Fixing the mess at the crime lab
Editorial:, Milford daily news
The mess at the state police crime lab is difficult to fathom: Evidence samples from thousands of crime scenes, dating back 20 years or more, were simply not tested. A state investigation revealed that DNA tests on evidence involving 16,000 cases were not done; 4,000 rape kits containing biological evidence were never even opened.
Defenders of the Sudbury facility cite new technology and lack of staffing for the backlog, and the new report, done by an independent consulting company, agrees. But we can't help but recall the mail carrier that dumped bags of mail in the woods because he didn't have time to deliver it. Such negligence is inexcusable.
If this mess is hard to describe, it will be doubly difficult to clean up. Even in the cases resolved years ago, there are victims and defendants who must be wondering how things might have been different if the State Police crime lab had done its job. They deserve some consideration.
Then there's the backlog of 2,000 cases awaiting trial for which the evidence has yet to be tested. One of these cases is nationally known: that of Neil Entwistle, due to face trial this fall for killing his wife and infant daughter in their Hopkinton home. His lawyer says the trial may be delayed because the State Police crime lab has yet to test evidence submitted more than five months ago.
State officials say the Entwistle evidence will be analyzed in time, and we hope that's true. Now that the problem has been exposed, the state should get on top of the backlogged tests, contracting them out if needed, especially for the highest priority cases. Justice delayed is justice denied.
But the lower profile cases deserve attention as well. Even in cases long closed, or cases where the statute of limitations has expired, the state has a moral obligation to analyze evidence wherever it can shed light on what really happened.
It can start by making public the 16,000 cases. Officials have so far refused to do so, but we hope they will respond positively to a request from an association of Massachusetts public defenders. Not every sample needs to be tested. There may well be cases already resolved in which further evidence is unnecessary. But there are also cases in which no arrest has been made, cases where the evidence tests may point to a suspect. And there are cases in which an innocent person may have been convicted.
An independent auditor must sift through the cases and make a recommendation as to whether the sample should be tested. Such a decision should be appealable by both defendant and prosecutors. Let's clear the current backlog and start systematically setting the record straight on cases previously closed.
"It's not just about convictions," Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett said this week, a point the state police should remember. It's about determining the truth. That's going to take time and money, but it must be done.
Chaos at the crime lab
BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
THE PATRICK administration should be wary of culturing scapegoats as it begins its reform of the forensic units of the State Police crime laboratory and the state Medical Examiner's office. The problems with these flawed institutions reach back many years and several administrations.
Kevin Burke, the secretary of public safety, and State Police Colonel Mark Delaney were reportedly stunned by the recent discovery of 16,000 cases of unprocessed DNA evidence at the lab dating back to the mid-1980s. But only the amount of material was shocking. Burke, after all, had termed the DNA lab "disgraceful" back in 2001 when he served as Essex County district attorney. Now he's in a position to do something about it.
Wisely, Burke is proposing to put a civilian, and not a State Police official, in charge of all the forensic units, including DNA, ballistics, and crime scene services. That was one recommendation of the Vance consulting firm, which recently released a blistering analysis of the management of the DNA lab. To succeed, Burke will need to elevate professionalism over politics.
Recent personnel shakeups raise some red flags. In March, the former head of the DNA lab, Carl Selavka, was forced to resign. Burke says Selavka focused so much on trying to win accreditation for the lab that he failed to deal with the backlog. It's easy to see why Selavka, who headed the troubled crime lab for almost a decade, would have to go. But Delaney was the State Police official in charge of overseeing the forensic units since 2002. And he was elevated last year to head the entire State Police department.
There are other inconsistencies. Chief medical examiner Dr. Mark Flomenbaum was placed on administrative leave in May after the autopsied body of a Cape Cod man went missing. He is awaiting his fate, which could hinge on the findings of another Vance consulting report. Meanwhile, former undersecretary LaDonna Hatton, the state's top forensic official, quit in June. In August, she is expected to become the general counsel for the State Police. For the public, such outcomes make it difficult to understand the lines of authority and accountability.
It's tough for forensic managers to make it in Massachusetts. The science and standards for DNA evidence evolved rapidly during the 1990s. But the hiring of chemists never kept pace. The medical examiner's office was criticized for conducting too few autopsies. Flomenbaum took the post in 2005 and quickly increased productivity. But then he found himself under fire when unclaimed bodies started to pile up in the cramped facility.
Burke says he is on a quest for sound management, quality assurance, and enough resources to create reliable forensic services. That's what the public needs, but without the fall guys.
Former State Police Crime Lab Administrator Tells Troubling Story
News Center 5
BOSTON -- A former administrator at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab who was fired for negligence is blowing the whistle on his former bosses, and what he told Team 5 Investigates raises some troubling questions about whether the state agency he worked for is putting politics before public safety.
NewsCenter 5's Sean Kelly reported Thursday that Bob Pino believes he's the fall guy for a crime lab riddled with problems.
Pino's CSI work has helped send many of the Commonwealth's most notorious killers to prison, including Eddie O'Brien, Rod Matthews, Henry Meinholz and Thomas Maimoni. But after 23 years, Col. Mark Delaney, the head of the Massachusetts State Police, showed Pino the door this past April.
"I've never been negligent in all my career at the crime lab. This is all a sham, they're using me to cover up something else," said Pino.
Team 5 Investigates examined the circumstances behind Pino's firing and found some very serious problems that plague the State Police run crime lab. Everything from budget shortfalls, inadequate staffing, and vague policies have all led to a backlog of cases that have jeopardized public safety. And Pino says these problems made him the fall guy.
"I get the blame for setting up the system, I also get the blame for discovering that this is a fault in the system and I got the blame for every part of the whole system," said Pino.
At issue is Pino's management of the crime lab's CODIS unit, a vital crime solving tool, used to compare DNA profiles and help police and prosecutors solve crimes. According to the state's investigation, Pino's "haphazard style" in managing this database is the reason why time ran out and prosecutors couldn't go after criminals in fourteen sexual assault cases. It's an accusation that Pino denies, "The statute of limitations is not a laboratory function. No criminal has been put free because of what I've done here," said Pino.
According to Pino, no one ever told him that keeping track of the statute of limitations on cases was part of the CODIS job. Ironically, Pino says he's the one who first discovered the problem and went to his bosses, including Mark Delaney, Crime Lab Director Carl Selavka and Technical Director Joanne Sgueglia, with a plan to fix it. "They should be accused of the same thing, since they knew about it," said Pino.
"These are just fundamental issues that somehow, even though it's challenging, the individual CODIS administrators and managers have got to make sure are addressed," said Timothy Palmbach.
Palmbach is the former director of the Connecticut crime lab, and the current director of the forensic science program at the acclaimed Henry Lee Institute at the University of New Haven. According to him, the entire criminal justice system should be held responsible for making sure there are not lapses in the statute of limitations. "I don't think it's fair to point to any one entity and say it's your responsibility," said Palmbach.
Another problem Team 5 Investigates found at the Massachusetts state police crime lab is an increased workload, and inadequate staff to get it all done. Pino's workload tripled in 2004 when the size of the CODIS database expanded to include DNA samples from all felons, but his staff size did not.
"Over the past five years, I've had 52 different temps," said Pino. It was a problem that Pino says his bosses were well aware of. "They were aware of it and they were saying in the next budget they were going to put in permanent staff but every time it'd just be another one where I'd never get any permanent staff," said Pino.
In addition, the state also claims Pino deliberately misused the DNA database to search for criminals through their family members who are already in the system. But according to an e-mail obtained by Team 5 Investigates, it appears that the state had actually given Pino permission to do that type of searching. "I went to the Chief Legal Counsel, Eleanor Sinnott, and she said by the law, we are allowed to do familial searches in Massachusetts," said Pino.
So why is Pino taking the brunt of the blame for problems everyone else seemed to know about?
"I think all of it's politics," said Pino.
And that's just one of many reasons why criminal defense attorney Joan Griffin says scientists, not cops, should be in charge of crime labs. "In my mind, there's no question that if this could be separated from the police, we would be better off. You have people running laboratories who are traffic cops with no scientific training at all," said Griffin.
While Pino was the only person fired, the problems also led to the resignation of crime lab director Carl Selavka who also is a scientist. Pino is trying to get his job back through arbitration, but so far the state has denied his claims. No one at State Police Headquarters or the Executive Office of Public Safety would agree to be interviewed.
Forensics chief exits as probes continue
Appointed in '05 to fix 2 agencies
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
The state's top forensics official resigned yesterday following a series of blunders in the State Police crime laboratory and the medical examiner's office, making her exit the most prominent in a string of high-level departures from both operations.
The resignation of LaDonna J. Hatton as undersecretary of forensic sciences comes amid four investigations into the alleged mishandling of DNA test results in about two dozen unsolved sexual assault cases at the crime lab and another inquiry into the disappearance of a body from the medical examiner's office.
Hatton, 46, was appointed by the Romney administration in 2005 to fix the long-troubled agencies but had struggled with one crisis after another over the past six months. She will leave in August to become general counsel to the State Police.
