IAPE Evidence Blog

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: ADAM WALLWORTH ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Van Buren, AR

A for­mer Van Buren police offi­cer con­victed of embez­zling drug money will get a new sen­tence after win­ning an appeal.

The deci­sion by a three judge panel of the 8th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis found in favor of Mik­los A. Mol­nar, 49, who is serv­ing a five-year term for steal­ing nearly $51,000 from the Police Department’s evi­dence locker. The deci­sion handed down last week means the case will go back to U.S. Dis­trict Judge Robert Daw­son in Fort Smith for a new sen­tenc­ing hearing.

Both sides in the case will be given a chance to present facts and tes­ti­mony at the hear­ing, said Deb­bie Groom, act­ing U.S. attor­ney for the West­ern Dis­trict of Arkansas.

Groom said her office likely will present new tes­ti­mony, but the office first will con­duct a thor­ough review. Mol­nar will be resen­tenced, but the court’s rul­ing doesn’t guar­an­tee a reduc­tion in his sen­tence, she said.

Mol­nar, a 20-year depart­ment vet­eran, pleaded guilty in August 2008 to embez­zling $50,997 from evi­dence in 14 cases. Daw­son chose to increase Molnar’s sen­tence to five years from the rec­om­mended 10 to 16 months after hear­ing tes­ti­mony in a Jan. 30, 2009, hearing.

Mol­nar had been in charge of the department’s evi­dence room and was part of a Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion task force when he took money that had been seized by police. Daw­son increased the sen­tence, cit­ing Molnar’s poten­tial impact on fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion investigations.

In its deci­sion, the panel quoted Daw­son, who told Mol­nar that some of the money he took was there­fore not avail­able to the DEA for drug pur­chases. “So I think your activ­i­ties have sig­nif­i­cantly impaired mul­ti­ple drug pre­ven­tion work,” Daw­son told Molnar.

The asser­tion that Mol­nar hin­dered other inves­ti­ga­tions was found to be in error because the DEA couldn’t read­ily access the money to use in inves­ti­ga­tions. The appeals court ruled that the assump­tion led to the unnec­es­sary sen­tenc­ing increase.

“Had the dis­trict court not plainly erred in con­sid­er­ing the facts relat­ing to ‘drug buy’ money, it would not have var­ied upward to the extent — 275 per­cent — that it did,” the panel found.

The panel agreed with Daw­son on the impor­tance of Molnar’s role as a police offi­cer but noted the for­mer offi­cer already had received a higher rec­om­mended sen­tence because of his job.

“Law­break­ing by a high­rank­ing police offi­cer pro­motes dis­re­spect for the law and must be addressed at this sen­tenc­ing,” Daw­son told Mol­nar, accord­ing to court records.

News of the resen­tenc­ing didn’t carry much sig­nif­i­cance for Van Buren Police Chief Ken­neth Bell, who said at the sen­tenc­ing hear­ing that he con­sid­ered Mol­nar a per­sonal friend.

“I really don’t have a thought one way or the other,” Bell said last week.

Bell said his role in the inves­ti­ga­tion ended when he turned it over to the FBI. How­ever, sev­eral changes have been made at the depart­ment to make sure such a crime isn’t repeated, he said.

Mol­nar was the last per­son to be in charge of the evi­dence room and involved in drug inves­ti­ga­tions, Bell said. The depart­ment has since hired a civil­ian to oper­ate the evi­dence locker, he said.

“We’ve got a lot more checks and bal­ances,” Bell said. “Orig­i­nally [Mol­nar] took care of the evi­dence room and was a drug offi­cer. We’ve taken the step to put some­body in between there. Live and learn.” The panel con­sisted of judges C. Arlen Beam of Lin­coln, Neb.; Michael J. Mel­loy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Ray­mond W. Gru­en­der of St. Louis.

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

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Ben­tonville, AR

EAST CAMDEN — A fired Ben­tonville Police Depart­ment evi­dence offi­cer and crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor lost her state-issued cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Thursday.

