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Forensics
Rare look inside state
crime labs reveals recurring DNA test problems
By RUTH TEICHROEB ,SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER, Thursday, July 22, 2004
For the
detective working the case, it looked like a sure thing. The
58-year-old suspect had confessed to raping his young niece.
He had a prior sex-crime conviction.
DNA evidence extracted from
the 10-year-old girl's underwear would be the clincher.
Charged with child rape, the
road-crew worker from the South King County town of Pacific faced
up to 26 years in prison -- until authorities learned of startling
test results coming out of the Washington State Patrol's Tacoma
crime lab.
The genetic evidence excluded
the victim's uncle and pointed to an unknown man. The airtight
case suddenly had a gaping hole.
Four months later, on Jan.
8, 2002, prosecutors offered a deal. The defendant pleaded guilty
to a lesser charge of child molestation, shaving a decade off
his sentence.
A couple of weeks after that,
the lab made an embarrassing discovery.
The mystery man was a mistake.
Forensic scientist Mike Dornan
had bungled the test, accidentally contaminating the child's
clothing with DNA from another case he'd been working on.
DNA contamination and errors
at the State Patrol crime labs are recurring problems, an investigation
by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has found.
Forensic scientists contaminated
tests or made other mistakes while handling DNA evidence in at
least 23 cases involving major crimes over the last three years,
according to State Patrol and court records.
The list of DNA testing errors,
uncovered through public-records requests and interviews with
defense attorneys and experts, offers an unusual glimpse into
what can go wrong. Crime labs across the country are struggling
with similar problems but documented evidence has been hard to
come by.
The State Patrol cases reveal
that the technology has an Achilles' heel: human error.
Forensic scientists tainted
tests with their own DNA in eight of the 23 cases. They made
mistakes in six others, from throwing out evidence swabs to misreading
results, fingering the wrong rape suspect. Tests were contaminated
by DNA from unrelated cases in three examinations, and between
evidence in the same case in another. The source of contamination
in five other tests is unknown.
Every cell in the human body
contains a copy of a person's unique DNA, or deoxyribonucleic
acid, a microscopic foot-long strand that determines eye color,
height and other inherited characteristics. A DNA match is considered
infallible proof of guilt or innocence in many crimes.
Sophisticated DNA testing has
played a crucial role in high-profile cases, including the crime
lab's work in helping put Green River Killer Gary Ridgway behind
bars for life last year and cracking a number of "cold-case"
murders.
Crime lab officials here and
elsewhere don't like to talk about the fact that the same test
that can link someone to a crime scene with a few minuscule cells
left on a doorknob can also be contaminated by a passing sneeze.
Or that DNA tests are only as reliable as the humans doing them
-- a troubling prospect when dealing with evidence that has the
power to exonerate suspects or imprison them for life.
"The amazing thing is
how many screw-ups they have for a technique that they go into
court and say is infallible," said William C. Thompson,
a forensic expert and professor of criminology and law at the
University of California-Irvine, who reviewed the incidents at
the request of the P-I.
"What we're seeing in
these 23 cases is really the tip of the iceberg."
That's because the lab is only
catching obvious cases that likely signal more widespread problems,
Thompson said.
State Patrol lab officials
disagree, saying they have strict protocols in place that guarantee
these incidents represent only a tiny fraction of the 1,400 DNA
cases handled each year.
"We're as good as any
lab and probably better than many," said Barry Logan, who
as director of the crime labs -- the Forensic Laboratory Services
Bureau -- oversees a $21 million biennial budget and seven labs
processing evidence for the bulk of Washington's criminal cases.
Although the labs only recently
set up a mandatory reporting system for DNA mistakes, officials
are "100 percent certain that with all the precautions we
catch everything," said Gary Shutler, who supervises the
lab system's DNA work.
That's almost impossible to
measure because the overburdened lab system, faced with a rapidly
expanding DNA caseload, operates almost entirely outside of state
and federal legislation, like its counterparts across the country.
Even the state-of-the-art FBI
crime lab in Quantico, Va., was shaken by scandal recently when
a DNA analyst, Jacqueline Blake, was caught falsifying her lab
reports over a two-year period. Blake skipped an important step
in her DNA tests, then lied about it.
A Justice Department report
two months ago said the FBI lab's testing procedures needed tightening
and criticized officials for dragging their heels on retesting
Blake's cases and notifying affected defendants.
Congress tried to address the
gap in government oversight of crime labs a decade ago by asking
the FBI to set up DNA guidelines that crime labs must follow
to get federal funding and use the national DNA criminal databank.
Yet a private medical lab testing
your blood-cholesterol level faces more government scrutiny than
forensic scientists handling evidence that could put a defendant
on death row.
Botched tests
spur out-of-state exam
The single cotton-tipped swab
contained an invisible speck of DNA that would make or break
the state's case against a Kirkland school bus driver accused
of raping a developmentally disabled student.
What began as a straightforward
test would end up in a legal tussle over the credibility of the
Marysville crime lab's work.
The evidence landed on the
desk of forensic scientist Brian Smelser, a four-year lab employee.
His February 2001 report pointed
to suspect Kirby Wayne Lyons, a Lake Washington School District
employee, as the major source of DNA. The report, however, failed
to explain traces of DNA from a second male, and made no mention
that Smelser had run the test three times due to problems.
Smelser had also told the prosecutor
he'd used less of the sample than had actually been consumed,
something the defense interpreted as a cover-up but which Smelser
said was a simple error.
It was only after Lyons' attorney
raised questions that the truth came out: Smelser had contaminated
all three tests with his own DNA.
"Mr. Smelser's sloppy
reporting techniques and concealment of botched tests cast further
doubt on whether any test he performed in this case is reliable,"
wrote defense attorney Jeff Cohen in a pre-trial motion seeking
to exclude Smelser as an expert witness.
Smelser said he would never
deliberately withhold information about his work. "There
is nothing worth losing my job or reputation over -- no mistake,"
he said yesterday.
The defense also attacked Smelser's
credentials, saying studies for his bachelor's degree in biology
hadn't included a biochemistry course, a minimum requirement
for crime lab DNA work. When the lab asked Smelser to take a
makeup course, he skipped the lab work, according to Cohen. Crime
lab officials said they waived the lab time because it was too
basic.
To salvage their case, prosecutors
persuaded a judge to let them send what was left of the sample
to a private lab in Richmond, Calif., to be retested even though
usual procedure was to hand it over to defense counsel. The DNA
evidence was crucial because the victim, a young woman with an
IQ of 40, would not be able to testify.
"I didn't want a cross-claim
at trial that there was another person out there who might have
contributed it (DNA)," said King County Deputy Prosecutor
Jim Rogers.
At a cost of $5,035, the private
lab, run by renowned forensic scientist Ed Blake, matched the
DNA to Lyons, and confirmed Smelser had contaminated the first
tests.
"That case started out
as a total unmitigated disaster," said Blake in a telephone
interview. He was particularly concerned that Smelser had failed
to disclose his mistakes in his report, something Blake insists
on at his lab.