"There is no perfect time to leave a job with as many challenges as undersecretary for forensic sciences, but I know that this is the right decision and the right time for me personally and professionally," Hatton said in a statement issued by Kevin M. Burke, public safety secretary.
The announcement follows the resignation in March of the civilian head of the crime lab, Carl Se lavka, and the suspension last month of the chief medical examiner, Dr. Mark A. Flomenbaum.
Although the upheaval put Hatton under scrutiny, Burke had vigorously defended her supervision of the lab and medical examiner's office. He told the Globe on March 15 that she had nothing to do with the problems that have roiled both operations and that she was playing a crucial role in addressing them.
"If I had four more LaDonna Hattons, I'd be very pleased," he said.
Yesterday, Burke said Hatton's work "has laid the foundation for the next phase of improvements that need to be implemented."
A spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, Charles McDonald, said that Hatton's departure was voluntary and that Burke, a former Essex County district attorney, will consult with the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association on choosing a replacement. He gave no timetable for appointing a successor.
Hatton, who was paid $125,000 a year, was appointed by the Romney administration despite having little expertise in forensics and was reappointed by Governor Deval Patrick in January.
Burke said she was staying through July to assist with the completion of analyses of the crime lab and medical examiner's office by Vance, a Virginia-based private consulting company. Vance is scheduled to complete a $267,000 top-to-bottom review of the crime lab by Saturday. The company recently began a separate analysis of the medical examiner's office.
Hatton, a former legal counsel to Boston Police Commissioner Paul Evans and Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, told the Globe yesterday morning that she would discuss her departure later in the day but did not return subsequent phone calls.
In the statement issued by Burke, she acknowledged that her resignation comes at a delicate time but said she looked forward to returning to the practice of law.
"There are still many challenges facing the [office of chief medical examiner] and crime lab, but with strong support from Governor Patrick and Secretary Burke, the important changes that have been identified will be made," she said.
Since January, the crime lab has been buffeted by disclosures about the mishandling of DNA test results, which led to investigations by the State Police, FBI, Vance, and the state inspector general's office.
All the investigations are looking into problems with evidence compiled in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the FBI-funded computer network that serves as the registry of 3.1 million DNA samples of convicted criminals and arrested individuals that have been collected by law enforcement nationwide. CODIS matches crime-scene DNA to genetic profiles in the database.
Robert Pino, a 23-year civilian employee of the lab who testified in more than 240 criminal cases and helped set up the state's portion of the FBI database, was fired April 13, three months after the agency suspended him for allegedly mishandling test results.
On March 9, Selavka, director of the lab since July 1998 and one of Pino's supervisors, resigned under pressure.
The State Police investigation has found several kinds of problems, including that Pino told law enforcement officials about 13 positive DNA matches in unsolved sexual assault cases after the statute of limitations had expired, too late for the cases to be prosecuted.
In another eight cases, the statute expired because the lab took too long to check DNA from the crime scenes against samples in the database, according to a State Police affidavit filed in February.
The medical examiner's office faced its own crisis in mid-March, when an increase in the number of autopsies caused unclaimed bodies to pile up in the agency's overcrowded Boston headquarters in the South End and in a refrigerated truck parked behind the building. In addition, the plumbing system had clogged, resulting in pools of blood on the autopsy room floor, and basic supplies, including body bags and toe tags, had run out periodically.
On May 3, the Patrick administration suspended Flomenbaum for the misplacement of the body of a Cape Cod man who was mistakenly buried in another man's grave and had to be exhumed .
Last week, the Patrick administration restricted a longtime pathologist at the medical examiner's office, Dr. William M. Zane, from examining any potential homicide victims because he made an autopsy error that forced prosecutors to downgrade murder charges against twin brothers from Ayer, who were convicted of manslaughter.
Flomenbaum said in a phone interview from home that he was unaware of Hatton's departure and declined to comment further. Zane did not return a phone call to his office.
Geline W. Williams, executive director of the state's district attorneys association, which has pushed since at least 2000 for improving forensic services relied upon by prosecutors, said both the crime lab and medical examiner's office are victims of years of underfunding and neglect. The state only began addressing those deficiencies in the past few years, she said, and whoever succeeds Hatton will face many of the same challenges.
"The record is clear that the state's forensic services across the board were neglected for almost two decades," she said. "You can't turn that around overnight."
State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who cochairs the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said Hatton's new job provides a good opportunity for her and for Patrick.
"This is an important chance for the Patrick administration to take a fresh look at these two agencies that have not been without their problems," he said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
DNA chief fired over crime lab problems State Police had said he mishandled resultsBy Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff
The embattled administrator of the DNA database at the State Police crime laboratory was fired yesterday, three months after the agency suspended him for allegedly mishandling test results in about two-dozen unsolved sexual assault cases, according to the lawyer for his union.
Robert Pino, a 23-year civilian employee of the lab who testified in more than 240 criminal cases and helped set up the state database, was sent a letter yesterday saying he was terminated, said Ann Looney, general counsel to his union, the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists.
Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent of the State Police, sent the letter two weeks after the agency held a closed-door administrative hearing about Pino's performance.
Pino is the second laboratory employee to lose his job over problems with the handling of DNA test results, including the alleged failure to report positive DNA matches before the statute of limitations ran out. On March 9, Carl Selavka, the civilian director of the lab since July 1998 and one of Pino's supervisors, abruptly resigned under pressure, after what Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke described as an unfavorable assessment of his performance.
The problems have embarrassed state officials and prompted inquiries by the State Police, the FBI, and a private consulting company, Vance, recently hired to conduct a $267,000 top-to-bottom review of the crime lab.
Pino, who was suspended with pay Jan. 11, did not return phone calls yesterday seeking comment. Shortly before the March 30 hearing, he said he did not know what he had done wrong, characterized his dismissal as a "done deal," and vowed to fight to get his job back through the union.
Looney struck a similar stance yesterday, calling the firing "a travesty."
"The department of State Police has destroyed this man's 23-year impeccable career of outstanding service for violations of policies that never existed and fallacies that have no substance and therefore no consequence," said Looney, who added that Pino's union intends to file a grievance challenging his firing.
A State Police spokesman, Lieutenant Detective William Powers, declined to comment late yesterday afternoon, except to say that Pino was still listed as an employee.
Pino, who started at the lab as a chemist, allegedly mishandled evidence in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the FBI-funded computer system that serves as the registry of 3.1 million DNA samples of convicted criminals and arrested individuals that have been collected by law enforcement nationwide. CODIS matches crime scene DNA to genetic profiles in the database, often leading investigators to suspects.
So far, the internal investigation has found three categories of problems.
First, it determined that Pino told law enforcement officials too late about 13 positive DNA matches in unsolved sexual assault cases dating as far back as the late 1980s, and the statute of limitations ran out.
In another eight cases, the statute expired because the lab took too long to load profiles of crime scene DNA into the database, according to a February affidavit by State Police Detective Captain Gregory J. Foley prepared in case of potential legal challenges.
Second, Pino allegedly prepared four reports about near-matches between DNA profiles of convicted felons and crime scene DNA, apparently to alert law enforcement officials that a relative of a convict might have committed the crime, said the affidavit. Pino allegedly reported two of those near matches incorrectly as perfect matches to law enforcement officials, although no one was wrongly arrested.
State officials say that familial searches, a controversial practice that genetics researchers and prosecutors contend could prove to be an important crimefighting tool, are prohibited at the lab. But Pino and officials from his union have disputed that, citing, among other things, a July 2006 e-mail from a legal counsel to the State Police as evidence that such searches were allowed.
Third, the State Police collected DNA profiles of 12 people convicted of misdemeanors, even though state law limits the database to convicted felons. Burke has said it was unclear why the profiles were in the database.
Looney, who defended Pino at his administrative hearing, said yesterday that the State Police lacked policies concerning matters for which Pino has been faulted.
"They wanted someone to blame" for the problems at the lab, she said.
Selavka, who is well known in the tightknit forensic community, has declined to comment since his resignation was announced on March 9. But several prominent figures in the field nationwide have rallied to his defense and characterized him as a victim of circumstances that afflict many crime labs nationwide.
They said years of inadequate funding by the state made it hard to run the lab. They also said that a 2003 law that expanded the state's DNA database to include samples from all convicted felons -- instead of the 33 serious and violent felonies in the 1997 law creating the computerized archive -- led to overwhelming backlogs and administrative problems similar to those in other states that broadened their databases.
W. Mark Dale -- director of the Northeast Regional Forensic Institute at the University at Albany, which has run three academies for newly hired DNA scientists from the Massachusetts lab -- said recently that the problems that surfaced this year are "really a symptom of the stress and pressure that's almost routine in the labs across the country today."
The Legislature has increased funding to the lab, from $6.2 million in fiscal 2005 to $16.2 million in fiscal 2007. But it takes years to turn around a lab, Dale said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
March 25, 2007
State Efforts To Probe Crime Lab Stall
Three Cases Being Investigated; One By FBI
TheBostonChannel.com
BOSTON -- Massachusetts isn't the only state with crime lab problems.
