Prosecutors Gain Control of Crime Lab

I don’t know the back story sur­round­ing the fight between the prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s depart­ment, but is this what is best for soci­ety? There are other crime labs run entirely by pros­e­cu­tors in the United States, so this isn’t novel or new by any means. But do crime labs run by the pros­e­cu­tors pass the “smell” test for appear­ing impar­tial? If the pros­e­cu­tors’ office has con­trol over the crime lab, how likely is it that the foren­sic sci­en­tists work­ing there will be free to impar­tially exam­ine the evi­dence and come to an inde­pen­dent conclusion?

Surely those ana­lysts who get results that help their boss (pros­e­cu­tor) are more likely to even­tu­ally get pro­moted, encour­ag­ing a pro-prosecution bias in the laboratory.

Original arti­cle posted here.

Confidential plan: D.A. to get par­tial con­trol of crime lab, foren­sic evidence

Plan could end fight between D.A. and Sheriff over forensics

By TONY SAAVEDRA
The Orange County Register
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District Attorney Tony Rackauckas may soon have a hand in run­ning the county crime lab and over­see­ing how foren­sic evi­dence – from fin­ger­prints to DNA to hair – is ana­lyzed, accord­ing to draft rec­om­men­da­tions made by a spe­cial DNA task force.

Under the con­fi­den­tial plan, a new, high-volume DNA lab­o­ra­tory pro­posed by Rackauckas would be merged with the exist­ing county crime lab at the sheriff’s depart­ment. The entire foren­sic oper­a­tions would be turned over to a three-member exec­u­tive com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of Rackauckas, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and County Chief Executive Officer Tom Mauk.

Currently, Hutchens and lab direc­tor Dean Gialamas over­see the county’s foren­sic oper­a­tions which ana­lyze 2,500 cases a year, but has a back­log of about 1,800.

The pro­posal is an attempt to set­tle the bit­ter, long-running feud between Rackauckas and the sheriff’s depart­ment over how DNA oper­a­tions should be man­aged. Both sides recently squared off over who should run the yet-to-be-built, $7.4 mil­lion DNA lab devoted to prop­erty crimes.

Rackauckas vehe­mently accused the sheriff’s lab of being too slow and inef­fi­cient, tak­ing months to ana­lyze sam­ples and delay­ing court cases. Moreover, Rackauckas said he could no longer trust the sheriff’s lab, which he said stonewalled him when he asked for infor­ma­tion and sab­o­taged his attempts to find other labs to work with.

Supporters of Gialamas and the sheriff’s depart­ment counter that Rackauckas would have a built-in con­flict of inter­est, evi­denced by accu­sa­tions that pros­e­cu­tors have approached crime lab work­ers lob­by­ing for analy­ses favor­able to their cases.

Neither Rackauckas nor Hutchens would com­ment on the report because it is still in the work­ing stages.

The draft rec­om­men­da­tions were made by a task force com­prised of Rackauckas, Hutchens, Mauk, the Public Defender’s Office, the Orange County Police Chief’s Association and the Orange County City Managers’ Association. The group began meet­ing in early July.

It is unclear whether Rackauckas or Hutchens has the most to lose or gain from the recommendations.

George Wright, chair of the crim­i­nal jus­tice depart­ment at Santa Ana College, said the pro­posal appeared to fur­ther erode a sheriff’s depart­ment hob­bled by the indict­ment of for­mer sher­iff Michael S. Carona — whose fed­eral trial begins this month. Hutchens was appointed in June to fin­ish the two years left on Carona’s term.

“Certain peo­ple want to have as much author­ity as they can. They see a new sher­iff and maybe she’s not as inclined to DNA as her pre­de­ces­sors.” Wright said. “I just see it as the fur­ther dilu­tion of the sheriff’s department.”

Stephen Saloom, pol­icy direc­tor for the Innocence Project, a New York orga­ni­za­tion that uses DNA evi­dence to free the wrongly con­victed, said pros­e­cu­tors should stay out of the labs.

“Just like we wouldn’t want a defense attor­ney to call the shots in a lab, we wouldn’t want a pros­e­cu­tor,” Saloom said. “The prosecution’s pres­ence on the over­sight board, com­bined with the inher­ently polit­i­cal nature of crime pol­icy, could cre­ate some pres­sure that may result in pol­i­tics tak­ing prece­dence over science.”

The crime lab rec­om­men­da­tions will be pre­sented Oct. 28 – for­mer sher­iff Carona’s trial is set to begin – to the Board of Supervisors.