At a meet­ing here, the Arkansas Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Stan­dards and Train­ing deter­mined that Michelle Mar­garet Smith should be barred from work­ing as a police offi­cer in the state because of poorly orga­nized evi­dence belong­ing to 330 sep­a­rate cases in Ben­tonville and what her for­mer chief, James Allen, called “bizarre” behavior.

After the com­mis­sion handed down its deci­sion, Smith sat qui­etly and shook her head, look­ing stunned.

Smith’s attor­ney, William Put­man of Fayet­teville, argued that a mal­func­tion­ing com­puter sys­tem and a reac­tion to the com­bi­na­tion of a cer­tain antibi­otic med­ica­tion com­bined with doctor-prescribed steroid injec­tions caused both her dimin­ished job per­for­mance and what he called her “manic” emo­tional state.

When it came time for Smith to tes­tify, she described her love of crime scene work and said her prob­lems were behind her.

“I’m great,” she told the com­mis­sion. “I’m men­tally and phys­i­cally bet­ter.” Smith said the days when she would sweat through her clothes and the nights she would sweat through her sheets — all for no clear rea­son — were behind her.

Also gone were her vio­lent dreams.

Allen said of that time in Smith’s life: “It was just baf­fling to us what was occur­ring. It was not the same Michelle Smith we had known for years.” Allen hired Smith from the Jones­boro Police Depart­ment in 2005. She had worked there nearly seven years with no issues.

But in late 2008, after repeated expo­sure to methamphetamine-making chem­i­cals that required she get med­ical treat­ment, some­thing changed.

The evi­dence room began to fall into dis­ar­ray. After Smith’s per­sonal prob­lems wors­ened — her par­ents moved in with her for a time to help, she said — her super­vi­sors learned that she had stopped tak­ing evi­dence to the Arkansas Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Lit­tle Rock. They found other evi­dence — 18 cases’ worth — in a taped-shut dehu­mid­i­fier box in the main prop­erty room. Smith also failed to sep­a­rate out drugs, guns and cash for stor­age in a more-secure room out­side the main police headquarters.

Allen said the chain of cus­tody was not com­pro­mised, so the mis­han­dled evi­dence ulti­mately did not jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases. But it took “hun­dreds of hours” to find that out, he said.

Ben­tonville police Lt. Jon Simp­son said Smith also failed to prop­erly store evi­dence she col­lected at crime scenes, includ­ing bul­let frag­ments from an officer-involved shooting.

Allen fired Smith on April 13.

At the hear­ing Thurs­day, Smith and her doc­tor, William McCol­lum, said they felt sure that the com­bi­na­tion of the antibi­otic Lev­aquin and steroid injec­tions to help her recover from methamphetamine-related chem­i­cal expo­sures were at the core of her prob­lems and would not be repeated.

McCol­lum said he saw no issues with Smith per­form­ing the duties nec­es­sary to be a police officer.

Smith said she would not seek a job in another prop­erty room if allowed to keep her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, but she would like to work as a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor again.

“I love crime scene [inves­ti­ga­tion],” she said.

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

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: BY ADAM WALLWORTH ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Ben­tonville, AR

Beer cans and broadswords are among the items that fill the rows of shelves in one of the invis­i­ble places in police depart­ments — the prop­erty rooms.

The eclec­tic col­lec­tions hold crit­i­cal evi­dence used to put sus­pects in jail or get them off the hook.

Recent audits of the Rogers and Ben­tonville police depart­ments’ evi­dence rooms have pointed out poten­tially trou­bling issues with how the evi­dence was logged and maintained.

“Prop­erty rooms are the for­got­ten child until we have a prob­lem in our orga­ni­za­tions,” said Joe Latta, exec­u­tive direc­tor of California-based Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence Inc.

Latta’s group works to fos­ter bet­ter prac­tices among prop­erty and evi­dence rooms that house thou­sands of pieces of evi­dence for cases from drunken dri­ving to homi­cide, but have no gov­ern­ing body to set standards. 