Falsified tests, misplaced evidence, and scientific mistakes have surfaced across the country in recent years, officials said.
Those problems have led to lawsuits and sometimes audits in Massachusetts, West Virginia, Montana, Oklahoma, Ohio and more.
In Massachusetts, a State Police crime lab administrator failed to inform prosecutors that he matched DNA samples to rape suspects before the statute of limitations on crimes had run out, authorities said.
There are now at least three separate investigations of the crime lab, including one led by the FBI, officials said. The lab's director has resigned.
Minnesota, Texas and Virginia have each founded oversight boards that can investigate misconduct in crime labs. But not one has yet reopened a case -- either because they have refused to do so or because they haven't been funded, authorities said.
DNA reporting failures put crime lab in state’s spotlight
By Steve
LeBlanc THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOSTON— The first hints of trouble at the state police crime lab
trickled out in January, when officials suspended a lab administrator for
failing to let prosecutors know he had matched DNA samples to suspects before
the statute of limitations on crimes had run out.
At first, officials said about a dozen cases were jeopardized, including at
least five sexual assaults.
But two months later, the number of cases has grown to nearly two-dozen, all of
them sexual assaults, prompting at least three separate investigations of the
crime lab, including one led by the FBI, and a separate state police internal
review. The lab’s director has resigned.
At the
same time, the man at the center of the controversy, computer database
administrator Robert Pino, says he’s being used as a scapegoat and that, if not
for him, the cases would have been forgotten.
“I didn’t sit on these cases. I’m the one who took the initiative and found
these cases,” Pino said in an interview. “They languished for years.”
The troubles not only raised the possibility of rape suspects walking free, but
threatened to undermine public confidence in the lab itself, a critical link in
the investigation and prosecution of some of the state’s most serious crimes.
Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke recently signed a $267,000 contract with an
outside consulting firm to review all operational and management systems at the
lab in an effort to get the situation under control. He also appointed a new
acting director, after accepting Carl Selavka’s resignation.
“We’re examining the whole system,” Burke said.
Selavka, who had worked as director since July 1998, was replaced by Mary Kate
McGilvray, a 20-year employee at the facility. Selavka’s duties included
oversight of the DNA databank.
Much of the initial focus of the problems fell on the actions of Pino.
Investigators blamed Pino for failing to report the DNA matches before the
statute of limitations on the crimes had expired.
Pino said the troubles date back to the mid-1980s, when the state began
routinely collecting biological evidence in sexual assault kits.
At the time, he said, DNA and other testing was far more primitive and many of
those cases sat unsolved until the state began getting federal grants about five
years ago that allowed the lab to take another look at the old cases.
While the lab continued to test evidence in new cases, Pino said, he went back
to the oldest cases and started to work forward in time, trying to find matches.
When he did, he forwarded them to prosecutors.
Pino said dealing with the statute of limitations is up to prosecutors, not the
lab. He said his focus was on aiding the victims of what he said were forgotten
cases.
“I did nothing wrong. I’ve done what I should have done. I was the one who
identified them. I was their advocate,” said Pino, who remains on administrative
leave. “This is for the victims of these crimes, for them to get closure.”
But Burke said Pino was in large part to blame for not reporting the information
in time for the prosecutions to move forward.
In 21 cases, he said, information about a DNA match “stayed in a drawer” until
the statute of limitation ran out on the crime because of “individual negligence
and malfeasance” — including Pino’s — that wasn’t picked up by administrators
overseeing the lab.
Toni Troop, spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., a Boston-based coalition against
sexual assault, said it’s important that victims be informed of the status of
their cases.
“We have two equal concerns, one that any individual survivors whose cases might
be affected are contacted and that everything is done to pursue justice,” she
said. “The other is that Public Safety Secretary Burke is on top of the
investigation” into the lab.
Burke’s office has not released details about the cases.
Burke said his biggest concern was the delay in reporting matches.
“In any good system you would pick up the idea that the statute was going to run
at a date certain and you had to make sure in your notification system ...
(that) those cases are prioritized,” he said.
He said Selavka admitted some responsibility for the lack of administrative
oversight, but Burke also laid much of the blame on Pino.
“It’s safe to say that Mr. Pino has been charged with failing to meet his
responsibility,” he said. “Let us leave it at that.”
The spate of investigations comes less than two years after the crime lab found
itself under fire for waiting nine months to process a DNA sample from the man
later convicted of raping and murdering Cape Cod fashion writer Christa
Worthington in her Truro home in 2002.
Christopher McCowen voluntarily gave his DNA sample to investigators in March
2004. It took several months for the sample to reach the crime lab, and another
nine months for the lab to match it to semen from the crime scene.
Burke said the goal of the investigations and staff shake-ups is to regain any
public faith lost in the lab.
March 6, 2007
DNA woes prompt a novel prosecution
Jonathan Saltzman, Boston
Globe, The (MA)
The alleged mishandling of DNA test results by a suspended administrator at the State Police crime laboratory has prompted one prosecutor to offer a novel interpretation of the Massachusetts statute of limitations, according to the Hampden County district attorney and a defense lawyer opposing him in a rape case.
District Attorney William M.
Bennett said yesterday he plans to prosecute a former Springfield man in a 1991
rape, even though the lab administrator failed to report that DNA recovered in
the case matched the defendant's genetic profile within the 15-year statute of
limitations for rape cases.
Bennett's argument for extending the statute is that the defendant used an alias
for at least six months and that that time should not count against how long
prosecutors had to bring charges.
Massachusetts law extends statutes of limitations, which impose deadlines on how
soon after the crime prosecutors must file charges, for the length of time a
defendant lives out of state. But Bennett and the defense lawyer say no state
court has ruled on whether the clock stops when a defendant adopts a new
identity.
Antonio Sanchez, 41, who is at MCI-Shirley for an unrelated conviction, was
indicted in May on the basis of DNA evidence on charges of aggravated rape and
assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. That was 15 years and three months
after authorities said he raped a 17-year-old female in Chicopee and attacked
her with a screwdriver.
The state's public safety director, Kevin M. Burke, said district attorneys
cannot prosecute 21 unnamed individuals for sex offenses because Robert E. Pino,
the administrator of the DNA computer database, had failed to tell police and
prosecutors of matches in time.
Bennett confirmed yesterday that Sanchez was among the 21 individuals and said
that he will seek to prosecute him by arguing that Sanchez used the alias
Reinaldo Espinosa from August 1999, when a warrant was issued for his arrest on
larceny and assault charges, until February 2000, when he was taken into custody
on that warrant.
The case illustrates how Pino's alleged mishandling of DNA evidence, which has
prompted three sweeping investigations and embarrassed the State Police, is
reverberating through the Massachusetts criminal justice system.
Hampden Superior Court Judge Daniel A. Ford ruled in November that the six-year
statute of limitations had expired on the 1991 assault and battery charge, so
Sanchez could not be prosecuted for that. But the judge said it is up to a jury
to decide whether the statute had elapsed on the aggravated rape charge, and set
a trial date of April 24, according to Sanchez's court-appointed lawyer, Charles
Groce III of Springfield.
Bennett acknowledged that his argument on the statute of limitations might not
sway a jury or the appellate courts. "We're going to find out," he said.
Groce said prosecutors are misreading the law, which stops the statute of
limitations from running when the defendant is "not usually and publicly a
resident within the Commonwealth."
The only other provision for extending the statute, he said, is that for young
victims who report sex and other specified crimes years afterwards, the clock
does not start until they turn 16.
"What I think the language means is that the government has to show [Sanchez]
was outside the Commonwealth and that it really doesn't make a difference what
he was doing inside the Commonwealth," said Groce.
Groce said that before the rape case goes to trial, he will appeal Ford's ruling
to the Supreme Judicial Court. He said he also plans to oppose prosecutors'
request for a new DNA sample from Sanchez to confirm the earlier match because,
he contends, Pino's handling of DNA evidence has tainted the case.
David M. Siegel, who teaches criminal law at the New England School of Law and
is not involved in the case, said that Bennett's argument is a reach and that
Ford's ruling also seems dubious.
"I think that's going to be a fertile ground for appeal," Siegel said.
Sanchez is accused of raping the teen in Chicopee Feb. 19, 1991, according to
Groce.
Pino sent a letter to Chicopee police dated May 13, 2006, reporting that about
two weeks earlier, the lab had determined that DNA collected from the crime
scene matched Sanchez's genetic profile in the lab's database.
Groce said the 15-year statute of limitations expired Feb. 19, 2006, even before
the lab determined the match.
It was unknown why the test took place after the statute of limitations ran out.
Pino's union has said the State Police lab, like many in the country, has faced
huge backlogs as lawmakers expanded convictions that required the automatic
collection of DNA samples, from a limited number of homicides and sex offenses
in the late 1990s to all felonies in 2004.
But Burke has insisted that the extra work had nothing to do with problems at
the lab.
