Bungles in Texas crime lab stir doubt over DNA

As head of the trial bureau in the Harris County Attorney's Office, Marie Munier is in the middle of a legal meltdown. Her only companions: more than two dozen boxes packed with police reports.

Following revelations earlier this year of shoddy scientific practices at the Houston Police Department crime laboratory, she's sorting through every police report recorded since 1992 in search of inaccuracies in DNA testing. The stacks of boxes in Ms. Munier's cramped office are just one small sign of the fallout from the scandal, which forced the police lab to shut down in January. Since then, it's become clear that hundreds of cases may have been tainted over the last decade of DNA testing.

In a state that sends more prisoners to death row than any other, it's considered a catastrophe. State lawmakers are pushing for regulations, defense attorneys are demanding retrials, and judges are calling for a grand-jury investigation into possible criminal misconduct.

Those who work with DNA still say the science is the best there is, and insist the recent errors are anomalies. But others say it's the tip of the iceberg - and suggest that without required certification and proper funding, crime labs across the country are in danger of similar problems.

"My sense is that this is a much more widespread problem than has been admitted," says Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "There are incredible shortcuts that technicians have taken, sometimes out of laziness, sometimes out of zeal, and sometimes out of pure incompetence."

So far, Munier and her group have identified 95 additional cases to be retested, including 17 death-penalty cases. Just this week, the Fort Worth Police Department announced that nearly 100 DNA cases handled by its crime lab over the past three years would be reviewed because a forensic scientist did not follow protocol. And an FBI lab technician recently resigned while under investigation for failing to follow proper procedure when analyzing DNA in at least 103 cases over the past few years.

Taken together, the breaches are shaking the confidence of a public that, in the past decade, has come to view DNA evidence as foolproof.

In Houston, for example, Josiah Sutton was recently released from prison after serving four years of a 25-year sentence: On retest, the same DNA evidence used to convict him of rape showed clearly that he was not guilty.

"We were all told years ago that DNA was infallible and we wouldn't have innocent people being convicted. Well, we forgot about human error and misconduct," says Rep. Kevin Bailey, who chairs a legislative committee looking into the Houston crime lab. He has introduced a bill that mandates accreditation for labs - something only New York and Oklahoma currently require.

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