DNA Advisory Board
An alarming audit of the Houston Police Department (HPD) Crime Laboratory in December 2002 found that problems abounded in this unaccredited laboratory. In a poorly funded and managed environment, laboratory personnel were not adequately trained, evidence was often consumed, and the roof in the evidence storage area leaked from rain damage. The city of Houston shut down operations in the HPD laboratory and outsourced hundreds of cases for review to a private Houston-based laboratory named Identigene. While most of the retesting supported the original conclusions that the suspect in a case could be included in contributing the crime sample, unfortunately errors in data interpretation by the HPD laboratory led to the false conviction and incarceration of a young man accused of a 1998 rape. In March 2003 Josiah Sutton’s case made national headlines when it was revealed that DNA tests performed by Identigene found that he could not have committed the crime for which he had been incarcerated for more than 4 years based on DNA evidence originally analyzed by HPD. With this news also came the stigma that DNA testing was fallible. It is important to note that many of the problematic tests performed by the HPD laboratory involved DNA mixtures and the use of an earlier, low-resolution PCR-based test known as HLA-DQA1 rather than the current and more precise method of STR typing. Since only six alleles are possible with DQA1 typing, it is inherently poor at separating mixture components. More than $4.6 million were allocated for retesting of samples from almost 400 cases originally handled by the HPD laboratory. Thus, failure to achieve laboratory accreditation, properly train personnel, maintain adequate facilities, and follow guidelines for data interpretation can cost significantly more than just a laboratory’s reputation. In June 2007, the HPD crime laboratory was granted accreditation following an ASCLD/LAB inspection. It is hoped that the HPD laboratory will maintain its status as an accredited laboratory and conduct quality forensic DNA testing. The FBI DNA Laboratory has also come under fi re in recent years largely due to the deceitful actions of a forensic biologist named Jacqueline Blake. Ms. Blake apparently ran over 100 cases in the FBI’s DNA Analysis Unit I without performing testing of her negative control samples — and then falsifi ed documents to make it appear as though she had followed the standard operating procedure. The Department of Justice’s Offi ce of the Inspector General issued a report in May 2004 reviewing the protocol and practice vulnerabilities of the FBI DNA Laboratory to ensure that this type of failure is not observed again.
It is important to keep in mind that these two cases represent the rare exception rather than the rule because the vast majority of forensic laboratories work hard to be accredited, maintain analyst training and profi`ciency, carefully validate methods, and follow standard operating procedures. The science itself is sound and reliable when performed correctly. These situations simply illustrate the need for consistent internal quality assurance and external oversight to ensure procedural accuracy within a laboratory.