Pino's alleged lapses have led to an internal State Police investigation, an FBI
audit, and a soon-to-be, top-to-bottom study of the lab by an outside consultant
for up to $300,000. So far, the internal investigation has found three
categories of problems, Burke said.
First, Pino allegedly told law enforcement authorities too late about 21
positive DNA matches in sexual assault cases dating as far back as the late
1980s. Burke's office said it had mistakenly put the number at 23 last month.
Second, Pino allegedly prepared four reports about near-matches between DNA
profiles of convicted felons and DNA from sexual assaults, apparently to alert
law enforcement officials that a relative of a convict might have committed the
crime. Burke said the State Police does not authorize searches for familial DNA
links.
Third, the State Police collected DNA profiles of 12 people convicted of
misdemeanors though state law limits the database to convicted felons. Burke
said it was unclear whether Pino was responsible for those 12 lapses.
Pino, who was suspended with pay Jan. 11, said in a letter to the president of
his union on Feb. 20 that the State Police and Executive Office of Public Safety
have made him a scapegoat and that he was responsible for uncovering the cases
in which DNA matches came after statutes of limitations expired.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
Another
problem found at DNA lab
Data could harm 12 sex crime cases
John R. Ellement, Boston Globe, The (MA)
State officials said yesterday they have discovered a new problem in the State Police crime lab that could jeopardize 12 sex crime investigations: DNA profiles of the suspects were wrongly in the lab's database of convicted felons.
Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke said the 12
suspects, whose profiles matched DNA evidence collected from crime scenes, were
convicted of misdemeanors. State law, however, limits the database to those
convicted of felonies.
Burke, a former Essex County prosecutor, said he believes that police and
prosecutors can still seek criminal charges using the DNA information. "As far
as I can see, it is admissible," he said in a telephone interview. "This error
wasn't an intentional error. The errors in these 12 cases were the result of
misreading the original criminal record."
But defense attorneys said that since the state had no right to the information,
prosecutors should not be allowed to use the DNA matches in trials.
"Why are the samples being taken illegally? That sounds like 12 violations of
the law," said William J. Leahy, chief counsel for the state's public defender
agency, who said he wants more information from Burke. "There may be more
violations. The 12 could just be the tip of the iceberg."
The 12 cases are in addition to 23 sexual assault cases in which Robert E. Pino,
the civilian administrator of the Combined DNA Index System failed to notify
police of DNA matches in time, making it impossible for law enforcement to
prosecute offenders. Pino also violated department rules in four cases by
treating "familial matches" of relatives as links to convicted felons, officials
say.
Pino has been suspended with pay, and his union has said the problems were the
result of an overworked lab staff.
The FBI is auditing the DNA database, and Burke plans to spend up to $300,000 to
hire an outside consultant to conduct a complete management review of the lab.
Yesterday, he also said he has ordered a top deputy, LaDonna Hatton, to
supervise the lab's DNA database.
Burke said it was not clear if the 12 new problem cases should be blamed on Pino.
He said the DNA profiles were collected at jails, prisons, and probation
offices, and shipped to the lab based on the belief that the offenders were
convicted of felonies.
He said it was State Police lab workers who discovered the mistakes.
State Police were forced to disclose the new cases in an affidavit filed in a
Norfolk Superior Court case in which a Boston man faces nine counts of
aggravated rape stemming from a 2001 break-in of a house.
The man, Che Sosa, is also being prosecuted in Suffolk County in a 1995 break-in
and rape and in Middlesex County, according to court records and his defense
lawyer, John J. Courtney.
Courtney said Pino testified before the Norfolk County grand jury that indicted
Sosa, and Courtney has asked a Superior Court judge to dismiss the charges or to
delay the trial until the inquiries of the lab are completed.
"We won't know until the audit comes through whether or not any of this
information is false, '' Courtney said of Pino's grand jury testimony. "It's
reasonable to at least be suspicious about the reliability of his testimony."
Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating's office said through a spokesman
it does not believe the lab's issues have any bearing on the evidence against
Sosa. Burke has insisted that the science of DNA matches is valid and that the
problems are only administrative.
Superior Court Judge Charles Grabau has taken Courtney's motions under
advisement.
John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com.
Crime lab botched 27 DNA
results
Nearly twice as many as state found earlier
Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe, The (MA)
An administrator at the State Police crime laboratory mishandled DNA test results in 27 sexual assault cases, nearly twice as many as state officials' most recent count, according to a nearly completed internal review.
In his first interview on the problems at the lab, Kevin
M. Burke, the state's new public safety secretary, said yesterday that the DNA
computer database administrator, Robert E. Pino, failed to tell law enforcement
officials of DNA matches in 23 sexual assault cases.
During the time Pino did not report the matches, the statute of limitations
expired in the cases. Despite hope expressed by some district attorneys that
they could prosecute some of those cases, Burke said they cannot be pursued.
In the four other cases, Pino prepared letters for law enforcement officials
that presented apparent matches, even though they were near-matches between DNA
evidence found at crime scenes and the genetic profiles of close relatives of
convicted felons, Burke said. Neither the FBI nor the State Police perform
searches for familial DNA links, he said.
Frederick R. Bieber, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women's Hospital who
coauthored an article in the journal Science in May on familial searches, said
he knew of no Massachusetts or FBI regulations that prohibit administrators of
DNA databases from making such searches.
They are a controversial crime-fighting technique that has been used to solve a
few homicides and other crimes in the United States and United Kingdom. Critics
say that relatives not involved in any crimes can be unfairly targeted by
investigators. State officials had previously said that the four cases involved
false matches, but Burke said yesterday that Pino had violated agency practices
by making familial searches.
Burke said investigators do not know why Pino let the statute of limitations run
out on nearly two dozen matches, while conducting familial searches.
"It's certainly a fair question, but it's one we don't have an answer to," said
Burke, who served as Essex district attorney for 24 years and was appointed
public safety secretary last month by Governor Deval Patrick. "It's only an
answer he can give."
Neither Pino nor his lawyer, Michael J. O'Reilly, could be reached for comment
yesterday. Pino's union has said that an overworked staff at the lab was partly
responsible for any problems, but Burke denied that staffing levels were a
factor.
Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent of the State Police, suspended Pino with
pay Jan. 11 and the next day announced that he had begun an internal
investigation of Pino in mid-November. Initially, the State Police said Pino
bungled results in at least 10 cases and several weeks ago revised the number to
15.
Delaney also asked the FBI last month to begin its own review of the state's
Combined DNA Indexing System to determine whether the problems with DNA test
results might be more widespread. In addition, Burke's office is seeking bids on
Feb. 23 for as much as $300,000 for an outside consultant to do a top-to-bottom
review of the crime lab.
Yesterday, Burke said that the State Police review is almost complete and that
he doubted it would find that Pino had mishandled more cases. Burke said that
while it was alarming that Pino's lapses had made it impossible to prosecute
suspects in 23 unsolved sexual assault cases, , none of those individuals had
been arrested for serious crimes since the statute of limitations had expired.
"The most serious offense committed by any one of those people was a stolen
vehicle," said Burke, who said he could not legally identify any of the
potential suspects.
He also said that none of the four relatives identified through the familial
searches had been arrested. He said Pino mailed only two of the letters, one to
the Middlesex district attorney and one to Boston police.
Burke also said that the internal review had found no evidence that any of
Pino's supervisors were at fault for his lapses.
"He was in complete control of the process as the CODIS administrator," Burke
said. "It's difficult to imagine why he would make the kind of errors he made."
One prosecutor has told the Globe he fears that the problems could damage
juries' confidence in DNA evidence. And William J. Leahy, chief counsel for the
state public defender agency, said the growing number of mishandled cases cannot
help but make jurors skeptical. "Jurors aren't scientists," he said. "Jurors
aren't going to say, 'Well, they're screwing up, but it doesn't influence this
case."'
But Burke stressed that the lab's mishandling of test results does not mean that
the science of DNA evidence is flawed. "We're not implicating the quality of the
testing or the tests themselves," he said.
Leahy said he wrote Burke's office last month seeking specifics about the cases
that have been mishandled and has not received a reply. He said he is writing
nearly 1,000 private lawyers who are appointed to represent indigent defendants
to alert them to the potential DNA problems.
"We're just accepting the assertion that mistakes in unnamed cases have caused
no harm, and that's hardly satisfactory," he said. State Senator Jarrett T.
Barrios, who co-chairs the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland
Security, said the increase in mishandled cases makes it more urgent that the
committee holds public hearings into problems at the laboratory. He said he
hoped to schedule the hearings within weeks but would not do so until the FBI
completes its audit of the lab. The FBI, which is focusing on 622 matches that
have been made since 2001, has provided no timetable.
"There are enormous implications to the failure of the State Police crime lab in
this instance, not the least of which is the potential for innocent people being
convicted," Barrios said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
US audit found more problems at crime lab
Jonathan Saltzman, Boston
Globe, The (MA)
A federal inspection of the State Police crime laboratory completed in September found problems with the handling of DNA evidence that go beyond those that prompted the agency to suspend a civilian administrator and led to two sweeping reviews of the lab.