Lyons, then 50, pleaded guilty
to a reduced charge of third-degree rape in June 2002 and was
sentenced to a year in jail. He was originally charged with second-degree
rape. The lab's mishandling of the evidence likely played a "significant
role" in the prosecutor's decision to reduce the charges,
Cohen said.
Rogers disagreed, saying that
the plea was offered because the victim wasn't able to testify.
Smelser's mistake, while "unfortunate," didn't affect
the outcome of the case or undermine his confidence in the lab's
work, Rogers said.
"There was no systemic
problem in that," Rogers said. "The quality of the
crime lab work has gone up tremendously. They have great scientists
there."
The crime labs' forensic scientists
are now required to disclose errors in their DNA-testing reports,
according to Shutler, a Canadian forensic expert hired two years
ago to oversee the state system's two dozen DNA analysts. He
made that change about six months ago.
"The old standard was,
'Something minor happened and I won't mention it,' " said
Shutler. "I'm trying to change that attitude now."
Shutler also defended Smelser,
saying aggressive defense attorneys will seize upon anything
to help a client.
"It's an adversarial system,"
Shutler said. "The forensic scientist is often caught in
the middle."
Slightest contamination
detected
In the late '80s to mid-'90s,
the early days of DNA "fingerprinting," it was a lot
harder for forensic scientists to contaminate the tests.
A decade ago, DNA tests needed
a quarter-size stain of blood or semen to produce a strong match
and took about six weeks to complete. Today, the lab needs only
about 40 human cells, invisible to the naked eye, to produce
a DNA profile using an extremely sensitive method called "polymerase
chain-reaction," or PCR.
With PCR tests, DNA is extracted
from a sample, mixed with special chemicals and put into computerized
machines that make thousands of copies of the DNA. The process
takes days instead of weeks.
The type of PCR test now in
use, called "short tandem repeats," or STR, measures
DNA at 13 sites, and feeds results to a computer. STR tests can
predict a DNA match that has only a one in a quadrillion -- a
million billion -- chance of being the same as a randomly selected
person.
But the sensitivity of the
test also means it detects even the slightest contamination.
In January, the Seattle lab's
DNA supervisor, George Chan, was chatting with a forensic scientist
who was examining evidence in a child rape case. Although Chan
had no other exposure to the case, a subsequent test found Chan's
DNA, as well as that of the suspect, in the evidence -- a sample
taken from a pair of boxer shorts. The likely culprit: saliva
spewed during Chan's conversation.
DNA analysts are now required
to use a Plexiglas screen, wear a mask or refrain from talking
while testing DNA, Shutler said.
The lab system has been tightening
up all its procedures to reduce contamination, from training
staff on sterile procedures to tracking the incidents. The DNA
profiles of forensic scientists are also kept on file to compare
with suspicious results. Police officers who collect evidence
at crime scenes could soon be asked to do the same.
"The challenge is to contain
it, identify it and disclose it," Shutler said of the risk
of contamination.
The occasional "contamination
event" is inevitable, said Blake, the California scientist,
but crime labs aren't routinely disclosing those miscues.
"We have a duty to tell
people about that," he said.
Many crime labs are "stunningly
ignorant: about contamination, said Janine Arvizu, an Albuquerque-based
forensic scientist who has audited federal and private industry
labs.
"I wish they'd step up
and say, 'We need help cleaning it up,' " Arvizu said. "But
they won't. It's pretty scary."
The number of incidents at
the State Patrol labs, she said, indicates a "significant
contamination problem."
'Royal road
to a false conviction'
When the mystery man's DNA
showed up in evidence from the Pacific child-rape case, Detective
James Pickett was mystified.
"That was a pretty big
deal," he said. "We did a lot of work trying to figure
out who this other guy was."
Perplexed, Pickett pushed to
have the evidence retested, but the explanation came too late.
Today, he believes what happened
two years ago was an aberration. "The lab does a lot of
great work," he said, "(but) they are still human."
Rogers, the King County prosecutor
who handled the case, called the DNA mix-up "an issue for
the case," but said the No. 1 reason behind the plea bargain
was to spare the victim from testifying.
The defendant, who had a previous
child molestation conviction, ended up with a 16-year prison
term. The P-I is not identifying him in order to protect the
victim's privacy.
The forensic scientist, Dornan,
was temporarily taken off casework after the mistake was discovered,
a crime lab report indicated. Dornan refused to comment on the
case.
The contamination was traced
to Dornan failing to sterilize scissors between cutting evidence
samples in the two cases. After that problem came to light, lab
officials adopted more stringent sterilization procedures.
Since then, at least two more
incidents of cross-contamination between cases have occurred
-- one in 2003, and one this year, records show. Both mistakes
were caught before a report was issued because the contamination
showed up in control samples that are not supposed to contain
any DNA, lab officials said.
Contamination in control samples
is the easiest type to catch and can point to more widespread
problems, said Thompson, the criminology professor.
"Who can believe the only
contamination they have is those (cases) where they can detect
it? There's inevitably lots more," Thompson said.
That contention was recently
confirmed by a study in the May 2004 Journal of Forensic Sciences
that found that clean controls don't guarantee contaminant-free
evidence.
If DNA from a suspect's reference
sample contaminated evidence, there'd be little chance of detecting
it, Thompson said.
"That's the royal road
to a false conviction."
Police nearly
extradite wrong person
Crime lab forensic scientist
Denise Olson called Seattle police with good news in December
2002. Her DNA testing revealed a match to the suspect in a case
involving a brutal rape and attempted murder. The victim suffered
a fractured skull, lacerated liver and other injuries.
Detectives contacted a deputy
prosecutor, who prepared to file charges against a former boyfriend
of the military doctor attacked in the May 2002 assault. Police
got ready to extradite the suspect from Denver.
Eleven days after declaring
the match, Olson called back.
The test had actually ruled
out the suspect. She'd misinterpreted the results, and so had
a colleague who did a quick check. Another forensic scientist
noticed the error during peer-review, a process in which workers
double-check each other's work.
"I frankly had a brain
fart," Olson said in a recent interview.
Her mistake was a "false-positive
match" -- one of the worst mistakes a forensic scientist
can make, said Arvizu, the auditor. "That's a classic error
that reflects a bias on the part of the analyst wanting to make
a match."
Olson, who has worked in the
crime lab system since 1998, said she tried not to be swayed
by detectives' belief that they had a strong suspect. "We're
all human," she said. "I tried not to let it influence
me. But I can't say it never does."
Records show she didn't keep
notes on her calls to police, as required. She also threw out
the erroneous draft report, a violation of lab policy.
Police called lab officials
to complain in January 2003.
An investigation concluded
that Olson had misread the test, which contained a mixture of
DNA from at least two people -- a complex sample that requires
careful interpretation. She missed indications in the DNA that
excluded the suspect.
The lab's internal review said
Olson rushed her work in order to satisfy police.
"The quality of interpretations
and data review should not be compromised under pressure from
the submitting agencies to prematurely release results,"
the internal crime lab report said.
