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<DIV><FONT size=4>New York Times 05-07-05</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV class=timestamp>May 7, 2005</DIV><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
<H1>Lab's Errors Force Review of 150 DNA Cases</H1></NYT_HEADLINE><NYT_BYLINE
version="1.0" type=" ">
<DIV class=byline>By <A title="More Articles by James Dao"
onclick="javascript:s_code_linktrack('Article-Byline');"
href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JAMES DAO&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JAMES DAO&inline=nyt-per"><FONT
color=#000066>JAMES DAO</FONT></A> </DIV></NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>
<DIV id=articleBody>
<P>WASHINGTON, May 6 - A sharply critical independent audit found Friday that
Virginia's nationally recognized central crime laboratory had botched DNA tests
in a leading capital murder case. The findings prompted Gov. Mark Warner to
order a review of the lab's handling of testing in 150 other cases as well.</P>
<P>Among the auditors' eight recommendations, all of which were accepted by Mr.
Warner, were that the governor restrict the work of the lab's chief DNA
scientist, Jeffrey Ban; review 40 cases that Mr. Ban has handled in recent
years, along with a sample totaling 110 additional cases; and develop procedures
to insulate the lab from any outside political pressures.</P>
<P>Experts said the findings could lead to a re-examination of scores of past
prosecutions, including those involving some of the nearly two dozen inmates on
Virginia's death row, and might also throw into turmoil many current
prosecutions in which the lab's work helped identify or rule out suspects.</P>
<P>"You have to have doubts about the reliability of any case coming out of
there," said Betty Layne DesPortes, a criminal defense lawyer from Richmond who
heads a legal panel for the American Academy of Forensic Science. "How can we be
sure that this case wasn't typical?" she said of the handling of evidence in the
prosecution of Earl Washington Jr.</P>
<P>The governor called for the independent audit of the lab last fall in
response to the case of Mr. Washington, a retarded man who came within days of
execution for a rape and killing before DNA evidence, though not resolving the
case, did raise doubts about his guilt.</P>
<P>The audit's findings come at a time when DNA is growing in importance in
implicating and exonerating suspects. Forensic labs in several states, including
Oklahoma and Texas, have come under intense scrutiny for their mishandling of
that and other evidence.</P>
<P>The outside auditors, from the American Society of Crime Laboratory
Directors, found that the Virginia lab's internal review process was flawed.
They also raised concerns that lab workers had felt pressured by their superiors
as well as the office of Jim Gilmore, who was governor when a flawed test of
newly discovered DNA was conducted in 2000, to produce quick and conclusive
reports in the Washington case, even when the evidence was muddled.</P>
<P>"Pressures from outside the laboratory and excessive managerial influence
from within the laboratory," the report said, "had a detrimental effect on the
analyst's decisions, examinations and reports in this case."</P>
<P>In an interview, Mr. Gilmore, a death penalty supporter now in private law
practice, said that while he had "demanded all the proper evidence we could
get," he had never asked the lab to reach any particular conclusion.</P>
<P>Virginia has executed more people, 94, than any other state except Texas
since the Supreme Court allowed reinstatement of the death penalty 29 years ago.
Mr. Washington was initially sentenced to death for the 1982 rape and fatal
stabbing of Rebecca Williams, a 19-year-old mother from Culpepper, Va., but the
sentence was commuted by Gov. Douglas Wilder in 1994. He was then pardoned by
Mr. Gilmore in 2000 because of DNA evidence that raised doubts about his
guilt.</P>
<P>But because of mistakes in the DNA tests by the crime lab in 1993, his
lawyers assert, he stayed on death row seven years longer than necessary. And
additional botched testing in 2000, they say, is the reason he has never been
fully exonerated.</P>
<P>"This laboratory touts itself as the best state lab in the country, yet it
generated these wrong test results in a capital case twice," said Peter Neufeld,
a lawyer for Mr. Washington who is co-director of the Innocence Project. "This
case raises very serious questions about the legitimacy of the capital justice
system."</P>
<P>Mr. Washington, 45, is living in a home for the mentally retarded on
Virginia's Eastern Shore. When he was told Friday afternoon about the audit's
findings, he said he hoped he would now be officially declared innocent in the
Williams murder, Mr. Neufeld said.</P>
<P>Mr. Ban, a nationally recognized forensic scientist who has helped other
states develop DNA policies, trained many members of the Virginia lab's staff.
As a result, the auditors recommended that independent experts review tests by
other analysts there involving low levels of DNA - the type of evidence used in
the Williams case - to ensure that similar problems were not rampant at the
lab.</P>
<P>The audit found an array of problems in the way Mr. Ban had conducted and
analyzed DNA tests in the Williams case. Those mistakes caused him to conclude
incorrectly that a convicted serial rapist named Kenneth Tinsley was not the
source of semen found in Ms. Williams, even though he had been found to be the
source of DNA on a blanket at the crime scene. </P>
<P>But a test commissioned by Mr. Washington's lawyers in 2004 pointed to Mr.
Tinsley as the likely sole source of the DNA found in Ms. Williams. Had the
state lab come to the same conclusion, Mr. Washington's lawyers claim, Mr.
Tinsley would have been prosecuted for the Williams murder years ago. He never
has been, though Mr. Neufeld said he was now imprisoned in an unrelated rape
case.</P>
<P>The Virginia legislature enacted a law this year that makes the Division of
Forensic Science, which runs the central crime lab, an independent state agency
and creates an advisory board, made up in part by division employees, to help
oversee its work. But Mr. Neufeld said the legislation did not go far enough
because it did not create an entirely independent office to review the lab's
work.</P>
<P>"The audit provides compelling evidence that crime labs can't police
themselves," Mr. Neufeld said.</P>
<P>Paul B. Ferrara, the director of the Division of Forensic Science, who in the
past refused to acknowledge any errors in the Washington case, declined to be
interviewed. But in a statement, he said the audit "belies the major body of
other work" by Mr. Ban that helped lead to Mr. Washington's pardon.</P>
<P>Ms. DesPortes, of the forensic science academy, criticized Mr. Ferrara for
what she described as his failure to shield Mr. Ban from "typical" political
pressure on crime labs. She said his response to the audit suggested that he
would not vigorously carry out its recommendations.</P>
<P>"He seems to think a perfect lab is one where errors never occur," she said.
"But errors are going to occur. A perfect system is one that is able to catch
its mistakes, and correct them."</P></DIV></NYT_TEXT></DIV></BODY></HTML>