Auditors from the US Justice
Department's Office of the Inspector General concluded that the laboratory
entered incomplete genetic profiles into its computerized database in 12 cases
of a sample of 100 involving unidentified suspects who left DNA at crimes
scenes, making the profiles inadequate.
The auditors also found instances in which laboratory officials entered the same
genetic profile under two different ID numbers in the database and failed to
follow FBI protocols for analyzing profiles and double-checking results,
according to an executive summary of the inspection report.
In addition, the summary said, the laboratory waited nearly eight months to
confirm a tentative match between DNA from a crime scene and DNA from a
convicted felon whose genetic profile was entered into the database. Federal
guidelines call for confirmation within 30 days.
The lab underwent a private inspection for work performed in 2005, but failed to
pass the report on to the FBI for almost seven months, not immediately as
required. In all, the federal audit cited seven categories of problems. It did
not specifically mention the suspended administrator, but did appear to focus on
duties he performed.
Apart from those deficiencies, the auditors said the lab "generally complied"
with federal standards for labs that participate in the nationwide Combined DNA
Index System, or CODIS. That database allows law enforcement officials, seeking
to match suspects to crimes, to electronically compare more than 3.1 million DNA
profiles.
The State Police had not disclosed the existence of the federal report since
Jan. 12, when the agency announced the suspension of Robert E. Pino, the
civilian administrator in charge of the state's DNA indexing system.
The State Police said Colonel Mark Delaney, superintendent of the force,
launched an internal investigation in mid-November after discovering that Pino
mishandled test results in 15 sexual assault cases. In 11 of those cases, the
agency has said, Pino failed to report matches to police departments for months,
making it impossible for prosecutors to pursue charges. The State Police had
said the internal investigation began after a Hampden County police officer
complained to the lab about receiving late notification of a match.
Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, which
oversees the State Police, said yesterday the federal inspection played no role
in Delaney starting the internal investigation in November.
However, she said, it confirms the need for the comprehensive analysis that the
Patrick administration announced last week. It has asked for proposals for an
independent management consultant who would be paid up to $250,000 to evaluate
all operations at the crime laboratory.
Meanwhile, Delaney has brought in the FBI to review its DNA database. The FBI
has downloaded more than 21,000 DNA profiles and is focusing on 622 matches that
have been made since 2001, a State Police spokesman has said.
Nantel said the State Police did not mention the federal audit because it was a
routine review and added that the agency has addressed the deficiencies cited by
the auditors. A State Police spokeswoman said the department had no comment
yesterday because it was too busy responding to the series of bomb scares across
Boston.
Cynthia A. Schnedar, counselor to the Inspector General, declined to comment on
the details of the audit or to characterize the seriousness of the lapses. But
she released a document showing her agency performed 18 audits of US crime
laboratories with DNA databases in fiscal 2004 and 2005 and found more than a
dozen cases in which labs entered genetic profiles that violated federal
standards.
DNA matching has become the gold standard for forensic identifications since the
late 1980s, but it has not been without problems. Originally, the databases were
designed to store genetic profiles of sexual offenders. But many states,
including Massachusetts, have expanded them to include samples from all
convicted felons, overwhelming laboratory employees and causing mammoth delays.
In addition, the Justice Department fails to check to see whether police
departments follow up on matches, making it impossible to assess how well the
databases are being used.
Carll Ladd, the supervisor of the DNA unit at the Connecticut State Police crime
laboratory, said auditors from the inspector general's office are sticklers and
will invariably find problems. Nonetheless, he said, some of the lapses
highlighted in the Massachusetts lab struck him as unacceptable, including the
finding that 12 percent of the genetic profiles sampled by the auditors were
incomplete. "I don't believe we have anything like 12 percent of our forensic
unknown profiles that are incomplete," he said in a telephone interview
yesterday. "I don't think we have any."
The Massachusetts State Police lab, which wrestled with a backlog in DNA
analyses that reached 1,000 cases in 2005, has come under fire since the agency
said Pino failed to forward DNA matches in 11 sexual assault cases dating to the
1980s to police departments before the 15-year statute of limitations on rape
cases had run out.
In addition, Pino prepared reports saying DNA results in four cases matched the
genetic material from old rape kits when they had not. No one was arrested in
those cases, State Police said, because someone discovered the mistakes.
State lawmakers, who increased funding to the lab from $6.2 million in fiscal
2005 to $16.2 million in fiscal 2007, are demanding answers about the problems.
The lapses at the lab have also prompted defense lawyers and advocates for
several well-known convicted felons to scrutinize DNA evidence in their cases.
The felons include Edward S. O'Brien, convicted in 1997 for murdering his best
friend's mother; Christopher M. McCowen, convicted last year of murdering Truro
fashion writer Christa Worthington; and Benjamin LaGuer, convicted in 1984 of
raping a Leominster woman.
Pino, who has been suspended with pay, has denied wrongdoing but said little to
reporters. On Monday, he told the Globe that he had hired a lawyer, Michael J.
O'Reilly, and looked forward to the hiring of the outside consultant to review
all operations at the forensic laboratory.
"When that thing is done, I know my name will be cleared," he said.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
January 27, 2007
Outside
consultant to review crime lab
Goal is to restore public confidence
John R. Ellement, Boston Globe, The (MA)
Seeking to restore public confidence in the beleaguered State Police crime lab, the Patrick administration said yesterday it will hire an outside consultant to conduct a review of all operations at the state's premier criminal forensic laboratory.
The lab has come under fire
since Jan. 12, when State Police acknowledged that a key member of the forensic
sciences team, Robert E. Pino, mishandled DNA test results. The agency later
said he had failed to forward DNA matches in 11 sexual assault cases, making it
impossible for prosecutors to bring charges in unsolved rape cases dating to the
1980s. In addition, Pino prepared reports saying DNA results in four cases
matched the genetic material from old rape kits when they had not.
Pino, who has been suspended, has denied wrongdoing.
Yesterday, Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke asked for proposals for an
independent management consultant who would go beyond an audit already being
conducted by the FBI. The FBI downloaded 21,000 DNA profiles last week and is
focusing on more than 600 matches since 2001.
The contract, for up to $250,000, calls for examining every forensic unit in the
lab, which is headquartered in Maynard with satellite operations in Danvers,
Sudbury, and Springfield, Burke said in a statement.
Burke said that State Police Colonel Mark Delaney, who now leads the State
Police and was the lab's top manager while the DNA test results were mishandled,
asked for the review.
State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who expects to retain his cochairmanship of
the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said yesterday that
the broad inquiry is needed to restore public confidence.
"This is a very positive step," said the Cambridge Democrat, who has pushed for
more spending on forensic science in the past several years. "This is going to
be to the benefit of the crime lab and the district attorneys and others who
rely on the crime lab to do their job for public safety."
Since Pino's suspension, law enforcement officials have repeatedly said the
accuracy of the DNA tests themselves was not compromised by what they have
called administrative failures.
Defense lawyer Robert A. George said the inquiry should be broadened to include
scrutiny of the accuracy of DNA testing in cases in which defendants have
already been convicted. He again cited two clients: Edward S. O'Brien, convicted
in 1997 for murdering his best friend's mother, and Christopher M. McCowen,
convicted last year for murdering Truro fashion writer Christa Worthington.
"There are people in prison who need to know whether the results in their cases
have been compromised by the problems that have plagued the crime lab," George
said.
John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com
January 27, 2007
NEWS In Brief
Outside firm eyed to assess state DNA lab
Boston Herald (MA)
Secretary of
Public Safety Kevin Burke wants to hire a private management consulting firm to
do an exhaustive audit of the problem-plagued Sudbury state police DNA lab.
The $250,000 contract will
encompass a four-month review that will look at the lab's operations, its
organizational structure and how it carries out the work, and then make
recommendations on how to improve it.
"In light of the recently discovered administrative process failures found at
the crime lab, both Colonel Delaney and I believe it is prudent for us to
conduct a review of the entire operation," Burke said in a statement. "While the
science of DNA is indisputable, we have a duty to ensure that the commonwealth
can have a similar level of confidences in the administrative processes we
employ."
January 24, 2007
Lawyers
question lab's DNA results
Might affect Entwistle, others
Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe, The (MA)
Showing the widening fallout from the mishandling of DNA test results at the State Police lab, the lawyers in three high-profile murder cases challenged the reliability of such test results and suggested the problems could help their clients.
A lawyer for Neil Entwistle,
whose DNA was allegedly found on the gun used to kill his wife and infant
daughter, said the suspension of Robert E. Pino, the civilian administrator of
the DNA database at the State Police forensic laboratory, "calls into question
the reliability, trustworthiness, and integrity" of the lab and should be
investigated by an independent forensic scientist.
The FBI began an audit of the laboratory last week because Pino allegedly failed
to report 11 matches in old unsolved rape cases until the statute of limitations
had expired and reported four test results incorrectly.
