More info on the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences

Apparently crim­i­nal defense attor­neys think highly of the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences (SWIFS). If you recall, we posted an entry a while back about SWIFS. Briefly an employee was ter­mi­nated for pur­port­edly not pass­ing train­ing mile­stones. The ex-employee con­tends he was fired for whistle-blowing about defi­cien­cies in the crime lab.

Below is infor­ma­tion from the Texas Forensic Commission detail­ing more information.

Allegations of crit­i­cal lapses at Texas crime labs, includ­ing one of the state’s most vaunted facil­i­ties, were among a dozen com­plaints reported to the Texas Forensic Science Commission and made pub­lic this week by the fledg­ling state agency that inves­ti­gates mis­con­duct by the foren­sic sci­ence community.

An ex-employee at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences com­plained about tainted rape kits, blood stock and DNA analy­sis at the Dallas crime lab.

“This alle­ga­tion rep­re­sents what is valu­able about the commission’s work to the peo­ple of Texas,” said Stephen Saloom, pol­icy direc­tor of the Innocence Project in New York.

But offi­cials with the insti­tute say that the alle­ga­tions are false and that the whistle-blower was fired for poor per­for­mance. The ex-employee has sued the county for wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion. At one point, county offi­cials said, the whistle-blower offered to retract his com­plaint and set­tle the case for $250,000.

“He could not pass the train­ing pro­gram for a foren­sic sci­en­tist,” said David Alex, admin­is­tra­tive chief in the Dallas County dis­trict attorney’s office. “The alle­ga­tions he was lodg­ing were unfounded pri­mar­ily because he was not even qual­i­fied to make those allegations.”

The com­plaints released this week were filed with the com­mis­sion over a two-year period.

Copies were released after the Texas attor­ney general’s office said they had to be made pub­lic in response to a Public Information Act request from the Star-Telegram.

Most sur­pris­ing to the North Texas crim­i­nal jus­tice com­mu­nity was crit­i­cism of the insti­tute and its chief of phys­i­cal evi­dence, Tim Sliter, who was a pan­elist at leg­isla­tive hear­ings that drew atten­tion to deba­cles at the Houston Crime Lab in 2005.

“SWIFS has a good rep­u­ta­tion,” said Gary Udashen, a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney in Dallas. “If it’s true, there are all kinds of prob­lems. I guess every­body just thought SWIFS was a cut above your aver­age lab.”

Sliter did not return repeated requests for comment.

Dr. Jeffrey Barnard, the Dallas County med­ical exam­iner who over­sees the crime lab, also did not return phone calls.

The com­plaint was filed anony­mously early last year with the state com­mis­sion. The Dallas County dis­trict attorney’s office rebutted each alle­ga­tion made in the com­plaint in its response filed with the com­mis­sion and made avail­able to the Star-Telegram.

Dallas County said for­mer employee Chris Nulf made the com­plaint. In his law­suit against the county, Nulf alleges that he was fired for mak­ing a com­plaint to the com­mis­sion. Nulf’s attor­ney, Raul Loya, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Alex said that Nulf did not fol­low griev­ance pro­ce­dures before fil­ing his lawsuit.

In the com­plaint to the com­mis­sion, the com­plainant said he “exhausted all pos­si­bil­i­ties” to resolve issues in the lab before he turned to fil­ing a complaint.

He said his con­cerns to super­vi­sors fell on deaf ears, doc­u­ments show.

“Supervisors have cho­sen to either for­get or dis­re­gard con­cerns that have been reported, or they have not taken cor­rec­tive actions in an expe­di­tious and timely man­ner,” he wrote. “Therefore, I am seek­ing advice from an exter­nal higher authority.”

The com­plaint alleged that the lab uses inac­cu­rate and out­dated serol­ogy pro­ce­dures. It also raised ques­tions about blood and semen cod­ing, stock­ing and label­ing; evi­dence exam­i­na­tion sheets and inter­pre­ta­tion of lab results; analy­ses using expired chem­i­cals; and com­pro­mised secu­rity of data.

Alex said that the insti­tute looked into the com­plaints and found them to be wrong. For exam­ple, an instru­ment alleged to be out of cal­i­bra­tion was not, accord­ing to the institute.

Commission Chairman John Bradley wrote in an e-mail that the com­mis­sion would take action on “pend­ing cases” and com­plaints “once it has adopted a process for con­duct­ing business.”

“There are cur­rently no writ­ten poli­cies or pro­ce­dures,” he wrote. “I am not aware of any state agency that oper­ates with­out a sin­gle writ­ten procedure.”

Bradley became the commission’s chair­man last year when Gov. Rick Perry replaced four of the body’s mem­bers just as the group was embark­ing on an inquiry into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was exe­cuted in 2004 for set­ting a house fire in Corsicana that killed his three daughters.

The com­mis­sion looked into two of the com­plaints it received from the Innocence Project.

The other com­plaints were filed by prison inmates or their rel­a­tives. One involved a 1919 mur­der. Complaints were also filed about crime labs in Fort Worth, Houston and Austin.

I really like the state­ment that the ex-employee wasn’t qual­i­fied to rec­og­nize deficiencies.

Original arti­cle posted on the Star Telegram online.