Latta said it is not uncom­mon for police admin­is­tra­tors to get in trou­ble be cause of igno­rance in the oper­a­tions of a prop­erty room.

“There are tons of chiefs out there that have lost their jobs because of prop­erty rooms,” Latta said.

Last month, Ben­tonville Chief James Allen asked the Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Stan­dards to revoke the cer­tifi­cate of a for mer offi­cer who was in charge of the evi­dence room for his department.

Allen fired Michelle Mar­garet Smith in April as prop­erty con­trol offi­cer for fail­ing to log 1,300 pieces of evi­dence in more than 300 cases.

It took more than a week and 300 man-hours for other offi­cers to sort through the prop­erty and evi­dence. Allen and other offi­cers have said that Smith did not com­pro­mise the chain of cus­tody and that every piece of evi­dence could be traced back to the offi­cer who entered it.

Allen’s request at the commission’s July 10 meet­ing in Cam­den came on the heels of an audit that found defi­cien­cies in the Rogers Police Depart­ment prop­erty room. New Chief Steve Hamil­ton ini­ti­ated the review shortly after his appoint­ment in October.

Hamil­ton said his staff had prob­lems with how evi­dence was pack­aged and accessed. The audi­tor found there were sev­eral keys to the prop­erty room, but no one knew exactly how many.
Now, Hamil­ton said he is the only per­son besides the two prop­erty room clerks who has keys.

“I’ve never been in there by myself,” he said.

Nei­ther audit has led to a suc­cess­ful appeal of a cri minal con­vic­tion, but Ben­ton County Pub­lic Defender Jay Sax­ton said he will review numer­ous cases.

Ben­ton County Prose cut­ing Attor­ney Van Stone said he doesn’t antic­i­pate any appeals com­ing out of either instance because the evi­dence wasn’t com promised.

If there was a prob­lem with evi­dence in a case, it would be his duty under the law to make sure the defense attor­ney knew about it, Stone said.

“On the cases we’ve pros­e­cuted, we’ve not had any issues with chain of cus­tody thus far,” Stone said.

Stone said the fact that there haven’t been any cases in Ben­ton County where evi­dence was com­pro­mised doesn’t dimin­ish the impor­tance of main­tain­ing stan­dards in pro­cess­ing evidence.

FEW ACCREDITED

The Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion for Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies, a non­profit group based in Fair­fax, Va., is the only orga­ni­za­tion that can enforce stan­dards for evi­dence rooms, Latta said. The group’s author­ity extends on ly to depart­ments that vol­un­tar­ily seek accred­i­ta­tion from the group.

The orga­ni­za­tion accred­its and rec­og­nizes more than 600 agen­cies in the U.S., Canada, Mex­ico and Bar­ba­dos. To be accred­ited, depart­ments must meet more than 400 dif­fer­ent stan­dards set by the com mis­sion. Recog­ni­tion, usu­ally reserved for smaller police agen­cies, requires 112 stan dards.

There are more than 17,000 local and state law enforce­ment agen­cies in the coun­try, accord­ing to the Bureau of Jus­tice Sta­tis­tics Web site. There are nine agen­cies in Arkansas that are rec­og­nized or accred­ited, includ­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Arkansas Police Depart­ment, which is accred­ited. Both Rogers and Fayet­teville depart­ments are in the process of apply­ing for accreditation.

The Lit­tle Rock Police Depart­ment has been accred­ited since 1998, but it looks beyond the commission’s stan­dards when it comes to man­ag­ing prop­erty, said Carri Fred­er­ick, prop­erty room super­vi­sor and pres­i­dent of the Arkansas Asso­ci­a­tion of Prop­erty and Evi­dence, an affil­i­ate of Latta’s organization.

Fred­er­ick said she researched poli­cies used by other depart­ments to develop those used in Lit­tle Rock. The main prob­lem fac­ing prop­erty rooms is a lack of space, she said.