Lab officials later issued
a systemwide memo stating that cases must be reviewed by a colleague
and approved by a supervisor before DNA results are released
verbally.
It wasn't the first time Olson's
DNA work had been criticized. Twice in the previous six months,
she made mistakes, running samples in the wrong order in a robbery
case and throwing out evidence swabs in a homicide.
"It was a particularly
stressful time," Olson said, adding that she transferred
from the Seattle to Spokane lab during that period. She had to
take a backlog of six cases with her from Seattle that weren't
finished.
Keeping up with the explosive
demand for DNA testing is a challenge for the labs.
DNA now has the potential to
help solve everything from decades-old homicides to break-ins.
Even auto thefts could be solved with DNA, although the lab has
to give priority to major cases right now.
Requests for genetic testing
were up 60 percent in the first three months of this year compared
with the same period in 2003 -- up from 305 requests to 502.
The lab system has been able to cope with the increase because
several staff recently finished DNA training. And six new DNA
positions are proposed in next year's budget.
Right now, at least one-third
of the DNA analysts are inexperienced.
Said Shutler: "They're
under a hell of a lot of pressure to get it out as fast as possible
and do it perfectly."
Crime lab passes
'DNA audits'
A decade ago, Congress took
a stab at reform by passing the DNA Identification Act, requiring
the FBI to set up a DNA advisory board to develop crime lab standards.
The law also provided funding
to improve the quality of forensic labs, and money for the FBI
to expand its Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. The databank
contains genetic profiles of convicted offenders and DNA from
unsolved crimes.
Labs must meet the FBI's DNA
standards to qualify for federal funding and have access to the
national DNA databank. That is an incentive for financially strapped
crime labs, including Washington's system.
In 2000, the State Patrol received
$2.1 million to hire a private lab to help clear a backlog of
30,000 DNA samples from convicted felons that had not been analyzed
or entered into CODIS. An additional $1.8 million grant in 2003
is paying for 56,000 more felon samples. The lab has also received
federal grants totaling almost $1.5 million since 2000 to upgrade
lab equipment.
To satisfy FBI standards, the
State Patrol must submit to an external "DNA audit"
once every two years. The lab contracts with officials from other
state crime labs to do the audit.
A review of three of those
audits since 1997 indicated that the State Patrol labs passed
most items on the checklist with flying colors.
"We're audited all over
the place," Logan said. "If we had any systemic problems
I guess they'd come to light in the process."
The 1999 audit did note that
several DNA analysts needed to verify they'd taken biochemistry
courses, while the 2000 audit suggested staff needed better training
in interpreting complex DNA mixtures.
The 2002 audit was done by
the National Forensic Science Technology Center, a federally
funded organization originally set up by the American Society
of Crime Laboratory Directors. That group hires DNA experts from
public and private labs to do the audits.
The most serious problems cited
during the 2002 audit were at the Spokane lab, where the inspector
warned the "risk of contamination is high" because
of crowding in the basement facility. A new lab is under construction.
The audit did not mention mistakes
or contamination requiring "corrective action" at any
of the labs, raising questions about the thoroughness of the
reviews. The Marysville lab reported having no problems when
records show there were at least two flawed cases in the previous
year.
"It almost makes you think
the whole thing is a rubber stamp," said Thompson, the criminology
professor.
But Mark Nelson, who runs the
audit program for the national forensic center, said auditors
pull sample cases to make sure problems are corrected. "We
are very thorough," he said.
A backlog of audit reports
at the FBI meant the lab didn't receive proof it passed the 2002
review until three months ago.
'Nobody watching
the henhouse'
Crime lab officials say the
ultimate test of their work is what happens in court.
DNA results are examined by
defense experts who review lab notes, analyze computer data and
rerun tests to double-check accuracy. Experts also observe DNA
testing at the lab when a sample is too small to divide.
Yet critics say many defense
attorneys are easily intimidated by DNA cases and don't dig deeper
when a suspect has been "matched" to a crime. Instead,
they cut the best deal they can.
That means only a small percentage
of cases are ever reviewed by defense experts, said Dan Krane,
a biology professor at Wright State University in Ohio, who runs
a private forensic consulting company.
"There's nobody watching
the henhouse," Krane said.
Underlying this divide in the
forensic community are divergent views about the role state-run
crime labs play in the criminal justice system.
Crime lab employees say they
are objective scientists doing their best to uncover the truth
-- not biased members of the prosecution team. "We don't
see ourselves that way," said Logan, adding that one-third
of their testing excludes suspects. "We have no interest
in seeing the wrong person in jail for a crime."
That doesn't reassure critics,
who say crime labs are primarily set up to service police and
prosecutors. "That goal comes to cloud their need for scientific
rigor," said Thompson, the criminology professor.
Society deserves more assurances
that justice will be served when crime labs wield the powerful
tool of DNA testing, he said.
"Innocent people aren't
that common," Thompson said. "The question is, do they
have the ability to detect when an innocent person comes along?"
© 1998-2004 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Crime labs too
beholden to prosecutors, critics say
By RUTH TEICHROEB, SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER, July 23, 2004
Flawed forensic
work not only leads to wrongful convictions, it leaves criminals
on the street.
That's a good reason to care
about reforming state-run crime labs, legal experts say.
"What you have in this
country is an epidemic of crime lab scandals," said Barry
Scheck, president-elect of the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers.
Scheck is co-founder of the
New-York based Innocence Project, a group that has helped exonerate
145 wrongfully convicted prisoners.
"Forensic science has
to be an independent third force in the justice system,"
he said, "not beholden to prosecutors and police."
Proposed solutions center on
more government scrutiny and better-funded labs. At the top of
the list is a federal law requiring crime labs to comply with
the same kind of rules medical labs have had to follow since
1967.
Clinical lab workers have to
take frequent "blind" proficiency tests that are mixed
into their regular work -- unlike crime lab staff who know when
they're being tested.
Blind testing would uncover
a lot more errors at state crime labs, said Janine Arvizu, an
expert from Albuquerque, who has audited federal and private
labs. "The forensic industry just won't bite that bullet,"
she said. "There's this attitude that, 'We work for the
good guys -- just trust us.' "
Even the national voluntary
accreditation group recommends, but does not require, blind testing.
"If you know it's a proficiency
test, the person may do better work than usual and double-check
it more," said Ralph Keaton, executive director of American
Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.
Washington crime lab officials
say blind testing is too costly and difficult to administer.
The system would have to design its own tests and collude with
police to pass them off as real since forensic scientists consult
with officers, said Barry Logan, director of the Washington State
Patrol's Forensic Laboratory Services Bureau.
Critics also want a federal
law to require regular inspections by independent outside experts
and licensing of forensic scientists.
"We really want to get
the bad guys who did it," said John Strait, a Seattle University
law professor who teaches forensics. "We want reliability
in the system."
Ties to State
Patrol defended
More controversial is the proposal
that crime labs should operate independently, as Britain's do,
rather than be run by police agencies.