But Entwistle's lawyer, Elliot M. Weinstein, said in an interview that the
bureau has had its own deficiencies with DNA analysis in recent years and lacks
credibility.
Weinstein, who unsuccessfully asked a judge last fall to toss out DNA evidence
against Entwistle, declined to say whether he intends to submit a new motion on
the basis of Pino's suspension. But his comments indicate that defense lawyers
will probably cite the lab's problems as reasons that judges should block DNA
results from being introduced as evidence, that juries should discount such
evidence, or that convictions should be overturned.
Also yesterday, lawyer Robert A. George said he expects that Pino's actions will
form the basis of challenges in two other high-profile murder cases: Christopher
M. McCowen's conviction in November of the murder of Christa Worthington, and
Edward S. O'Brien's 1997 conviction in the slaying of his best friend's mother.
George represented both defendants.
McCowen, a Hyannis trash collector, was sentenced to life in prison for raping
and killing Worthington, a fashion writer, after prosecutors presented evidence
that his DNA was recovered at her Truro house. O'Brien is serving a life
sentence for killing Janet Downing when he was 15; DNA tests indicated that
blood found in her Somerville home matched O'Brien's. Pino testified in the
O'Brien case.
"Every lawyer who cares about whether justice was done in their cases will
pursue whether Pino's involvement has destroyed the conviction," George said in
an interview. "To assume that we're being told the truth about the depth of
Pino's involvement in compromised cases is the equivalent of having the wool
pulled over our eyes. I don't believe it, and no one else should either."
Kelly A. Nantel - spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, which
oversees the State Police lab - said Pino's alleged lapses had nothing to do
with the reliability of DNA test results.
"We're talking about administrative problems," she said. "We're not talking
about problems with the science."
A spokesman for Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr., whose office is
prosecuting Entwistle in a trial scheduled to start Oct. 1, said prosecutors are
confident that the DNA evidence will pass muster.
Beyond saying that he remains an employee and that the allegations are under
investigation, Pino has declined comment.
Pino, who was suspended with pay Jan. 11, oversaw the state's Combined DNA
Indexing System, a computerized databank that matches DNA profiles of convicted
felons with samples collected at crime scenes and analyzed by civilian
scientists at the Sudbury facility or at private labs.
Weinstein said Pino's alleged actions cast doubts on the credibility of all DNA
evidence handled by the lab. "The public is entitled to know that its crime
laboratory is generating scientifically reliable test results," he said.
He also said the FBI is not suited to review the lab's practices because it has
had problems of its own. In 2003, for example, the Justice Department's
inspector general investigated an FBI lab unit after a technician failed to
follow required procedure in analyzing DNA evidence and went undetected for two
years.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
FBI begins review of crime
lab
Downloads DNA data after aide's suspension
Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe, The (MA)
FBI analysts downloaded more than 20,000 DNA profiles over 15 hours Thursday and yesterday, starting a top-to-bottom review of the State Police crime laboratory a week after an administrator was suspended for failing to tell prosecutors of DNA matches in nearly a dozen unsolved rape cases.
The audit, sought by the head
of the State Police, is expected to last weeks, if not months, said a State
Police spokesman, Lieutenant Detective William Powers.
The two analysts from the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Va., are trying to
determine whether Robert E. Pino, the civilian administrator of the state's
Combined DNA Indexing System, may have mishandled more DNA test results than the
15 disclosed by the State Police last week, when the agency announced his
suspension with pay, Powers said.
State Police have said that Pino received results last year indicating that DNA
tested in 11 old rape cases matched genetic samples from convicted felons, but
that he failed to report the information to police departments for months,
during which the 15-year statute of limitations for rape expired.
In four cases, Pino prepared reports to police saying that tests linked DNA
recovered at crime scenes to suspects, when, in fact, they had not. Pino did not
mail all four reports, and no one was arrested because other officials
discovered Pino's mistake, Powers said.
"By looking at all the different cases he would have reviewed, [the FBI] will
determine whether there were more notifications which he should have made,"
Powers said. The FBI will also determine whether Pino reported other matches
when none existed.
The data being audited by the FBI had been stored in a computerized databank
that matches DNA profiles of convicted felons with samples collected at crime
scenes and analyzed by civilian scientists at the Sudbury facility or at private
labs. A 2004 state law requires anyone convicted of a felony to submit a blood
sample, so the lab can identify the DNA.
Pino has declined to comment, saying that he remains an employee and that the
allegations are under investigation. However, the Massachusetts Organization of
State Engineers and Scientists, the union that represents him, has issued a
statement saying the mishandled cases stemmed from years of underfunding and
inadequate staffing.
"This investigation shouldn't be about an individual; it should be about an
office that hasn't grown with the advances in technology," the union's
president, Joseph Dorant, said in the statement released Sunday.
The mishandling of DNA test results is an embarrassment for Colonel Mark F.
Delaney, who became superintendent of the State Police in May after running the
forensics lab for four years and overseeing what the Romney administration
characterized as a dramatic overhaul of the troubled facility.
The Legislature increased funding of the lab from $6.2 million in fiscal 2005 to
$16.2 million in fiscal 2007, in part to address a mammoth backlog in DNA
analyses that reached 1,000 cases in 2005. In addition, lawmakers created the
post of undersecretary for forensic sciences in the Executive Office of Public
Safety to oversee improvements at the lab and the state medical examiner's
office.
Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, who expects to be reappointed as cochairman of the
Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, said this week that he
wants to hold hearings to determine how the mistakes in the lab happened and who
was overseeing Pino.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
DNA
gaffes shake foundation
Cops, victims feel pain of lab blunders
PETER REUELL (METROWEST
DAILY NEWS) Boston Herald (MA)
In a stinging rebuke, police say botched DNA tests at the state crime lab are "disturbing" and drop down through the court system all the way back to the streets.
The cops, courts and victims
will feel the brunt of the state's mistake.
"To let them walk free because of a technical lapse is disgusting. We don't like
it, and I know everyone feels the same," said Framingham police spokesman Lt.
Paul Shastany.
As police work becomes more technical, Shastany said, errors at the crime lab
will reverberate.
"(It's a) domino effect," he said. "Now the way we collect evidence and the
chain of custody for any DNA is going to be under more scrutiny."
Controversy over the lab's handling of DNA evidence could also endanger some
high-profile cases.
Two rapes in Westboro in 2003 were connected to the same still-at-large suburban
attacker.
Though no one has been arrested in connection with the rapes, Westboro Police
Chief Alan Gordon said he expects to see a flood of DNA-related appeals.
In the past five years, Gordon said, the department has received reports of 30
forced rapes and 32 statutory rapes.
"Though the crime lab's problems are troubling," the lab overall has been a good
department resource, he said.
Franklin Deputy Police Chief Steve Semerjian said the greatest damage may be to
victims.
"The victims - the people who are looking for the police to do the right thing
for them - are the ones I would feel bad for," he said.
"It is extremely disheartening," said Mary Gianakis, director of
Framingham-based Voices Against Violence. "We get angry because we know how
difficult these decisions are for survivors, and to know that they won't have
the opportunity to do all the things they feel they need to do to move forward
and begin the healing process is just incredibly frustrating."
January 18, 2007
Deluge
challenges will follow DNA lab's blunders
CASEY ROSS, Boston Herald (MA)
The mishandling of critical DNA evidence by a state police technician will draw a flood of motions from defense attorneys seeking to challenge convictions and police conduct in countless cases where DNA evidence was used, a top official said yesterday.
"It's going to be systemwide.
There will be motions on old cases and on any forthcoming case," said Public
Safety Secretary Kevin Burke, adding that the "negligence" of one crime lab
administrator could reverberate throughout the state's criminal justice system.
A top public defender is already calling for a review not just of the cases
handled by the administrator, but of the rules governing procedures employed by
police and prosecutors. The attorney, William Leahy, wrote a letter to Burke
requesting that a special commission be created to investigate the causes of
wrongful convictions.
"The larger issue is the continuing threat to the accuracy of verdicts in
Massachusetts criminal cases caused by both human error and deeply-flawed but
long-established procedures which virtually guarantee a . . . stream of wrongful
convictions," wrote Leahy, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel
Services.
Meanwhile, state police and the FBI are investigating the crime lab's work
methods and the cases handled by administrator Robert E. Pino, who is accused of
mishandling evidence in at least 15 unsolved rape cases.
In four cases, Pino allegedly prepared false reports, saying that DNA from a
crime scene matched a particular suspect, when in fact no match had occurred. In
11 other cases, he discovered a match but did not report it to prosecutors until
after the statute of limitations had lapsed, officials said. Pino could not be
reached for comment yesterday.
January 17, 2007
Mass. DNA lab's lapses
draw Beacon Hill inquiry
Delays, errors laid to lack of oversight
Jonathan Saltzman and John R. Ellement, Boston Globe, The (MA)
Key state lawmakers demanded answers yesterday about the mishandling of DNA test results at the State Police laboratory, as the agency acknowledged that analyses of genetic material from unsolved rape cases sat on an administrator's desk for months while prosecutors lost their chance to pursue charges.
