Backlog at crime lab is in dispute

Prosecutors say it's 2,000 cases
By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff
July 26, 2007

Top prosecutors accused the Patrick administration yesterday of overstating the backlog of untested crime scene samples at the State Police crime lab in a way that is undermining public confidence in the justice system.

In a joint interview with the Globe, Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Essex, Middlesex, Berkshire, and Cape and Islands district attorneys said the backlog is only 2,000 active cases, not 16,000 as the administration and a consultant have said.

"We are shocked in the sense that they said there is a 16,000-case backlog because we know it isn't there," said Coakley, who was Middlesex prosecutor for eight years before being elected attorney general in November.

"It is our obligation to say [the consultant] is not 100 percent correct, and on this particular point it gets a big headline -- and it is particularly misleading."

Earlier this month, the Executive Office of Public Safety unveiled a $267,000 study it commissioned on the crime lab after problems emerged with the processing of DNA test results. The study found major problems with management and also identified 16,000 biological samples dating to the 1980s that had gone untested.

Officials at the Office of Public Safety said that the cases included about 1,000 deaths and more than 6,600 sexual assaults and said that 10,000 of the samples were found in cold storage, though they stressed at the time that there was "only the remotest of possibilities" that slaying suspects or rapists were walking free.

Told of the prosecutors' criticisms yesterday, Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke insisted that the study found 16,000 untested biological samples that must be processed. He said there is only a difference in semantics between his numbers and the lower estimate preferred by prosecutors.

"I think we are on the same book and page about it," Burke said by telephone. "Everyone is looking at these cases to determine their status, and there will be cases where no action needs to be taken."

Prosecutors said thousands of the untested samples are from suicides, drug overdoses, and criminal cases where other evidence or guilty pleas made the biological evidence unnecessary at trials. Or the material is biological evidence simply being stored at the lab.

They said Burke should have limited his public comments about the lab to the 2,000 active investigations awaiting DNA testing. To say otherwise wrongly creates the impression among the public that prosecutors are hiding exculpatory evidence in cold storage at the lab, the prosecutors said.

"We are all disturbed that there would be some implication that somehow we are covering up or hiding something, because that's just not true," said Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett.

"You'd be talking about a global conspiracy and that's just not going to happen," he added.

"Eleven DAs trying to protect cases they'd already adjudicated because they knew there was a warehouse with exculpatory evidence -- that's nonsense."

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said he has reviewed 50 deaths dating to the 1980s in which biological samples were sent to the crime lab. In only a handful of those criminal cases was DNA testing not completed, and the forensic evidence wasn't needed, he said.

"Just the fact that they could produce that information shows that this isn't some situation where there is a closet there with 16,000 or 10,000 or even 3,000 cases sitting around that nobody knows anything about or had paid any attention to," O'Keefe said.

The state's public defender agency, the Committee for Public Counsel Services, is seeking data on all 16,000 cases to see whether it can identify any wrongfully convicted prisoners.

Burke said the administration will dedicate the money to fix the management and staffing problems identified by the consultant. An estimated $6 million is needed to test the samples where the statute of limitations has not expired, officials have said.

"The governor is committed to fixing the lab and that will be done," Burke said.

While critical of some findings, the prosecutors emphasized that the Vance report found no problems with the science performed at the lab.

"We have never had any reason to have anything other than the utmost confidence in the results we get from the crime lab," said David F. Capeless, the Berkshire prosecutor. "The lab isn't in any way connected to a case involving a wrongful conviction. It's only been to prove that, in fact, the person was innocent."