IAPE Evidence Blog

The Mer­cury, a Jour­nal Reg­is­ter Prop­erty, pottsmerc.com
BYLINE: Carl Hessler Jr., chessler@journalregister.com
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Mont­gomery County, PA

NORRISTOWN – A cig­a­rette butt left behind by a Lim­er­ick bur­glar was the smok­ing gun that led to a Philadel­phia man’s con­vic­tion for the crime.

James Fran­cis DePaul, 26, of Lawn­dale Avenue, was con­victed Wednes­day by a Mont­gomery County jury of charges of bur­glary, crim­i­nal tres­pass and theft by unlaw­ful tak­ing in con­nec­tion with the Dec. 17, 2008, break-in at a home on Metka Road in Limerick.

The jury reached the ver­dict after hear­ing tes­ti­mony that DePaul’s DNA was dis­cov­ered on a cig­a­rette butt that Lim­er­ick police found at the scene of the bur­glary, appar­ently left behind by DePaul.

At the time of the bur­glary, which net­ted DePaul $200 in cash, DePaul was actu­ally resid­ing in a halfway house in Philadel­phia under pre-release sta­tus in con­nec­tion with a pre­vi­ous state prison sen­tence he was serv­ing for a 2004 Abing­ton con­ve­nience store rob­bery dur­ing which he stole cigarettes.

“I think it’s safe to say that smok­ing has taken years off Mr. DePaul’s life, espe­cially when he con­tin­ues to com­mit crimes in Mont­gomery County,” said Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney John Walko, who vowed to seek prison time against DePaul for the Lim­er­ick crime.

“I’m happy with the jury’s ver­dict. I believe they reached the right result, no ifs, ands, or buts, well maybe one but, a cig­a­rette butt,” Walko added.

As jurors were polled indi­vid­u­ally by court clerk Kevin Frankel, sev­eral mem­bers of DePaul’s fam­ily wept with each “guilty” ver­dict that was announced.

Judge Steven T. O’Neill, who presided over the two-day trial, imme­di­ately revoked DePaul’s bail, while empha­siz­ing that DePaul com­mit­ted the bur­glary while in a state Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions’ pre-release pro­gram for his 2004 rob­bery conviction.

“This defen­dant also has a his­tory of vio­lent crimes. Fur­ther release would be a risk,” said O’Neill as sheriff’s deputies slapped hand­cuffs on DePaul’s wrists for the trip to jail.

DePaul, who was rep­re­sented by defense lawyer Andres Jalon, faces a pos­si­ble max­i­mum sen­tence of 14 ½ to 29 years in prison on the charges.

An inves­ti­ga­tion of DePaul began on Dec. 17, 2008, when the Metka Road home­owner returned home to find that his home had been bur­glar­ized. The res­i­dent dis­cov­ered $200 in cash was taken.

Author­i­ties dis­cov­ered a cig­a­rette butt on the liv­ing room floor, near a lap­top com­puter that had been moved by the bur­glar, accord­ing to the arrest affi­davit filed by Lim­er­ick Detec­tive Ernie Mor­ris. The inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that no one who resided in the home smoked.

“The cig­a­rette butt was col­lected and sub­mit­ted for evi­dence,” Mor­ris wrote in the crim­i­nal com­plaint, explain­ing state police foren­sic sci­en­tists were able to extract DNA from the cigarette.

Trial tes­ti­mony revealed a DNA mix­ture from two peo­ple was obtained from the cig­a­rette. Walko, rely­ing on tests con­ducted by foren­sic sci­en­tists, argued DePaul was the major con­trib­u­tor to that DNA mix­ture profile.

“It’s hard to argue with DNA evi­dence and it was only the DNA evi­dence that was really link­ing him to this crime. But again, it was very strong, com­pelling evi­dence,” Walko said. “Essen­tially, there was more of the defendant’s DNA on the cigarette.”

Defense lawyers unsuc­cess­fully implied to the jury that the uniden­ti­fied sec­ond per­son whose DNA was dis­cov­ered in the mix­ture on the cig­a­rette was actu­ally the burglar.

DePaul did not tes­tify dur­ing the trial; how­ever, his lawyers implied that DePaul had left the halfway house to attend a class at a Philadel­phia tech­ni­cal school and could not have com­mit­ted the burglary.

In Decem­ber 2004, DePaul was sen­tenced to 4 ½ to nine years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to a rob­bery charge in con­nec­tion with an April 13, 2004, holdup at the Sunoco A-Plus Mini Mart on Town­ship Line Road in Abing­ton. DePaul pointed a knife at the cashier and demanded money from the cash reg­is­ter, police said.

DePaul made off with about $79 in cash and a cou­ple packs of cig­a­rettes dur­ing the rob­bery, court doc­u­ments indicate.

Fol­low Carl Hessler Jr. on Twit­ter @MontcoCourtNews

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

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, The Repub­lic, therepublic.com

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Brad­dock Bor­ough, PA

LIGONIER, Pa. — A sus­pended Pittsburgh-area police offi­cer has been ordered to stand trial on charges includ­ing bur­glary and steal­ing crack cocaine from a police evi­dence room that he allegedly used to buy the silence of a for­mer live-in girl­friend who allegedly helped him.

Brad­dock Bor­ough Coun­cil voted Tues­day to sus­pend 29-year-old James Scuf­fle, of Plum, from their police depart­ment after he was ordered to stand trial ear­lier in the day.

Author­i­ties say James Scuf­fle also filed a false insur­ance claim for the theft of his car, in addi­tion to steal­ing a motor­cy­cle trailer dur­ing the bur­glary in ques­tion in April.