Senator Jarrett T. Barrios,
who expects to be reappointed as cochairman of the Joint Committee on Public
Safety and Homeland Security, said that state public safety officials told him
yesterday that the DNA database administrator knew last February of DNA matches
in several cases but waited until September to inform police and prosecutors. In
other cases, matches were reported in error.
Barrios - who was briefed yesterday by Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent
of the State Police, and LaDonna Hatton, undersecretary for forensic sciences -
said the delays and erroneous reports reveal a serious deficiency at the lab:
The administrator alone appeared to control the reporting of DNA test results to
police and prosecutors.
"I'm not passing judgment on this person," Barrios said. "But suppose the
[positive] hit was on his brother and he chose not to tell anybody? Nobody would
be the wiser."
The investigation will look at who was supposed to be supervising the DNA
administrator, Robert E. Pino, said Lieutenant Detective William Powers, a State
Police spokesman.
"I don't think you'd find that this whole investigation would center on just
this one guy," Powers said. "It's going to be not just why the work didn't get
done, but why it didn't get noticed."
Barrios said the lapses were particularly alarming because the Legislature
increased funding of the lab from $6.2 million in fiscal 2005 to $16.2 million
in fiscal 2007. The Cambridge Democrat, who was cochairman of the Public Safety
Committee last year, said he plans to hold hearings this year on the lab's
performance.
"The public has a right to know why their dollars, apparently, have been
misspent," he said. "We need to have confidence that this is just one person and
not something systemic in the lab that allowed this to happen."
Ann Dufresne, a spokeswoman for Senate President Robert E. Travaglini, said he
championed the creation of Hatton's post to help fix problems at the lab. In
light of the latest disclosure, she said, "we want accountability." State Police
disclosed Friday that the internal investigation showed that the administrator
had failed to tell prosecutors of DNA matches in some cases and in other cases
falsely reported that DNA found at crime scenes matched suspects.
In the statement, Delaney said he is bringing in the FBI to conduct an
independent audit of DNA testing procedures at the lab in Sudbury, which he
headed for about four years before becoming superintendent last year. State
Police did not name the administrator, but his union confirmed Saturday that it
was Pino and blamed the problems on understaffing and inadequate funding. Pino
was suspended with pay Thursday, Powers said.
Pino declined to comment yesterday, saying that he remains an employee and that
the allegations are under investigation. Pino, a 1983 graduate of Boston
College, has worked at the crime lab for more than 22 years and has been the
civilian DNA administrator for the last seven, according to a short biography on
the BC website.
Powers acknowledged yesterday that the problems came to light in September when
a police officer in Hampden County received written notification from Pino of a
match for DNA recovered in an old rape case with genetic material provided by a
convicted felon under a state law that requires such submissions.
The officer "looked at the package and the date that he received it and the date
that the scientific work was actually completed, and it was several months
later," said Powers.
After the lab's chief scientist conducted an initial inquiry, he contacted top
State Police officials, Powers said. In mid-November, Delaney began an internal
investigation that found that the administrator mishandled 15 test results
involving unsolved rape cases that date to the 1980s, Powers said.
In 11 of the cases, Pino received test results indicating matches but failed to
report the information to police departments for several months, during which
the statute of limitations expired, Powers said.
In four cases, he said, the administrator prepared reports to police saying that
tests linked DNA recovered at crime scenes to suspects when, in fact, they had
not. Pino did not mail all four reports.
Powers said that no one was wrongly arrested in those four cases because other
officials discovered Pino's mistake. "Nobody was arrested, nobody went to trial
as a result of his sloppy paperwork," said Powers.
Nonetheless, William J. Leahy, chief counsel of the state's public defender
agency, said the disclosure raises the specter of someone being wrongly
convicted. He wrote yesterday to Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke,
requesting copies of the same information about specific cases involved that the
State Police sent to district attorneys in the past several days.
Several district attorneys' offices said yesterday they are not giving up on
prosecuting suspects in the cases, despite the apparent expiration of the
statute of limitations. In rape cases, that is normally 15 years from the time
of the alleged offense.
Hampden District Attorney William M. Bennett, for example, said his prosecutors
intend to bring charges in one of his cases because the defendant was
incarcerated in Connecticut for a period that could extend the 15-year statute
of limitations.
In Plymouth County, one DNA match was in a 1990 sex assault investigation, but
police at the time knew who the alleged assailant was, investigated, and decided
not to bring charges, said Bridget Norton Middleton, spokeswoman for District
Attorney Timothy J. Cruz.
But she said in a second case, also from 1990, the victim has been notified that
the statute of limitations has probably passed. Norton Middleton would not
comment on whether the suspect in that case poses a threat to the public.
Stephen O'Connell, spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett,
said that in a Lynn case, his office was told that there was a DNA match, then
that the match was in error.
However, O'Connell said, the suspect was arrested without any forensic evidence,
and prosecutors will now alert the man's lawyer to the DNA mistake.
The office of Norfolk District Attorney William R. Keating said it learned
yesterday the identity of the person whose DNA matched a 1989 sexual assault
investigation. Spokesman David Traub said the suspect is imprisoned on other
charges. He said investigators are trying to track down the victim.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com;
and John R. Ellement at ellement@globe.com.
January 14, 2007
Union defends suspended DNA database administrator
Cites lab funding, staffing problems
Tracy Jan, Boston Globe, The (MA)
GLOBE STAFF - John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
The union representing a suspended DNA database administrator at the State Police crime laboratory yesterday blamed any delays or DNA mismatches at the lab on a longstanding problem of understaffing and inadequate funding.
The Massachusetts
Organization of State Engineers and Scientists confirmed that Robert E. Pino,
the administrator in charge of the Combined DNA Indexing System, was suspended
with pay. On Friday, State Police officials said the administrator, whom they
have not identified, failed to tell prosecutors of DNA matches in a number of
unsolved rape cases and falsely reported links between crime scene DNA and
suspects. The FBI is now conducting an audit of the state's DNA testing
procedures.
Pino could not be reached yesterday, but his wife, Gwen, who also works in the
crime lab, said in a telephone interview that he was unable to comment because
of the active investigation.
News of the lab's problems outraged some defense attorneys yesterday because
they say it could lead to a lack of confidence in the state's criminal justice
system. State Police officials say at least 10 cases could be in jeopardy, some
of which date to the 1980s. The lawyers said they feared it could be many more.
"This puts their credibility at issue in every single case where the prosecution
attempts to introduce DNA evidence from that laboratory," said defense attorney
Robert Griffin, former chief of Superior Court prosecutions in Suffolk County.
"It's a big deal. It could be false convictions, and it could be guilty people
walking free."
Pino, a 1983 graduate of Boston College, has worked at the crime lab for more
than 22 years and has been the administrator of the DNA database for the last
seven, according to a short biography on the BC website. Pino has played a role
in several thousand criminal investigations involving evidence submitted to the
crime lab and has testified in state courts more than 240 times, the biography
says.
Yesterday, the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists
defended Pino and said in a statement that any problems at the Sudbury lab were
the result of the state's unwillingness to properly staff and fund it. The union
said the State Police recently loaned Pino two employees with no forensic
training to help with his workload, an indication that there is a staffing
shortage.
"Years of underfunding have left the State Police Crime Lab seriously
short-staffed," Joseph Dorant, president of the union, said in the statement.
In 1991, Pino, then a State Police chemist, testified that he found blood in
Henry L. Meinholz Jr.'s Kingston garage, where Meinholz was accused of killing
his 13-year-old next-door neighbor. Meinholz was later convicted.
Pino told the Globe in an August 2003 story that the DNA database could be law
enforcement's most effective tool against repeat criminals such as the serial
rapist police were searching for at the time who had raped or assaulted four
women in the western suburbs of Boston.
"It can take a rapist off the street very quickly," Pino said in the interview.
"And with improvements in technology, it's only going to work quicker and
quicker."
The DNA database matches profiles of convicts with samples collected at crime
scenes and analyzed by scientists. The FBI might find more errors involving old
cases, a State Police spokesman said Friday, but the State Police internal
investigation did not find problems with DNA testing in ongoing criminal cases.
Griffin said that last year, he defended one of three young men charged with the
murder of an elderly great aunt to receive an inheritance. The state crime lab
report indicated that semen was found on the victim's body, but the autopsy gave
no evidence of sexual assault, Griffin said. The DNA sample did not match any of
the defendants.
Ultimately, as the trial date approached, Griffin said the lab concluded that
the DNA sample was not semen, but that it had come from one of the chemists in
the lab who had contaminated a sample of protein found in the victim's urine.
"It's a glaring example of how they screw up," Griffin said. "If [Pino] was the
boss, he was ultimately responsible for it. It's like the sign on Harry Truman's
desk: The buck stops here."
Stephen Hrones, a Boston defense attorney who has represented four people
convicted of crimes and later exonerated, said news of the investigation jolted
the law enforcement community and could bring disastrous consequences for
district attorneys and defense attorneys.
