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Sunday, November 28, 2004

Indiana Law - Marion County crime lab inquiry results are nearly complete

The Marion County crime lab is the subject of a long story today in the Indianapolis Star headlined "Lab inquiry results are nearly complete: Investigators expect findings soon as employees remain optimistic about their jobs and facility's future." Some quotes:

In July 2003, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi ordered retests of the 64 DNA matches that Balamurugan performed during his six-year tenure with the lab. Months later, Brizzi announced that he had lost confidence in Director Jim Hamby, saying in a court document that Hamby has "not always been readily forthcoming."

In May 2004, Mayor Bart Peterson fired Hamby and Assistant Director John Mann.

Special Prosecutor Barry Brown has been investigating the lab since January. He said two Indiana State Police investigators have sifted through thousands of pages of documents, and he expects to release his conclusions in December.

"We're reviewing transcripts of past interviews and essentially trying to hone this down into a manageable report," Brown said.

Brown said it is too soon to comment on what they have found. Lab officials insist all problems are administrative, not criminal.

The turmoil and scandal have stained the lab's reputation, but some say a recent jury verdict proves that the public is regaining confidence in the county's scientists.

In September, defense attorneys exposed the crime lab's blunders during the trial of accused serial rapist Charles Hill. In the end, the jury believed the science and convicted Hill of 24 felonies, including rape, confinement and child molesting.

"I know the science is good," said Indianapolis Police Lt. Pete Mungovan, who manages the lab's operations while the county conducts a national search for a permanent director. "Most of the problems are administrative issues, and it's not affecting the science." * * *

Meanwhile, labs across the nation have been unable to meet increased demand for all kinds of forensic testing. Backlogs of several months are very common, experts say.

"The labs have become overwhelmed," said John K. Neuner, international program manager for the Florida-based American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board. "Everyone wants DNA done in every case now. They don't have enough people and enough equipment to keep up with it."

Nationally, 81 percent of the nation's DNA crime labs had backlogs of 16,081 cases that included more than 265,000 samples, the U.S. Department of Justice found in 2001.

Such backlogs have created an opening for entrepreneurs with the skill and the financial backing to invest in private labs. Scott Newman, a former Marion County prosecutor, and Mohammad A. Tahir, the former manager of the crime lab's DNA section, are forming a private lab in Indianapolis.

It's too soon to tell whether the Newman-Tahir lab could have any impact on the backlog in Marion County's crime lab. The county has been awarded $220,000 in federal money, Mungovan said, to pay overtime to analysts and outsource some of its DNA testing in an effort to cut the backlog.

Marion County's lab has a backlog of 58 DNA cases, 120 fingerprint cases and 190 firearms cases. The backlog means police, prosecutors and victims may wait months for their test results.

Here are the leads to some earlier Star crime lab stories. Unfortunately, the full stories are available only for a fee from the Star:
1. 2 team to form private DNA lab. November 19, 2004. A former Marion County prosecutor and a former leader at the local crime lab are teaming up to form a private DNA testing laboratory in Indianapolis. Scott Newman, who served two terms as prosecutor, confirmed he is wooing investors to the new business venture that will be operated by Mohammad A. Tahir, who resigned Sept. 22 as the technical manager of the Marion County Forensic Services Agency's DNA section. Experts say the private lab, which would be the first of its kind in ...

2. Crime lab owns white elephant. May 12, 2004. After spending $80,000 to buy a top-of-the-line DNA testing machine, officials of the Marion County crime lab say they do not have the staff available to properly operate the new equipment. During a meeting of the Forensic Services Agency board Tuesday, city Public Safety Director Robert Turner called the equipment an "$80,000 paperweight." The device, an ABI Prism 3100 Genetic Analyzer ...

3. Brizzi requests crime lab probe. January 22, 2004. Prosecutor Carl Brizzi wants a special prosecutor to consider criminal charges against the director of the Marion County crime lab, an operation mired in controversy over the validity of DNA tests in several criminal cases. "The information that has come to light is troubling, and justice demands that we get to the bottom of what happened at the crime lab," Brizzi said. Forensic Services Agency Director Jim Hamby has "not always been readily forthcoming," Brizzi wrote ...

4. Crime lab cover-up alleged. December 25, 2003. A top scientist at the Marion County crime lab is accusing his bosses of covering up serious abuses in DNA testing procedures -- and threatening reprisals against anyone who spoke out. In a Dec. 12 deposition taken in connection with a serial rape case and obtained by The Indianapolis Star, Mohammad A. Tahir, technical manager of the Forensic Services Agency's DNA section, paints a picture of the crime lab as a dictatorial place where disloyalty is punished. This latest revelation ...

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 28, 2004 05:15 PM
Posted to Indiana Law