That doesn't sit well with
Logan, who said the lab's work isn't compromised by its ties
to the State Patrol. Only 7 percent of the crime labs' cases
are referred by the State Patrol, most of those drug-related.
And the State Patrol's clout with legislators on budget matters
is a big advantage, he said.
Federal legislation would duplicate
standards already established by voluntary accreditation, according
to Logan.
Better pay,
higher standards
The real problem is inadequate
funding for staff and equipment, said Logan and veteran prosecutors.
"There aren't enough people
to do the work," said Mark Roe, Snohomish County's chief
criminal deputy prosecutor.
Logan is asking legislators
to approve funding for 20 new forensic positions next year when
updated labs open in Vancouver and Spokane. That will help clear
current backlogs of up to a year.
Thanks to the hit TV show "CSI,"
crime labs are attracting plenty of forensic wannabes. Recruiting
experienced forensic scientists is harder because Washington's
pay scale is 20 percent below that of other Western states, Logan
said. Entry-level wages begin at $31,740 a year and reach $63,000
for veterans. Efforts to secure pay raises have failed during
the last two years.
To encourage more applicants,
lab officials have worked with Eastern Washington University
in Cheney to set up a forensic chemistry program, and will soon
have a forensic biology program as well. A bachelor of science
degree is now required for most lab jobs.
Fingerprint examiners need
only a minimum of four years of related experience. By 2005,
a university degree will be the recommended national minimum.
The last voluntary accreditation
of the State Patrol lab system, done in September 1999, found
that six of its seven fingerprint examiners didn't have university
degrees. The fingerprint supervisor had an associate degree in
secretarial science.
Independent
oversight
The public will be more willing
to pay for improvements if crime labs are held accountable, critics
say.
State legislators should set
up independent agencies that investigate allegations of misconduct
at crime labs, according to the national defense attorneys group.
That should include a full
review of past cases handled by a discredited scientist.
"Problems are exposed
and then it's back to business as usual," said William C.
Thompson, a criminology and law professor at the University of
California-Irvine. "We need some sort of independent body
with the power to hold hearings."
© 1998-2004 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
DNA testing mistakes
at the State Patrol crime labs
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
STAFFThursday, July 22, 2004
Contamination and other errors
in DNA analysis have occurred at the Washington State Patrol
crime labs, most of it the result of sloppy work.
The most common problems are
cross-contamination by microscopic traces of unrelated evidence
and forensic scientists accidentally mixing their own DNA with
the sample being tested. That can happen, for example, when the
analyst talks while handling a sample, leaving an invisible deposit
of saliva.
Below are the 23 cases of contamination
or errors in major criminal cases the lab system has admitted
to, according to State Patrol and court documents:
EXAMPLE NO. 1
Problem: Cross-contamination
When and where: July 2002,
Spokane lab
Forensic scientist: Lisa Turpen
Case: child rape
What happened: Turpen contaminated
one of four vaginal swabs with semen from a positive control
sample. Corrected report issued almost two years later in March
2004. ....Yakima prosecutors offered plea deal during the trial,
with defendant pleading guilty to two gross misdemeanors. Turpen's
mistake was a factor, according to defense.
EXAMPLE NO. 2
Problem: Erroneous lab report
When and where: August 2002,
Seattle lab
Forensic scientist: William
Stubbs
Case: Fatal police shooting
of Robert Thomas
What happened: Two hours before
testifying at inquest, Stubbs discovered his crime lab report
was wrong and notified prosecutor. His report said test found
brown stain on gun was likely blood, but his notes had no indication
of blood. ... Corrected report issued in September 2002. ...
Co-worker reviewing case did not catch mistake.
EXAMPLE NO. 3
Problem: Self-contamination
When and where: April 2001,
Spokane lab
Forensic scientists: Charles
Solomon, Lisa Turpen
Case: rape/kidnapping/assault
What happened: In separate
tests, Solomon and Turpen contaminated hair-root tests with their
own DNA. Solomon also contaminated reference blood sample with
his DNA. ...Three defendants were convicted.
EXAMPLE NO. 4
Problem: Testing error
When and where: September 2002,
Marysville lab
Forensic scientist: Mike Croteau
Case: robbery/assault
What happened: Rushing to meet
deadlines, Croteau mixed up reference samples from victim and
suspect. He reported incorrect findings verbally to prosecutor,
then discovered his mistake. ... Defendant pleaded guilty.
EXAMPLE NO. 5
Problem: Cross-contamination
When and where: August 2003, Seattle lab
Forensic scientist: Robin Bussoletti
Case: homicide
What happened: Bussoletti likely
contaminated work surface while testing a blood sample from a
convicted felon during training. Next DNA analyst who used work
station noticed contamination in chemical solution that is not
supposed to contain DNA.
EXAMPLE NO. 6
Problem: Cross-contamination
When and where: January 2004,
Tacoma lab
Forensic scientist: Jeremy
Sanderson
Case: child rape
What happened: Sanderson failed
to change gloves between handling evidence in two cases. He noticed
contamination in chemical solution. ... Defendant convicted and
sent to prison.
EXAMPLE NO. 7
Problem: Error during testing
When and where: June 2002,
Seattle lab
Forensic scientist: Denise
Olson
Case: aggravated murder
What happened: Olson did initial
test to look for blood on shoes. She got weak positive result,
then threw out swabs. She didn't document findings or notify
police. Kirkland police complained because discarded swabs couldn't
be tested for DNA. ... Shoes sent to private lab for retesting.
... Defendant Kim Mason convicted and sentenced to life without
release.
EXAMPLE NO. 8
· Problem: Error in
DNA test interpretation
· When and where: October
1998, Seattle lab
· Forensic scientist:
George Chan
· Case: rape
· What happened: Chan
misstated statistical likelihood of match with suspect. Co-worker
reviewing case didn't catch error. ... Pierce County prosecutor
noticed mistake at pretrial conference in September 2000. ...
Defendant convicted.
EXAMPLE NO. 9
· Problem: Error in
testing procedure
· When and where: September
2002, Seattle lab
· Forensic scientist:
Denise Olson
· Case: robbery/assault
· What happened: Olson
tested known DNA samples before evidence collected at crime scene
-- a violation of lab procedure aimed at preventing cross-contamination.
A co-worker caught the mistake while reviewing the case.... Tests
were redone. ... Defendant pleaded guilty.
EXAMPLE NO. 10
· Problem: Self-contamination
· When and where: November
2002, Tacoma lab
· Forensic scientist:
Mike Dornan
· Case: rape
· What happened: Dornan
contaminated DNA test of victim's underwear with his own DNA.
May have resulted from talking during testing process.... Defendant
pleaded guilty.
EXAMPLE NO. 11
· Problem: Unknown source
of contamination
· When and where: January
2004, Tacoma lab
· Forensic scientist:
Christopher Sewell
· Case: homicide
· What happened: Sewell
found low level of DNA from unknown source in blood sample from
victim. May have come from blood transfusion of victim before
death. ... Case pending.
