pect” case or link a per­pe­tra­tor to a spe­cific crime through CODIS, the national DNA data­base, and latent prints can iden­tify unknown per­pe­tra­tors through auto­mated sys­tems like the national Inte­grated Auto­mated Fin­ger­print Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (IAFIS). The knowl­edge gap revealed in some of these find­ings — par­tic­u­larly, as the sur­vey reveals, among the nation’s small (less than 25 offi­cers) agen­cies — could be due to a lack of train­ing. Spe­cial­ized train­ing in these cases may have been ben­e­fi­cial and led to a dif­fer­ent out­come. In another find­ing from the study, 11 per­cent of the agen­cies reported that one of the rea­sons they do not sub­mit evi­dence for analy­sis is because of the lab’s inabil­ity to pro­duce timely results, and 6 per­cent said the lab was not accept­ing new evi­dence due to back­log issues. (See About the Back­log on DNA.gov).

> See Rea­sons Why Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies did not Sub­mit Foren­sic Evi­dence for Unsolved Cases (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Many Agen­cies Lack Com­put­er­ized Sys­tems
Com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tems enhance the abil­ity of police agen­cies to man­age, track and mon­i­tor foren­sic evi­dence in crim­i­nal cases. The sur­vey revealed that more than half of law enforce­ment agen­cies (56 per­cent) did not have a com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tem that was capa­ble of track­ing foren­sic evi­dence inven­tory. Large agen­cies (100 or more sworn offi­cers) were much more likely to have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem, with nearly three out of four report­ing that their infor­ma­tion sys­tem allowed track­ing of foren­sic evidence.

For the agen­cies that do have a com­put­er­ized infor­ma­tion sys­tem, the sur­vey did not reveal the exact capa­bil­i­ties, such as whether they were able to spec­ify what evi­dence has been tested (or not tested) in a case, how long evi­dence in a case has been in stor­age, and the sta­tus of cases. The sur­vey also did not deter­mine, for the 44 per­cent of agen­cies that do have a com­put­er­ized sys­tem, whether these sys­tems are inte­grated with more cen­tral­ized police records man­age­ment systems.

> See Law Enforce­ment Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Foren­sic Evi­dence (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Many Agen­cies Lack Pol­icy, Prac­tice
Poli­cies and prac­tices for retain­ing evi­dence var­ied widely from juris­dic­tion to juris­dic­tion. In addi­tion to the need to retain evi­dence in unsolved crimes, there are an increas­ing num­ber of states that have passed laws requir­ing the indef­i­nite stor­age of foren­sic evi­dence used in crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. About a third of the agen­cies (38 per­cent) said they had an evidence-retention pol­icy regard­ing the preser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in cases where the defen­dant was found guilty, and 16 per­cent said they were unsure if they had such a policy.

Among agen­cies that do have a pol­icy regard­ing the reten­tion of evi­dence post-conviction, 51 per­cent reported that the pol­icy was gov­erned by state statute, 43 per­cent said evi­dence was retained due to agency pol­icy, and 5 per­cent said the pol­icy was in place as a result of a legal decision.

> See Law Enforce­ment Poli­cies for Retain­ing Bio­log­i­cal Evi­dence (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Rec­om­men­da­tions for the Future

The researchers made a num­ber of recommendations:

* Increased train­ing for law enforce­ment on the ben­e­fits and use of foren­sic evi­dence, includ­ing guide­lines for pri­or­i­tiz­ing cases for analysis.

* Cre­ation (or improve­ment) of infor­ma­tion man­age­ment sys­tems to track and mon­i­tor foren­sic evidence.

* Devel­op­ment of bet­ter pro­to­cols to ensure timely sub­mis­sion of pro­ba­tive foren­sic evi­dence to the lab and stan­dard­ized poli­cies for evi­dence retention.

* More stor­age capac­ity for ana­lyzed and unan­a­lyzed foren­sic evidence.

* Bet­ter coor­di­na­tion within a law enforce­ment agency and among the police, foren­sic lab and the prosecutor’s office. Coor­di­na­tion could involve ded­i­cated staff for case man­age­ment, reg­u­lar team meet­ings for case review and case track­ing sys­tems to allow information-sharing across these agencies.

* More research to bet­ter under­stand (1) what pro­por­tion of the open cases might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence was sub­mit­ted to a lab and (2) how such cases should be pri­or­i­tized for testing.

> See Study Impli­ca­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

The Poten­tial Value of Unan­a­lyzed Evi­dence not Addressed
The sur­vey does not reveal how many open cases with unan­a­lyzed evi­dence would be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads if evi­dence were to be sent to the lab. It also does not address the num­ber cases in which evi­dence was ana­lyzed in the past, but which now — with the ben­e­fit of larger offender data­bases and new foren­sic tech­nolo­gies — might be solved or yield inves­tiga­tive leads; for exam­ple, a latent print run through IAFIS sev­eral years ago with no suc­cess­ful match could yield a hit now. More research would help us bet­ter under­stand these issues.