The charges stem from inci­dents that occurred while Scuf­fle was off-duty due to a duty-related car crash in 2009. He finally returned to work in June.

Scuffle’s attor­ney, Lee Roth­man, said the officer’s ex-girlfriend and another wit­ness are not credible.

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

Philadel­phia Media Net­work, Inc., philly.com
BYLINE: DAVID GAMBACORTA, gambacd@phillynews.com 215 – 854-5994
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FUBAR files hold notes on miss­ing stuff

Philadel­phia, PA

This label in the Police Department’s Firearms Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Unit is affixed to a cab­i­net that has paper­work for weapons that are miss­ing, and for weapons that have no paper­work. “FUBAR stands for F — – Up Beyond All Recog­ni­tion.” (Photo pro­vided)

AT FIRST GLANCE, it looks like an ordi­nary, mean­ing­less lit­tle label.

But then your eyes focus and you real­ize it reads: “FUBAR Storage.”

The acronym, in case you’re won­der­ing, stands for “F — – Up Beyond All Recog­ni­tion.” The label is affixed to the front of a six-foot-tall cab­i­net in the Police Department’s Firearms Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Unit.

Police sources say that the cab­i­net is home to prop­erty receipts for firearms and other evi­dence that the unit can’t find, and weapons that don’t have paper­work explain­ing why they are in police custody.

Never has a label seem­ingly applied so well to a situation.

The “FUBAR” cab­i­net is among numer­ous trou­bling issues involv­ing the FIU that the Daily News has learned about in recent weeks.

Police Com­mis­sioner Charles Ram­sey said yes­ter­day that he has asked foren­sic experts from the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice to audit the FIU. The State Police agreed last week to help with the task.

Ram­sey also con­firmed that the unit is miss­ing a Tec-9, a semi­au­to­matic weapon, that police con­fis­cated in 2005 in an assault case.

“It could be at the D.A.‘s office,” he said. “It could be in evi­dence [at City Hall]. We just have to locate it.”

Ram­sey said that he has trans­ferred Offi­cer Anthony Magsam — who is at the cen­ter of a long-running Inter­nal Affairs inves­ti­ga­tion into the FIU — from North­east Philly’s 15th Dis­trict to the Dif­fer­en­tial Police Response Unit, an admin­is­tra­tive post in Police Headquarters.

The Daily News reported last week that Magsam allegedly had stolen inter­nal parts from two auto­matic weapons in the FIU in 2009, accord­ing to numer­ous sources with direct knowl­edge of the incident.

Being in pos­ses­sion of stolen or unreg­is­tered machine-gun parts is a fed­eral crime, accord­ing to the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

But Magsam — whose mother, police Sgt. Bar­bara Feeney, is mar­ried to retired Chief Inspec­tor Michael Feeney — was never dis­ci­plined or reported. He was trans­ferred to the 15th District.

Ram­sey reas­signed the com­man­der of the FIU, Lt. Vin­cent Testa, after the People’s Paper began inquir­ing about alle­ga­tions that Testa had helped to arrange a cover-up of the theft.

The com­mis­sioner also replaced the lead Inter­nal Affairs inves­ti­ga­tor on the case, as well as Capt. Car­men Vuotto, who was over­see­ing the investigator’s work. Vuotto pre­vi­ously worked with Testa in the FIU.

“We have good inves­ti­ga­tors work­ing on this,” he said. “It’s not that we didn’t before, but they just didn’t com­plete it.”

Police sources said that a firearms exam­iner real­ized more than a year ago that the Tec-9 was miss­ing from the FIU’s inventory.

“It had been altered to fire fully auto­matic,” said a source who has knowl­edge of the miss­ing weapon. “When the exam­iner real­ized it was miss­ing, he said, ‘Holy s — !’ It was brought to Testa’s atten­tion, and he said, ‘Don’t we have a Tec-9 in the archive room that we can replace it with?’ ”

Ram­sey said that Testa, who has declined to com­ment, never made such a statement.

The Tec-9 was con­fis­cated by police in July 2005, when offi­cers searched Floyd Wig­gins’ house.

Wig­gins and another man, Richard Lyons, had been charged with assault­ing and threat­en­ing a motorist in West Philly, accord­ing to court records.

Both were later found not guilty, how­ever, and the Tec-9 didn’t fig­ure into the case, said defense attor­ney Ray­mond Driscoll, who rep­re­sented Wiggins.

How the FIU lost track of the weapon is unclear.

Ram­sey said he was not “in a state of panic” over the miss­ing weapon.

“It needs to be put into con­text,” he said. “We’ve lit­er­ally had thou­sands of guns come in [to the FIU] since 2005.

“It’s not like you have five guns and you’re miss­ing one. And it’s not like this was an active case.”

But, find­ing the weapon is a pri­or­ity, as is find­ing out what’s lurk­ing inside the “FUBAR” cabinet.

Ram­sey said he was not aware that the cab­i­net existed until ear­lier this week.

“It’s a part of the inves­ti­ga­tion now,” he said.

Police sources said that the cab­i­net sits in the mid­dle of a walk­way in the FIU, and has long con­tained paper­work on numer­ous pieces of evi­dence that can’t be found, and guns that don’t have any attached paperwork.

Ram­sey said he has been told by police offi­cials that some of the miss­ing paper­work had been lost in an office flood.

“We just need to get a com­plete audit, get every­thing in line and make sure every­thing is being run right in there,” he said.

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