EXAMPLE NO. 12
· Problem: Self-contamination
· When and where: March
2004, Tacoma lab
· Forensic scientist:
William Dean
· Case: rape
· What happened: Dean
contaminated control sample with his own DNA while testing police
evidence. ... No suspect.
EXAMPLE NO. 13
· Problem: Unknown source
of contamination
· When and where: January
2003, Spokane lab
· Forensic scientist:
Lisa Turpen
· Case: murder
· What happened: Turpen
found unidentified female DNA in control sample while testing
evidence in Stevens County double-murder case.... Defendant convicted.
EXAMPLE NO. 14
· Problem: Unknown source
of contamination
· When and where: January
2003, Spokane lab
· Forensic scientist:
Lisa Turpen
· Case: robbery/kidnapping
· What happened: Turpen
found unidentified female DNA in control sample while testing
evidence in Yakima County case. Evidence tested same day as evidence
in Example No.13.... Case pending.
EXAMPLE NO. 15
· Problem: Self-contamination
· When and where: September
2003, Marysville lab
· Forensic scientist:
Greg Frank
· Case: murder
· What happened: Frank
contaminated control samples with his own DNA during testing
in Snohomish County case. ...Case pending.
EXAMPLE NO. 16
· Problem: Self-contamination
· When and where: September
2003, Marysville lab
· Forensic scientist:
Greg Frank
· Case: child molestation/rape
· What happened: Frank
contaminated control samples with his own DNA during testing
in Kitsap County case. ... Defendant pleaded guilty.
EXAMPLES NO. 17 & 18
· Problem: Unknown source
of contamination
· When and where: October
2003, Seattle lab
· Forensic scientists:
Phil Hodge, Amy Jagman
· Cases: unknown
· What happened: Hodge
and Jagman both discovered unknown source of contamination in
chemical used during DNA testing. Chemical discarded and evidence
retested.
EXAMPLE NO. 19
· Problem: Self-contamination
· When and where: October
2002, Spokane lab
· Forensic scientists:
Charles Solomon, Lisa Turpen
· Case: murder
· What happened: Solomon
found Turpen's DNA on three bullet casings retrieved from scene
of Richland double murder. ... Defense expert disputed this at
trial, testifying that DNA profile belonged to unknown female.
... Defendant Keith Hilton convicted.
EXAMPLE NO. 20
· Problem: Cross-contamination
· When and where: February
2002, Tacoma
· Forensic scientist:
Mike Dornan
· Case: child rape
· What happened: Dornan
contaminated evidence in King County rape case with DNA from
a previous case, likely by failing to properly sterilize scissors.
... Defendant pleaded guilty to a reduced charge before contamination
was discovered.
EXAMPLE NO. 21
· Problem:
Self-contamination
· When and where: January
2001, Marysville lab
· Forensic scientist: Brian
Smelser
· Case:
rape
· What happened: Smelser
contaminated three tests with his own DNA in Kirkland rape case.
Prosecutor had to send remaining half-sample to California lab
for retesting.... Defendant pleaded guilty to reduced charge.
EXAMPLE NO.
22
· Problem:
Error in testing
· When and where: December
2002, Seattle lab
· Forensic
scientist: Denise Olson
· Case:
rape/attempted murder
· What happened: Olson
misinterpreted DNA results, telling Seattle police their suspect
was a match. Co-worker caught error 11 days later, just as charges
were about to be filed.... Case unsolved.
EXAMPLE NO.
23
· Problem:
Self-contamination
· When and where: January
2004, Seattle lab
· Forensic scientist: George
Chan/William Stubbs
· Case:
child rape
· What happened:
Chan's DNA found in
suspect's boxer shorts by Stubbs. Problem traced to Chan talking
to Stubbs during testing.... Suspect pleaded guilty.
Sources: Washington State Patrol
documents; court documents; defense interviews
© 1998-2005 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
- Produce crime lab error
rates, some urge
- But defense attorneys
would misuse data, scientists counter
By RUTH TEICHROEB, SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER, July 22, 2004
The high stakes of DNA testing
have prompted debate about whether the nation's crime labs should
have to produce error rates. Defense experts and academics say
such a statistic would provide a valid way to gauge the reliability
of a lab's work. Forensic scientists in state-run and private
crime labs say error rates would be meaningless.
A generic error rate for a
lab doesn't tell you whether a specific DNA test is correct,
said Gary Shutler, who oversees DNA testing for the Washington
crime lab system.
Defense attorneys would use
labwide error rates to try to undermine every DNA result, Shutler
said. Even defining what type of contamination or errors should
be included in an error rate would be difficult.
But some experts argue that
error rates should be a factor in weighing DNA evidence in court
-- something prosecutors, police and crime lab officials have
a "vested interest" in avoiding.
"An error rate is an albatross
around their neck," said Dan Krane, a biology professor
at Ohio's Wright State University and president of a forensic
consulting company. "It limits the strength of their testimony
in court."
One of the best ways to determine
error rates would be to use blind proficiency tests -- exams
disguised as regular casework.
Right now, forensic scientists
at the Washington State Patrol labs, and most other state-run
crime labs, know when they are taking a proficiency test. DNA
analysts must pass two of those tests each year.
Krane said open proficiency
tests typically use pristine samples that bear little resemblance
to complex casework.
Blind proficiency testing is
recommended, but not required, by the American Society of Crime
Laboratory Directors' Laboratory Accreditation Board, an organization
that offers voluntary accreditation. That group advocates the
blind method not as a way to determine error rates but as a more
precise test of a worker's accuracy.
A decade ago, mandatory blind
testing was proposed as part of the federal DNA Identification
Act.
A Justice Department panel
designed blind tests, tried them out and estimated it would cost
$500,000 to $1 million annually for one test per lab, according
to panel member William C. Thompson, a criminology and law professor
at the University of California-Irvine.
The panel wound up recommending
against blind testing.
"Legislators didn't want
to do anything to offend law enforcement groups," Thompson
said. "Law enforcement sees this as a bleeding-heart liberal
attempt to give ammunition to defense lawyers."
Blind proficiency tests would
be too costly to design and administer, said Barry Logan, director
of the Washington crime lab system.
"We trust people doing
casework to do the work professionally," Logan said.
© 1998-2005 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
Oversight of crime-lab
staff has often been lax
By RUTH TEICHROEB, SEATTLE
POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER, July 23, 2004
A crime lab
chemist snorts heroin on the job for months, stealing the drug
from evidence he was testing.
A senior DNA analyst lies to
a defense attorney, fearing his testing error would be used to
undermine a case against a suspected rapist.
A forensic scientist is accused
of sloppy drug analysis, after a national watchdog group complains
about his misleading court testimony.
In all of these cases, internal
checks and balances failed. The system for double-checking work
broke down in one case. In another, officials overlooked warning
signs until faced with a crisis. And the work of discredited
senior staffers was almost never audited, an investigation by
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found.
A close look at the Washington
State Patrol crime labs reveals a stressed system in which officials
have been slow to deal with misconduct by long-time employees
-- dating back to one of the first scientists hired more than
30 years ago.
