Lykos: Wrongful conviction was cascading failure

Originally posted here.

Rebuke comes with detailed analy­sis of how case was botched

Police, pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys all con­tributed to the “cas­cad­ing, system-wide break­down” that cul­mi­nated with the 2003 con­vic­tion of an inno­cent Houston man accused of sex­u­ally assault­ing a child, accord­ing to a report released Thursday.

Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos laid blame on play­ers at every step of Ricardo Rachell’s jour­ney through the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. She cited Houston Police Department offi­cers who col­lected bio­log­i­cal evi­dence but never ensured it was tested as well as a defense attor­ney whose slow work on a recent appeal delayed Rachell’s release.

The “most egre­gious sys­tem fail­ure,” the report says, occurred at the HPD crime lab, which sus­pended DNA test­ing in December 2002 because of wide­spread errors in its operations.

“It is a prob­a­bil­ity that had the lab been open and oper­at­ing cor­rectly, some­one would have requested test­ing of the foren­sic evi­dence,” says the report, com­piled by Lykos and Police Chief Harold Hurtt.

Both apol­o­gized publicly.

“I would like to offer an apol­ogy, if there was any cul­pa­bil­ity on the part of the Houston Police Department and to the cit­i­zens, if there was any loss of con­fi­dence,” Hurtt said. “With new pro­ce­dures in place there is no rea­son the mis­takes of the past should reoc­cur.”
Preventing a repeat

Lykos and Hurtt out­lined sev­eral new pro­ce­dures to pre­vent such mis­takes from ever hap­pen­ing again. HPD will imple­ment a track­ing sys­tem for all DNA test­ing requests and pros­e­cu­tors will request DNA test­ing before trial in all cases where it is rel­e­vant. Before, the District Attorney’s Office had no pol­icy of when to test bio­log­i­cal evidence.

Both offi­cials also called for the cre­ation of a regional DNA crime lab based at the Medical Examiner’s Office that could serve a region pos­si­bly as large as the 13-county area cov­ered by the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

“I want this to be a cat­a­lyst,” Lykos said. “If there is going to be jus­tice, if this is not in vain, we must have an inde­pen­dent regional DNA crime lab.”

The Medical Examiner’s Office is in the process of build­ing a new facil­ity. Lykos would like to see that include a lab capa­ble of han­dling the region’s DNA needs, but, she said, the details of how the lab would be run and funded still need to be set­tled. Mayor Bill White and County Judge Ed Emmett have said they sup­port the regional lab idea.

Rachell, 51, walked out of prison in December after DNA evi­dence — avail­able before his con­vic­tion but untested until last year — cleared him of the sex­ual assault of an 8-year-old boy for which he served more than five years in prison. From the time of his arrest, Rachell main­tained his inno­cence and insisted that another man, con­victed in a string of strik­ingly sim­i­lar sex­ual assaults, com­mit­ted the crime of which he was accused.

In fact, accord­ing to Thursday’s report, in 2007 Rachell wrote directly to the HPD offi­cer who inves­ti­gated that other man, Andrew Wayne Hawthorne, and asked her to take action. Officer Emma Rodriguez’s super­vi­sor reviewed the case and found sim­i­lar­i­ties “but dis­tin­guished the facts of Rachell’s case from that of Hawthorne.”

Last year, DNA test­ing proved Rachell right. Samples from the rape kit col­lected at the time of the crime cleared Rachell of any involve­ment in the 8-year-old’s attack and pointed to Hawthorne. In January, inves­ti­ga­tors obtained a con­fes­sion from Hawthorne, who last month was charged.
Internal investigation

HPD has opened an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to exam­ine the police work on Rachell’s case, Hurtt said . Hurtt noted the large role cit­i­zens played in offi­cers’ work, includ­ing the victim’s mother, who drove her son past Rachell and asked the child if he was the man who attacked him.

Rachell, whose face is severely dis­fig­ured from a shot­gun blast, was known in his south Houston neigh­bor­hood as “Scary Man,” which may have con­tributed to his ordeal, Lykos said.

“The fact that he was an object of ridicule in the neigh­bor­hood and all these things con­spired in his con­vic­tion,” Lykos said.