Evi­dence is con­stantly brought in, but it takes time to get rid of it, Fred­er­ick said. She said her evi­dence room has about 80,000 pieces of evi­dence, includ­ing some that must be kept indef­i­nitely, such as DNA or evi­dence from homicides.

It takes time to research each piece of evi­dence to deter­mine whether it can be destroyed, Fred­er­ick said. She said she recently researched evi­dence in a rob­bery case and found the per­son was serv­ing a life sen­tence from another juris­dic­tion.
Latta said prop­erty rooms typ­i­cally lack the staff they need to main­tain proper inven­tory con­trol. Offi­cers and detec­tives con­stantly deliver evi­dence, and if it’s not dis­posed of, the prop­erty begins to pile up, he said.

“Ninety-nine per­cent of what we have is stuff we’ve col­lected that nobody knows what to do with,” Latta said.

The other 1 per­cent will be brought up in court and have to be accounted for from the moment the items are seized.

PROPERTY PATH

Offi­cers typ­i­cally fol­low sim­i­lar processes when han­dling newly acquired evi­dence, though each depart­ment has its own way of oper­at­ing. Depart­ments may favor a dif­fer­ent type of bag — paper or plas­tic — to hold the items, but they all require the offi­cer to ini­tial the seal.

Once bagged — or boxed in the case of guns — items are placed in lock­ers that are only to be opened by the prop­erty room staff. Most depart­ments use some sort of bar-code sys­tem to track the items once they are logged in to the prop­erty room.
Dif­fer­ent depart­ments use dif­fer­ent soft­ware, which is one of Latta’s com­plaints. Some soft­ware pack­ages are built as an after­thought to be sold with the computer-aided dis­patch soft­ware, he said.

The pri­mary com­plaint against the for­mer Ben­tonville offi­cer was her fail­ure to log pieces of evi­dence into the com­puter sys­tem for sev­eral months. Smith didn’t log a sin­gle piece of evi­dence in the department’s sys­tem from Octo­ber to Feb­ru­ary, accord­ing to a report from Allen.

Ben­tonville offi­cers are required to prop­erly pack­age and label evi­dence when they sub­mit it to the prop­erty room, said Lt. Jon Simp­son. Simp­son said that while Smith wasn’t log­ging the items into the prop­erty room, offi­cers fol­lowed pro­ce­dure in enter­ing them into custody.

Stone said no tri­als or hear­ings were delayed because of the evi­dence prob­lems. Ben­ton County pros­e­cu­tors, mon­i­tor­ing a com­puter track­ing sys­tem for police evi­dence, ques­tioned the Ben­tonville police when they noticed evi­dence was not being sent to the state Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Lit­tle Rock as quickly as usual.

Proper use of the sys­tem doesn’t guar­an­tee some items won’t show up on the wrong shelf, said Capt. Ron Hritz, the prop­erty room super­vi­sor for the Spring­dale Police Department.

Spring­dale audits the prop­erty room every year and typ­i­cally finds a few items in the wrong place, he said, adding that’s not an indi­ca­tion of a mis­take but rather the lim­its of the soft­ware.
The prop­erty man­ager may move faster than the soft­ware and not notice that the com­puter misses a scan, Hritz said. The piece of evi­dence would still show up in the sys­tem, but it would be in a dif­fer­ent place.

Evi­dence col­lec­tion and man­age­ment has been largely neglected, said Stephen Saloom, pol­icy direc­tor for the Inno­cence Project, a New York-based non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that reviews evi­dence for peo­ple who say they were wrongly convicted.

“This is the evi­dence used to deter­mine ques­tions of inno­cence and guilt in crim­i­nal cases,” he said. “The integrity of that evi­dence is of the utmost impor­tance, as is the abil­ity to locate it when you need it.” Saloom said his group is urg­ing the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice’s National Jus­tice Insti­tute to adopt best prac­tices for man­ag­ing evidence.

Evi­dence man­age­ment stan­dards con­tinue to become more impor­tant with advances in the use of DNA in crim­i­nal cases, he said.

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