Crime lab officials say these
are isolated incidents that don't reflect the high-quality work
done by their 120 employees on thousands of cases a year, despite
caseload and budget pressures.
"It's a constant process
of learning from our mistakes and trying to do better,"
said Barry Logan, director of the State Patrol's Forensic Laboratory
Services Bureau.
A single inept or dishonest
forensic scientist, though, can undermine the integrity of the
legal process, given the pivotal role the crime labs play in
determining a suspect's guilt or innocence.
"It's only as good as
the weakest link," said Steven Benjamin, co-chairman of
the forensic evidence committee for the National Association
of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "When a laboratory has an inept
or dishonest examiner and an inadequate response, then that whole
lab becomes the weakest link."
A review of two dozen crime
lab disciplinary records also raise questions about the professionalism
of some scientists on the state payroll. In the past five years,
a lab supervisor was caught viewing pornography on his office
computer, a lab manager was fired for sexually harassing female
co-workers and a DNA analyst was found sleeping on the job.
Crime labs are subject to minimal
federal or state oversight. Even the last industry-led, voluntary
accreditation review of Washington's system, however, found problems
in all seven labs in 1999.
The lack of government scrutiny
has become a national issue in the wake of high-profile scandals
plaguing crime labs from Houston, where shoddy DNA work led to
a wrongful conviction, to a string of problems at the FBI's pre-eminent
facility in Quantico, Va.
Two months ago, Oregon attorney
Brandon Mayfield was jailed for two weeks as a material witness
after FBI fingerprint experts mistakenly linked him to the March
11 Madrid bombings that killed 191 people.
Over the objections of Spanish
investigators, three veteran FBI fingerprint examiners declared
they had a "100 percent" match with Mayfield -- a claim
soon proved to be false.
The case not only prompted
questions about the reliability of fingerprint evidence; it left
people wondering whether experienced forensic scientists had
let biases cloud their judgment.
And it lent credence to the
complaint that too many crime lab staff see themselves as cops
in white lab coats rather than objective scientists.
'I tried to
conceal it'
A simple error on a DNA test
would lead to the undoing of 16-year forensic scientist John
Brown.
Embarrassed by his mistake,
Brown made a decision that would shatter his credibility and
impugn the integrity of the entire system.
It began when Seattle police
submitted vaginal swabs in an unsolved rape case to the state
crime lab. Brown came up with a DNA profile of a possible male
suspect but didn't find a match the first time he searched the
convicted-felon DNA databank in November 1997.
During an internal review,
his boss, Don McLaren, noticed that Brown had missed one of the
markers in the DNA test. Brown reran the correct profile and
produced a match with Craig Barfield, then 35, who had served
time for burglary convictions.
Brown issued a final report
linking Barfield to the DNA profile, but made no mention of his
first test.
"A mistake like this is
like leaving fresh salmon on the counter and ... leaving your
cat in the kitchen," Brown, 54, said recently, speaking
publicly for the first time.
"I saw it as much more
harm that the defense would get hold of the data saying there's
no match in the database, and they'd prance around and say it
proves the innocence of their client."
He also destroyed his erroneous
draft report, a common practice at that time, according to Brown
and McLaren, but one that contradicted the legal system's basic
tenet of full disclosure.
A few months later, in April
1998, Barfield's public defender, Stephanie Adraktas, grilled
a nervous Brown about discrepancies in his lab notes during a
pre-trial interview.
By then, Brown said he knew
Barfield had been accused of a previous rape, and wanted to help
bolster the case. "I didn't want this mistake to come up,"
he told the P-I. "So I tried to conceal it."
One of the founders of the
lab's DNA section almost a decade earlier, Brown had testified
in 40 DNA cases. He'd tested evidence in 300 DNA cases, according
to his resume.
He said defense attorneys had
begun personally attacking forensic scientists because they could
no longer challenge irrefutable DNA evidence in court. They wanted
to "destroy him."
"The legal stuff was a
battlefield," he said.
During the interview with Adraktas,
Brown was at first evasive, then lied about the existence of
the draft report. As the hours ground on, Adraktas extracted
the truth. "Every defense attorney wants to go out hunting
and to capture a forensic scientist and I was the big buck with
a full rack," Brown would later tell State Patrol investigators.
Brown's attitude stunned Adraktas.
"I do find it disturbing and sad that someone whose job
was to be objective and evaluate evidence fairly would do this,"
she said. "It wasn't his role to decide if the charged person
was guilty. That was up to a jury."
To do damage control, King
County Deputy Prosecutor Steven Fogg immediately sent the crucial
DNA evidence to a private California lab, which confirmed the
match with Barfield.
At Barfield's trial two years
later, Brown, who had just been promoted to supervisor of the
lab system's DNA program, admitted that he'd lied about his first
test.
The State Patrol put Brown
on administrative leave and launched an internal investigation.
Administrators concluded Brown's credibility was tarnished, and
his "untruthfulness" could be used to discredit his
prior work -- and the entire system.
On the verge of being fired,
Brown resigned in September 2000.
The lab, in response, began
limiting defense attorneys to two-hour time blocks during pre-trial
interviews to ease psychological pressures on forensic scientists.
"I'm not going to defend
what John Brown did," said Logan, the crime labs chief.
"He got into a difficult situation and made it worse by
how he handled it."
Lab officials didn't audit
Brown's other cases for problems after his resignation because
his previous track record was "excellent," Logan said.
They did write a policy requiring staff to keep all draft reports.
"I believe we have an
excellent record in disclosing as much as we believe will be
relevant," Logan said.
After Barfield was convicted
of rape and burglary, however, the court fined the state $5,000
for failing to disclose memos revealing Brown had been suspended
during the trial.
"A fine was just an inadequate
response to that," Adraktas said. "If that's all an
agency will suffer as a result of withholding information in
a serious case, what will prevent them from doing it again?"
The crime labs' habit of destroying
erroneous draft reports was "chilling" and raises the
possibility of wrongful convictions, she said.
Andraktas also questions why
the agency waited two years to investigate Brown's conduct, even
promoting him. She said she submitted a transcript of Brown's
false statements to the State Patrol's legal counsel soon after
the interview.
Logan said he didn't know about
Brown's dishonesty until the trial, and isn't sure if anyone
else did. Officials did know he'd destroyed the draft report,
which wasn't against policy at the time. Logan said they took
action as soon as Brown testified to lying.
Today, Brown in part blames
what happened on the stress of dealing with defense attorneys
-- something police agencies discount, because employees are
expected to "handle this stuff."
"We were facing on a monthly
basis people who were trying to destroy our reputations,"
Brown said. "There was no acceptance of that."
Scientist falsified
his report
From the earliest days of the
state system, crime lab officials have floundered at reining
in problem employees.
One glaring example is Donald
K. Phillips, a forensic scientist hired in 1971 after a brief
stint in the Seattle Police Department lab.
Phillips' skills were soon
called into question, but those concerns had little effect on
what would be a 15-year career with the State Patrol.