"You have rapists going free out there in society, and you have individuals in
prison who are innocent or who didn't get a fair trial," Hrones said. "Either
way, it's shocking."
Crime
lab mishandled DNA results
State Police suspend aide, ask FBI audit
Jonathan Saltzman and John
R. Ellement, Boston Globe, The (MA)
An administrator at the troubled State Police crime laboratory has been suspended for failing to tell prosecutors of DNA matches in a number of unsolved rape cases, which now cannot be pursued because the statute of limitations has expired, the head of the State Police said yesterday.
The administrator, whom
officials would not name, also told police and prosecutors that tests in an
unspecified number of cases linked DNA recovered at crime scenes to suspects,
when in fact they had not, Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent of the State
Police, said in a statement.
As a result of an internal investigation Delaney launched in mid-November, the
administrator has been placed on paid leave, and the State Police has brought in
the FBI to conduct an independent audit of DNA testing procedures at the crime
lab.
Lieutenant Detective William Powers, a State Police spokesman, said the
investigation involves at least 10 cases across the state, some of which date to
the 1980s. Under state law, most rape and sexual assault allegations must be
prosecuted within 15 years of the offense. In the mishandled cases, the evidence
was typically recovered years before DNA testing became commonplace.
It was not immediately clear if the administrator's mistakes allowed sexual
offenders to go free or led to the prosecution of innocent people. In at least
one case, the defendant was convicted without the DNA evidence, officials said
yesterday.
Governor Deval Patrick said he was first briefed on the matter Thursday and
expressed outrage at the latest black eye for the lab, which has operated with a
backlog that reached 1,000 cases in 2005.
"Every citizen is entitled to a highly professional, consistently impartial, and
fair criminal justice system," Patrick said. "DNA evidence and the use of DNA
evidence has been one element that has brought a certain degree of certainty
into many criminal prosecutions that wasn't there before. If we're going to use
that evidence and have that option available to us, then we have to assure that
it's consistently professional. And it hasn't been, at least in this series of
cases."
The State Police statement issued late yesterday afternoon did not identify the
civilian, citing the ongoing internal investigation. The administrator was in
charge of the Combined DNA Indexing System, a computerized databank that matches
the DNA profiles of convicted felons with samples collected at crime scenes and
analyzed by scientists. About 60 analysts and administrators work at the lab in
Sudbury.
Powers said the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Va., which has agreed to undertake
an audit, might uncover more errors involving old cases. But the State Police
internal review has found no problems with testing of DNA recovered in ongoing
criminal cases.
"We don't think it will have any impact on those whatsoever," he said.
He said the errors did not involve the analysis of DNA. "The work was done," he
said. "When it got into the hands of the administrator, the work was not
properly advanced to the appropriate investigating authorities."
Prosecutors said yesterday that the State Police and Executive Office of Public
Safety had notified them of the lapses in recent days, and they were assessing
the damage.
In Middlesex County, which has some of the busiest criminal courts in the state,
the lapses affected five cases involving crimes committed 15 to 20 years ago,
said Corey Welford, spokesman for District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr.
"We are attempting to locate and notify each victim," Welford said.
Leone issued a statement saying that his office will determine whether it can
prosecute the cases despite the statute of limitations. In some criminal cases,
the statute of limitations can be extended for the amount of time a defendant
wasn't living in Massachusetts.
Plymouth County has two cases, Norfolk has at least one, and Suffolk has none,
officials said.
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael D. O'Keefe said he has been told he
has one case involving a July 1988 sexual assault. But O'Keefe reviewed the case
and said the suspect pleaded guilty in 1989 to that sexual assault charge and
several others and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison, to be followed by
commitment to the state's sexual offender treatment center in Bridgewater.
In that case, scientists confirmed a DNA match, unbeknownst to O'Keefe, and the
statute of limitations would have expired in 2003 if the defendant had not
already been convicted.
"He was convicted of it without the benefit of the DNA," O'Keefe said.
The State Police lab has drawn criticism for years for a mammoth backlog in
checking DNA samples for matches. The issue came into sharp focus in April 2004
after authorities disclosed that it took more than eight months to process a DNA
sample that led to the arrest of a trash collector in the 2002 slaying of
Christa Worthington, a Cape Cod fashion writer who was found stabbed and
sexually assaulted in her home. The trash collector, Christopher M. McCowen, was
convicted of murder in November.
Last August, State Police and Governor Mitt Romney hailed the opening of a
12,000-square-foot addition to the lab, calling it a key step to eliminating the
DNA sample backlog.
Last September, the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association urged the state
to increase the number of chemists at the lab from 30 to 80 and to cut the
turnaround on analyzing samples to one month from about 10 months.
Geline Williams, a spokeswoman for the association, issued a statement yesterday
saying that the lab has dramatically improved overall in recent years and that
she was confident that the Patrick administration will address any problems
uncovered by the FBI audit.
Mary R. Lauby - executive director of Jane Doe Inc., an advocacy group for
victims of sexual assault and domestic violence - said the lab's problem
undercuts the confidence of victims of sex crimes in the criminal justice system
and could make it more difficult for law enforcement to persuade them to go
forward, since they already bear the emotional burden of facing their alleged
assailants at trial.
She said it was disheartening that some offenders could escape prosecution for
rapes committed more than 15 years ago, but credited State Police for taking
action to correct the errors and for working well with her agency.
Now, she said, law enforcement must inform every victim whose case was affected
by the error.
"I think this is an issue of integrity," she said. "... Each of the victims
needs to be contacted."
Stephanie Ebbert of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Ellement can be
reached at
ellement@globe.com; Saltzman at
jsaltzman@globe.com.
January 13, 2007
Statie DNA lab blunders may
jeopardize rape cases
Administrator placed on leave
CASEY ROSS and O'RYAN JOHNSON,Boston Herald (MA)
An administrator at the state police DNA lab has been placed on leave for botching tests, running tests too late to prosecute suspects and outright failure to run tests at all, thereby jeopardizing prosecutors' cases.
State Police Col. Mark
Delaney launched an investigation in November into allegations the
administrator, who has been suspended with pay, "failed to follow clearly
established professional practices" with regards to the DNA evidence.
State police would not say who the administrator was, but three law enforcement
sources identified him as Robert Pino, a longtime forensic chemist who has
worked on untold numbers of high-profile rapes, murders and other violent
crimes.
Pino could not be reached for comment last night.
Pino worked in the state police lab in Sudbury and used DNA evidence to crack
cold cases, many of them unsolved rapes, sources said.
His job was to enter DNA testing data obtained from incarcerated Massachusetts
convicts into a national database to see if it matched DNA evidence from
unsolved cases all over the country.
"In many of the cases, a suspect was identified prior to the expiration of the
statute of limitations, but neither the police investigators nor the District
Attorney's Office of jurisdiction were notified in a timely manner," the state
police said in a statement.
While it is too soon to say for sure if suspects escaped prosecution or were
falsely arrested based on the administrator's actions, a veteran prosecutor said
most of the DNA evidence in question was taken from rape kits collected in the
late 1980s and early 1990s that were sent to labs out of state and then returned
to Massachusetts.
During at least 16 years with the state police, Pino analyzed evidence in major
cases across the state, often providing testimony that helped put accused
rapists and murderers behind bars.
He tesitifed in the case of teen killer Edward O'Brien, a 17-year-old convicted
of killing his 42-year-old neighbor by stabbing her 98 times. Pino also assisted
in the prosecution of Kenneth Seguin, a Holliston man convicted of killing his
wife and two young children in 1992.
The statement last night indicated the inquiry is limited to cases involving the
use of the Combined DNA Indexing System (CODIS), a database that helps
investigators match DNA to potential suspects.
Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said state police told his office that
DNA evidence in five rape cases may have been brought too late to prosecute.
In Essex County, Stephen O'Connell, spokesman for District Attorney Jon Blodgett
said his office received one false DNA report from the Sudbury lab that resulted
in an arrest. He refused to say when the person was arrested, what the charges
were or whether the suspect has been tried, convicted, or released.
In Plymouth County, officials know of two cases that have been affected, but
they are still assessing the extent of the possible damage.
Cape and Islands DA Michael O'Keefe said his office had one case where the
evidence was returned too late to prosecute, but that the defendant in that
case, Michael Flowers, is already in jail for raping four women.
Suffolk reported no cases involving the DNA administrator.
The Norfolk DA's office said some of their cases were affected.
September 24, 2006
LABORATORIES OF JUSTICE
Boston Globe, The (MA)
IN TELEVISION crime dramas, forensic scientists work in sprawling facilities, produce case-closing lab results in a matter of hours, and earn enough money to support runway-worthy office attire. At the Massachusetts State Police crime lab, forensic scientists have backlogs of cases, inadequate bench space, and $35,000 salaries that recently led five of the state's 32 crime lab chemists to seek work in other states a 15 percent turnover in one year. Most real-world DNA crime labs fall short of prime-time standards.