IAPE Evidence Blog

The Billings Gazette, billingsgazette.com
BYLINE: JESSIE MCQUILLAN and DAN WEINBERG The Billings Gazette
Link to Article

Billings, MT

The Mon­tana House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has before it a bill that, if enacted, will mea­sur­ably improve our jus­tice sys­tem. Sen­ate Bill 58, co-sponsored by Sen. Lynda Moss, D-Billings, and Sen. Jim Shock­ley, R-Victor, will have county law enforce­ment pre­serve DNA sam­ples on evi­dence found in cer­tain seri­ous, vio­lent crimes. The bill has already passed the Mon­tana Senate.

The Mon­tana Asso­ci­a­tion of Coun­ties doesn’t want this bill to pass. Its lob­by­ists claim the expense of stor­ing small bits of DNA evi­dence is too expen­sive for the coun­ties to take on. They also claim that facil­i­ties that store evi­dence are already inad­e­quate. There are sto­ries of mold grow­ing in one evi­dence room and poor doc­u­men­ta­tion in others.

MACO’s claims of poor evi­dence stor­age are true. Some of Montana’s coun­ties need to do a bet­ter job of main­tain­ing evi­dence. The integrity of our jus­tice sys­tem depends on it. Cases are deter­mined by the qual­ity of evi­dence. Their claims are not true that stor­ing small bits of DNA evi­dence would be unpre­dictably and unnec­es­sar­ily expensive.

If you were to talk with MACO rep­re­sen­ta­tives or lis­ten to the leg­isla­tive hear­ings, you would envi­sion entire auto­mo­biles and sofas being stored in enor­mous ware­houses. These require­ments are false. SB58 requires only that small sam­ples of DNA be pre­served, and offers clear ways for coun­ties to dis­pose of unnec­es­sary evidence.

Since DNA was first used in foren­sic sci­ence, hun­dreds of peo­ple nation­wide have been exon­er­ated for crimes they did not com­mit. DNA tells a story with 100 per­cent accu­racy. Match­ing bio­log­i­cal mate­r­ial, assum­ing the evi­dence is main­tained, is accu­rate and true. The other value of DNA is that it has shown us how fal­li­ble the other meth­ods of foren­sic sci­ence have been. The true value of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, hair analy­sis, bal­lis­tics analy­sis and coerced con­fes­sions all dimin­ish com­pared to DNA.

Texan Craig Watkins is the Dal­las County Dis­trict Attor­ney. When he took office sev­eral years ago, he was asked to sign a piece of paper that would have cleaned up the county’s evi­dence room and destroyed sam­ples of DNA. Mr. Watkins chose not to sign that paper. Since that day, over 40 men and women, con­victed in Dal­las and housed in Texas jails and pris­ons, have been exon­er­ated using those sam­ples of DNA. These were all inno­cent peo­ple, wrong­fully con­victed and imprisoned.

If jus­tice is not your chief con­cern but safety is, then con­sider this: In nearly 40 per­cent of the cases where some­one has been exon­er­ated of a crime using DNA, law enforce­ment went on to find the real per­pe­tra­tor using that same sam­ple of DNA. When we prop­erly store and use DNA evi­dence, we get real crim­i­nals off the street.

If jus­tice is not your chief con­cern but eco­nom­ics is, how do you rec­on­cile the cost of stor­ing small sam­ples of DNA with the cost of impris­on­ing inno­cent peo­ple (more than $34,000 per inmate per year)? MACO com­plains that the state of Mon­tana should store DNA, not the coun­ties. Presently, the state crime lab does main­tain some stor­age. The coun­ties need to do their part.

What is the value of free­dom for Mon­tanans who have com­mit­ted no crime? What is the value of jus­tice? This is our Dal­las moment.

Jessie McQuil­lan of Mis­soula is exec­u­tive direc­tor for Mon­tana Inno­cence Project. Dan Wein­berg is the organization’s founder and president.

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

The Billings Gazette — Billings, MT — billingsgazette.com
Link to Arti­cle
BYLINE: KAHRIN DEINES Of The Gazette Staff

Mus­selshell County, MT

Mus­selshell County Sher­iff Woody Weitzeil, shown in July 2009, is accused of mis­us­ing prop­erty from the county’s evi­dence room.
Photo by DAVID GRUBBS/Gazette Staff

The state Depart­ment of Jus­tice is con­sid­er­ing whether Mus­selshell County Sher­iff Woody Weitzeil improp­erly used prop­erty from his evi­dence room.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tion has been com­pleted, and the case has been for­warded to the state’s Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vices Bureau to deter­mine whether charges should be filed, said Judy Beck, spokes­woman for Attor­ney Gen­eral Steve Bullock.

“Noth­ing will become pub­lic until if and when there are charges filed,” Beck said.

Weitzeil said he took an old, rusty action that had sat unused for about 15 to 20 years from the evi­dence room.