> See Study Lim­i­ta­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

About the Sur­vey Responses
The 72 per­cent response rate for the sur­vey is con­sid­ered very good; 2,250 of the 3,094 state and local law enforce­ment agen­cies that the sur­vey was sent to responded. In some juris­dic­tions, how­ever, the num­ber of unsolved cases con­tain­ing unan­a­lyzed evi­dence was based on esti­mates; and some of the larger county and state agen­cies reported dif­fi­culty pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about rape and prop­erty cases because they do not main­tain these cases in a cen­tral­ized system.

> See Study Lim­i­ta­tions (pdf, 81 pages) in the full report. Link to Article

Notes

[1] Strom, Kevin J., Jeri Ropero-Miller, Shel­ton Jones, Nathan Sikes, Mark Pope and Nicole Horstmann, The 2007 Sur­vey of Law Enforce­ment Foren­sic Evi­dence Pro­cess­ing (pdf, 81 pages), Final Report, Wash­ing­ton, DC: U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice, National Insti­tute of Jus­tice, Sep­tem­ber 2009, 228415.

[2] Unsolved cases were defined as cases that had not been offi­cially cleared by the law enforce­ment agency.

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

The Den­ver Post
BYLINE: Susan Greene Den­ver Post Columnist

Den­ver, CO

Clarence Moses-EL may spend the rest of his life behind bars as the face of a national prob­lem that too long has gone ignored.

From prison, the Col­orado inmate won a judge’s per­mis­sion to test the DNA evi­dence from a rape for which he says he was wrong­fully con­victed. He man­aged to raise $1,000 from fel­low inmates to pay for the lab work. Den­ver police wrapped up the evi­dence and labeled the box, “DO NOT DESTROY.”

Nev­er­the­less, it got tossed in the trash.

Nearly 25 years since the dawn of the DNA era, there still are no fed­eral safe­guards pre­vent­ing local author­i­ties from destroy­ing traces of human biol­ogy that can free the wrong­fully con­victed or help crack unsolved cases. Nobody on a national level has taken a mean­ing­ful look at preservation.

Until now.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion this month is launch­ing a fed­eral work­ing group to rec­om­mend stan­dards for pre­serv­ing foren­sic evidence.

“The aim is national guide­lines that can be adopted by law enforce­ment, courts and any­one else who’s respon­si­ble for stor­ing evi­dence, espe­cially long term,” says Mark Stolorow of the National Insti­tute of Stan­dards and Technology.

A Den­ver Post series, “Trash­ing the Truth,” found author­i­ties across the coun­try have lost or destroyed tens of thou­sands of DNA sam­ples since genetic fin­ger­print­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ized crime solving.

In a nation where TV shows glo­rify DNA foren­sics, all too many real-life evi­dence rooms are mis­man­aged and under-funded, rou­tinely fail­ing to track valu­able items from crime scenes.

Pros­e­cu­tors and police nation­wide have cited costly stor­age space among rea­sons to jus­tify toss­ing DNA sam­ples, includ­ing rape kits.

Tax­pay­ers in Col­orado Springs paid $1.24 mil­lion to expand evi­dence rooms in 2002. But the space was cramped with unor­ga­nized piles within three years. So the Police Depart­ment trashed evi­dence from 500 cases, includ­ing sev­eral cold-case sex crimes and sus­pected murders.

One of those cases was the dis­ap­pear­ance of Glo­ria Berreth in 1994. Police didn’t tell her fam­ily they had burned the evidence.

Her daugh­ter learned about the purge months ago from an archived ver­sion of a 2-year-old arti­cle. She was stunned that police let her mom’s case go so cold.

Funded for at least a year by the U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment, the new fed­eral work­ing group will include sci­en­tists, legal experts and evi­dence cus­to­di­ans who have yet to be appointed. They’ll rec­om­mend pro­to­cols on what types of evi­dence should be pre­served, how and for how long, Stolorow says. They’re likely ulti­mately to ask Con­gress for funding.

The Bush admin­is­tra­tion killed pre­vi­ous attempts to address the prob­lem. “States have been need­ing guid­ance in this area for quite some time. This is a crit­i­cal step for­ward,” says Rebecca Brown, pol­icy advo­cate for the New York-based Inno­cence Project.

Col­orado imple­mented some reforms in 2008. But those efforts and the fed­eral work­ing group come too late for Moses-EL, 55, who remains locked up serv­ing a 48-year sen­tence. The DNA rev­o­lu­tion passed him by when Den­ver took the bio­log­i­cal proof of his guilt or inno­cence and threw it in a Dumpster.

“Some­one needs to set this straight,” he has writ­ten from the Kit Car­son Cor­rec­tional Facil­ity in Burling­ton. “If not for me, then for the next guy.”

Susan Greene writes Sun­days, Tues­days and Thurs­days. Reach her at 303 – 954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com