"They let him through
probation even though they knew he was a problem," recalled
Kay Sweeney, a former crime lab quality assurance manager for
the State Patrol. "Once you passed probation, it's very
hard to be terminated."
In August 1973, Phillips failed
an 11-month trial run as a supervisor. His job evaluation, while
praising his loyalty, cited poor communication with fellow employees
and "an inability to properly perceive the necessary approach"
to casework. It recommended he not be put in charge of cases.
Over the next two years, Phillips
was promoted twice. By 1977, he was regularly collecting evidence
at major crime scenes. Four years later, he was supervising homicide
and rape crime-scene investigations.
It became clear in the mid-'80s
that Phillips had misrepresented his credentials. On the witness
stand, he'd testified more than once to having a chemistry major.
In reality, he had majored in agricultural science at Ohio State
University.
"I just didn't tell them
what kind of chemistry," Phillips said in a recent interview.
In April 1985, lab officials
fired Phillips for misconduct after he frightened a hotel maid
by showing her gruesome crime scene photos in his room while
out of town for a trial. The maid told police she feared he might
be the Green River Killer.
Phillips said he was really
fired for filing too much overtime. Eight months later, he won
an appeal and was reinstated. Lab officials at first restricted
him to drug cases.
Phillips said he was surprised
when his boss, Sweeney, sent him to collect evidence at a Kitsap
County crime scene on Sept.29, 1986. After reminding Phillips
about proper procedures, Sweeney gave him the green light to
search a garage where police believed 16-year-old Tracy Parker
had been bludgeoned to death two weeks earlier. It would become
a capital case, ultimately putting the killer -- Brian Keith
Lord -- behind bars for life.
Police soon reported that Phillips
had sprayed a claw hammer with too much of a chemical used to
detect blood, preventing further testing.
Phillips denies doing anything
wrong. "To this day, I believe there was enough blood to
get a typing."
The real problem wasn't Phillips'
mistake but his attempt to cover it up by denying he'd sprayed
the hammer -- to the point of stating that in his lab report,
according to Sweeney and State Patrol documents.
"He chose to falsify what
he'd done. If he was going to do that to me, his supervisor,
I couldn't trust him," Sweeney said.
When the State Patrol launched
an internal investigation, Phillips resigned in December 1986.
"I still dream about it
-- I loved the lab," said Phillips, 65, who moved to Oklahoma
and started a business -- his own perennial greenhouse. "I
thought I'd be there forever."
Despite Phillips' turbulent
history, lab officials did not audit any of the thousands of
cases he'd handled, or review his testimony in more than 50 cases.
Flaws on proficiency
tests
Lab officials often point to
proficiency tests as proof of forensic scientists' competence.
Crime lab workers must pass
one test annually in each specialty to satisfy voluntary rules
set by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors' Laboratory
Accreditation Board. Staff know they're being tested, rather
than having exams slipped in with regular casework.
Some say the system needs tightening.
Tacoma lab forensic scientist
Charles Vaughan took a routine proficiency exam in September
1998, testing his ability to interpret footprint evidence.
When accreditation inspectors
visited the Tacoma lab in September 1999, they couldn't find
any record of Vaughan's exam.
It soon became apparent that
Vaughan's supervisor, Terry McAdam, had never reviewed the test
-- or realized that Vaughan failed to correctly match all of
the footprints with the right shoe.
Vaughan was pulled off that
type of casework for about six weeks until he could redo the
test, plus pass another exam.
The same year Vaughan bungled
his proficiency test, he mistakenly linked hairs found at a Thurston
County burglary to a suspect, according to the suspect's attorney,
Richard Woodrow.
Woodrow said he hired a private
Seattle forensic scientist who concluded the hairs didn't match.
The prosecutor dismissed the burglary charge in September 1998.
During the lab system's last
accreditation, inspectors identified two other forensic scientists
whose proficiency testing was not up to date. They also noted
that technicians doing DNA work for the convicted felon databank
had never taken a proficiency test, although that was not mandatory.
Since the last accreditation,
several lab employees have made mistakes on proficiency tests,
according to internal lab documents.
In the past year, a firearms
examiner in Spokane and one in Seattle both flunked tests. The
year before, a Seattle forensic scientist failed a shoeprint
exam.
When employees fail a test,
they're taken off casework until they can pass another exam.
If problems persist, a supervisor monitors their work or puts
them on a work-improvement plan.
"The work is being done
by human beings and human beings sometimes make mistakes,"
Logan said.
That doesn't reassure critics
who say proficiency testing is already too easy.
"It's such a hokey test,"
said Dan Krane, a biology professor at Wright State University
in Ohio who runs a forensic consulting firm. "They all do
it at the same time and use pristine samples which aren't anything
like casework."
What Phillips said happened
in the early 1980s was even worse.
"Everybody would put their
heads together and get the right answers," he recalled.
"We wanted to be right."
Drug analyst
under surveillance
The chemist's odd behavior
raised co-workers' suspicions as far back as 1998. Yet two years
would pass before the State Patrol intervened.
After starting work at the
Marysville lab in April 1997, James Boaz noticed that his colleague,
Michael Hoover, handled an inordinate number of heroin cases.
Sometimes Hoover even took over Boaz's cases without permission.
Boaz began locking up his files
in his drawer when he wasn't at his desk. He also heard "loud
snorting" coming from Hoover's desk, Boaz would later tell
State Patrol investigators.
Chemist David Northrop said
he first noticed problems in 1999 when Hoover posted a note soliciting
heroin cases from the intake clerks. Northrop complained to his
boss, Erik Neilson. By summer 2000, Boaz and Northrop reported
that Hoover was secretive when handling heroin cases and assigned
himself too many. They suspected he was making up results.
When Neilson confronted Hoover
in September 2000, the 11-year employee claimed he was stashing
heroin for police to use in training drug-sniffing dogs. Neilson
warned him to stop.
Two months later, Boaz and
Northrop reiterated their suspicions and Neilson contacted the
State Patrol to report that Hoover might be stealing heroin from
evidence.
The State Patrol immediately
launched an internal investigation, installed a hidden video
camera above Hoover's desk and later questioned him.
Hoover confessed, saying he
sniffed heroin in the lab to ease chronic back pain.
"I don't want anything
bad to reflect on the State Patrol," Hoover told investigators
on Dec. 22, 2000. "I found that if I sniff a little bit
of ... heroin once in a while, it makes the pain go away where
I can sleep at night."
Snohomish County prosecutors
charged him with one count of tampering with evidence and one
count of official misconduct, both misdemeanors. Felony charges
weren't filed because no heroin was found in Hoover's possession.
Hoover resigned, pleaded guilty
to the charges and received an 11-month jail sentence in November
2001. The scandal led to the dismissal of hundreds of pending
drug cases in Snohomish, Island, Skagit, Whatcom, Jefferson and
Clallam counties. The state Court of Appeals also overturned
convictions in two drug cases because Hoover had tested the evidence.
"He stands by his test
results," said Hoover's former attorney, Stephen Garvey.
"I suspect juries would have still convicted."