Over a period of sev­eral months, Weitzeil said, he cleaned the old J. Stevens Marks­man single-shot, break-open action and pur­chased parts to retro­fit it into a .22-caliber that could be kept in his patrol vehi­cle to kill wildlife, such as injured deer found on county road­ways and skunks.

“It was a piece of scrap iron,” Weitzeil said. “That’s all it was.”

Mus­selshell County Attor­ney Kent Sipe said that he referred the mat­ter to the state’s Divi­sion of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tions in mid — to early April after Weitzeil told him about tak­ing an item from the evi­dence room that was described as a firearm with a sawed-off bar­rel and welded-on pis­tol grip.

“The admis­sion was that he’d taken it for his per­sonal use and wasn’t he enti­tled to it. … That was the state­ment that was made to me was wasn’t he enti­tled to a lit­tle piece of metal after 25 years,” Sipe said.

Weitzeil has been with the Mus­selshell County Sheriff’s Office since 1986. He became the sher­iff in 2004 after vot­ers recalled for­mer Sher­iff Mar­tin Mal­one, who was accused of mis­us­ing a county credit card and cell phone.

On Tues­day, Weitzeil, a Repub­li­can, faces chal­lenges from two other Repub­li­cans in a pri­mary elec­tion for the sheriff’s post. He is run­ning against Repub­li­cans Lyle Beauchamp and John White, along with Bert Holmes, an Inde­pen­dent candidate.

Weitzeil said he thinks the tim­ing of the inves­ti­ga­tion is suspicious.

“I find it very inter­est­ing that the county attor­ney would do this just before an elec­tion,” Weitzeil said.

Sipe said he relayed all infor­ma­tion about the issue to the state’s inves­ti­ga­tion bureau and did not con­tact the media about the mat­ter. He said he was con­tacted by DCI late Fri­day after the agency received a request for infor­ma­tion about the inves­ti­ga­tion from Billings tele­vi­sion sta­tion KTVQ.

“I made my refer­ral,” Sipe said. “It was an admis­sion that was made to me and that I was not com­fort­able with.”

State law requires that a peti­tion be filed with a court to destroy or appro­pri­ate phys­i­cal evi­dence from crim­i­nal cases or con­tra­band items seized from indi­vid­u­als. A court may then issue an order autho­riz­ing the item’s destruc­tion or use for law enforce­ment purposes.

Weitzeil said that, in this case, the action was never tagged as evi­dence. He said it had a short, sawed-off bar­rel attached to it and most likely was once used as a “druggie’s gun.”

“It was either going to get thrown in the garbage or just left there for­ever, so why not just turn it into some­thing the depart­ment can use?” Weitzeil asked.

Sipe said he was told by the sher­iff that the weapon was seized from an indi­vid­ual as an unlaw­ful firearm many years ago.

Con­tact Kahrin Deines at kdeines@billingsgazette.com or 657‑1392.

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

Great Falls Tri­bune (Mon­tana)
BYLINE: Tri­bune Staff

Roo­sevelt County, MT

A 20-year-old Wolf Point man pleaded guilty in fed­eral court Tues­day on drug charges after he was found to be steal­ing drug evi­dence from the Roo­sevelt County Sheriff’s Office while employed as a jail offi­cer about a year ago.

Jared Albert Weeks-Combs will be sen­tenced on Aug. 26 in Great Falls for pos­ses­sion with the intent to dis­trib­ute metham­phet­a­mine. He faces a pos­si­ble 20-year prison sen­tence and/or a $1 mil­lion fine.

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Roo­sevelt County’s under­sh­er­iff dis­cov­ered drug evi­dence miss­ing from the office’s evi­dence room on April 20, 2009.

A recently retired cus­to­dian was asked to inven­tory the evi­dence room and dis­cov­ered that 22 items of drug evi­dence were miss­ing: approx­i­mately 12 grams of metham­phet­a­mine and 12 ounces of mar­i­juana were among the miss­ing items, as was $400 cash.

The same day the inven­tory was con­ducted, the sheriff’s office received a call from a cit­i­zen who accused Weeks-Combs of steal­ing the drugs from the evi­dence room and sell­ing them to pay his rent.

Secu­rity cam­eras were reviewed and wit­nesses were inter­viewed. Weeks-Combs was inter­viewed and admit­ted to gain­ing access to the evi­dence room eight to 15 times between Feb­ru­ary and April 23, 2009. He told inves­ti­ga­tors that he stole 21 to 22 envelopes con­tain­ing meth or mar­i­juana. He also admit­ted to tak­ing a wal­let con­tain­ing $400 cash.

Weeks-Combs told inves­ti­ga­tors that he used most of the stolen drugs, though he did pro­vide some of them to friends. The inves­ti­ga­tion was a coop­er­a­tive effort between the Roo­sevelt County Sheriff’s Office and the Fed­eral Bureau of Investigation.

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