IAPE Evidence Blog

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

www.lasvegassun.com
BYLINE: Jean Reid Nor­man
Link to Arti­cle
one photo

Boul­der City, NV

A pipe that burst dur­ing ren­o­va­tion of the Boul­der City Police Sta­tion flooded the evi­dence room but did not dam­age any evi­dence, police say.

The pipe, part of the fire sup­pres­sion sys­tem, broke Aug. 25 in an upstairs area that is being turned into new offices for the police chief, deputy chief and an assis­tant as well as a con­fer­ence room, Shane Cun­ning­ham of the Pub­lic Works Depart­ment said. Water flooded the evi­dence room in the base­ment below those offices and dam­aged the cur­rent office of Deputy Chief John Chase, which is also in the base­ment below the work area, Cun­ning­ham said.

The water filled the floor of the evi­dence room to about an inch in depth, Detec­tive Sgt. Vince Albow­icz said. Luck­ily for the depart­ment, all of the boxes of evi­dence were on metal shelv­ing well off the floor, and only a few card­board boxes sus­tained damage.

None of the evi­dence inside the boxes was harmed, Albow­icz said.

“The major­ity of the dam­age was not to the evi­dence or the evi­dence items. It was to the room itself,” he said. “We were very for­tu­nate. No evi­dence was lost.”

All of the evi­dence in dam­aged boxes was repacked into new card­board boxes, and all of the evi­dence was moved to a new, larger room, where it will stay, Albow­icz said.

As it turns out, he said, the detec­tive bureau had just moved into its new offices upstairs and its old offices in the base­ment were available.

“It will afford us some growth in the future,” he said.

In the mean­time, con­trac­tor Hardy Con­struc­tion Inc. is fix­ing the dam­age the bro­ken pipe caused, Cun­ning­ham said. All of the walls and drop ceil­ings are being replaced, and Hardy Con­struc­tion will pay for the time city employ­ees spent reor­ga­niz­ing the evi­dence and mov­ing it to its new home.

The good news, Cun­ning­ham said, is that Hardy brought in extra work­ers to han­dle the repairs, and the remod­el­ing job is still on track to be com­pleted by Sept. 25.

The city plans to host the next Cham­ber of Com­merce mixer at the ren­o­vated sta­tion at 6 p.m. Oct. 14 to allow the pub­lic to see results of the $750,000 project.

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