The State Patrol did its best
to minimize the damage, emphasizing that "the system worked"
because lab employees turned Hoover in.
Asked about the delay in investigating
Hoover's suspicious behavior, Logan said he and others have thought
long and hard about what might have led to earlier detection
and are now more likely to see the red flags: "They were
seeing these things and they never wanted to put two and two
together about someone who was a colleague and a friend."
Official concedes
safeguards lax
The State Patrol lab relies
on peer review as its primary safeguard for catching mistakes.
Lab notes and reports for every case must be reviewed by at least
one other forensic scientist before being released.
While effective to a point,
peer review has its limits.
Interpersonal conflicts get
played out during reviews. Overloaded scientists do only cursory
looks. Errors are missed due to inexperience.
A troubling breakdown in that
system came to light during an internal audit of the work of
Spokane forensic scientist Arnold Melnikoff.
Lab officials decided to review
his work after Melnikoff was accused of helping wrongfully convict
a Montana man of rape based on erroneous hair-analysis work he
did for that state's lab in the 1980s.
The April 2003 audit examined
100 of Melnikoff's felony drug cases dating back four years and
found troubling flaws in 30, ranging from insufficient data to
identify substances to mistakes in documentation. The report
described Melnikoff's drug-analysis work as "sloppy"
and "built around speed and short-cuts."
Melnikoff, who had been on
paid leave since November 2002, contested every finding in the
audit. In a written rebuttal, he wrote that he'd never failed
a proficiency test or had a negative performance review in his
14-year employment.
And he pointed out that every
drug case he'd analyzed had passed peer review: "If there
was a 'problem,' it was a statewide laboratory problem,"
Melnikoff wrote.
The State Patrol fired Melnikoff
in March, saying his 1990 testimony in a Montana rape trial had
undermined his credibility. Melnikoff is appealing his firing.
Logan conceded that Melnikoff's
case revealed employees had become lax about peer review, especially
when dealing with a difficult co-worker. "The people doing
peer review were only taking him on on the major errors,"
said Logan, who now requires supervisors to do spot checks as
well.
What's really needed is more
rigorous science, said Edward Blake, a California forensic scientist
whose work has helped free dozens of wrongly convicted prisoners.
"This is an operation
like 'I'm OK, you're OK,' " Blake said.
Lab workers
violate conduct code
Moral integrity and honesty
are key qualities for crime lab employees whose work will help
convict or exonerate suspects.
Job applicants take lie-detector
tests that include questions about illegal drug use. One- third
of applicants are disqualified because they've smoked marijuana
in the previous three years.
Once hired, crime lab scientists
are supposed to follow the State Patrol's code of conduct. But
over the last five years, 25 of them have been disciplined for
violating those rules. Complaints included everything from arguing
with co-workers or leaving a loaded rifle propped against a workbench
to lying about travel and releasing confidential documents to
a family member.
One-third of the scientists
received a written reprimand. Others were suspended briefly or
counseled. Seven were fired, although one of them won back his
job.
Timothy Nishimura, then manager
of the Marysville lab, was fired in September 2000 for misconduct,
including sexual harassment of female employees dating back to
1991, according to State Patrol documents.
Nishimura appealed his firing,
and was reinstated with back pay in March 2002. He was demoted
to a document-examiner job in the Seattle lab. He refused comment
for this story.
In another case, Kevin Fortney,
supervisor in the Spokane lab, was investigated in December 2000
for cruising Internet porn sites at work. Fortney admitted his
behavior and was suspended for two days. He has since been promoted
to manager of that lab. Fortney didn't respond to requests for
comment.
Crime labs seem hard-pressed
to find scientists who are not only well-educated but can analyze
complex cases, said Blake, the California expert. "Just
because they can extract DNA doesn't mean they can think through
problems," he said.
The most common problem isn't
testing errors but incorrect interpretation of the data, said
Ray Grimsbo, a Portland forensic scientist who runs a private
lab.
"It's what they do with
the results that gets them into trouble," said Grimsbo,
attributing that to lack of experience or arrogance.
Pushing evidence too far is
what some critics say happened when former Seattle crime lab
manager Mike Grubb testified in a Vancouver, Wash., murder case.
Grubb told the court an earprint
found at the scene in 1994 likely belonged to the accused, David
Kunze. An expert from the Netherlands went further, testifying
that the earprint was definitely left by Kunze's left ear.
The earprint evidence convinced
a jury, who convicted Kunze in July 1997 of aggravated murder
in the beating death of his ex-wife's fiancé. Kunze was
sentenced to life in prison.
Two years later, the Court
of Appeals overturned Kunze's conviction, criticizing the earprint
testimony as "not generally accepted as reliable in the
relevant scientific community."
"It was junk science,"
said John Henry Browne, Kunze's attorney. Kunze was set free
in 2001 after a second trial ended in a mistrial.
It wasn't the first time an
appeals court had taken issue with Grubb's conclusions. His testimony
in a 1994 rape-murder trial, in which he claimed he could determine
the age of semen found in the body of the teenage victim, was
criticized as scientifically unsound.
Grubb stands behind his conclusions
in both cases, saying he based his findings on years of experience
and forensic studies.
"My testimony was well
within the bounds of reasonableness," said Grubb, who left
the lab in 1998 to run the San Diego Police Department crime
lab.
Experts say
reforms needed
Some critics believe a host
of reforms are needed, including weeding out incompetent or dishonest
crime lab employees, and requiring more rigorous outside reviews.
Washington's crime labs are
inspected once every five years to retain voluntary accreditation.
During the last review, in September 1999, all of the labs initially
fell short of meeting key standards, records show.
Inspectors cited problems ranging
from proficiency tests that weren't up to date to an unlocked
evidence freezer. Those problems were soon corrected.
Said Logan: "They didn't
come up with anything that they felt was a problem with the quality
of the work."
Failing to meet voluntary standards,
however, is a red flag because accreditation is done by former
crime lab insiders who set the bar low, experts say.
"It's an old boys' network,"
said William C. Thompson, a criminology and law professor at
the University of California-Irvine. "It's the absolute
bare bones that's needed to run a lab. It isn't the best scientific
work that can be done."
"The labs have manufactured
credentials for themselves," said Blake, who won't accredit
his California lab. "If you have people who are willing
to manufacture credentials, what else are they making up?"
Unlike most critics, Frederick
Whitehurst has been on the other side.
Whitehurst, an attorney and
former FBI explosives expert, went public in 1995 about flaws
in that lab.
He now heads the non-profit
Forensic Justice Project.
While he favors requiring the
nation's crime labs to undergo independent audits, he also remembers
what it was like to have a two-year backlog of cases on his desk.
He hasn't forgotten the frustration
of trying to do his best in the face of unrelenting demand.
"They can't go back and
check. There's no time, there's no money," he said. "...
And they will fall to the pressures."
P-I reporter Ruth Teichroeb
can be reached at 206-448-8175 or ruthteichroeb@seattlepi.com
© 1998-2004 Seattle
Post-Intelligencer
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
