July 1, 2005
Officials Ignored Houston Lab's Troubles, Report Finds
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL, NY TIMES

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HOUSTON, June 30 - For years, while rain from a leaky roof contaminated evidence in the Houston Police Crime Laboratory, and thousands of backlogged rape kits from sexual assault victims went untested, city and police officials turned their backs as the laboratory became a "shambles," tainting an untold number of cases, an outside investigator reported on Thursday.

Officials even failed to take proper action when two laboratory analysts were cited for four instances of fabricating scientific evidence, or drylabbing, said the investigator, Michael R. Bromwich, a Washington lawyer and former Justice Department inspector general called in by the city to conduct the review.

The DNA section of the laboratory was shut down in scandal in 2002, but other units continued operating and have been accredited under new leadership.

Wrapping up a 90-day investigation into general management problems going back to 1987, Mr. Bromwich said he was now preparing a second phase examining more than 2,000 criminal cases handled over the years by the laboratory's six sections including DNA and serology, or bodily fluids. That section is the only Houston unit still shut down, requiring the department to send out its DNA evidence for analysis.

Yet to be determined, the report said, was whether the lapses were "isolated breakdowns or only the tip of an iceberg." Among cases to be studied were three high-profile convictions, including one for murder, based on faulty laboratory evidence.

"The findings are extremely troubling," said Mr. Bromwich, a partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, in an interview after presenting his report. But he said, "Houston is not alone in having this problem." As the Justice Department's top internal watchdog from 1994 to 1999, he exposed sloppy work and false testimony by F.B.I. laboratory scientists. Other state crime labs have also come under fire.

But some of the Houston's report's language was particularly scathing. By the time a state audit in 2002 confirmed problems exposed by a local television station, KHOU, Mr. Bromwich reported, "the DNA Section was in shambles - plagued by a leaky roof, operating for years without a line supervisor, overseen by a technical leader who had no personal experience performing DNA analysis and who was lacking the qualifications under the F.B.I. standards, staffed by underpaid and undertrained analysts, and generating mistake-ridden and poorly documented casework."

By 2002, the number of untested rape kits had grown to 19,500, some dating back to 1980, and the backlog is still about 10,000, the report said. Tropical Storm Allison in 2001 flooded the laboratory, and in 33 homicide and rape cases, employees were quoted as reporting, "this biological evidence had become so saturated with water that they observed bloody water dripping out of the boxes containing the evidence and pooling on the floor."

In another location, the property room - where 280 cartons of misplaced evidence from 8,000 cases dating back to the 1960's were discovered last year - rats were found eating through evidence boxes.

The laboratory was established in 1953, but the report said the problems multiplied in the 1980's with the growing complexity of DNA breakthroughs and other advances.

A drug chemist who joined the laboratory in 1979, James R. Bolding, was pushed up the ladder under former Police Chief Lee P. Brown, who later became mayor, and his police successor, former chief Clarence O. Bradford, to fill vacancies in serology, despite inadequate training, the report said. It quoted Mr. Bolding as telling investigators he "took books home and did the best he could." Mr. Bolding did not respond to a phone message left with his son at home.

And Chief Bradford, it went on, refused to spend a City Council grant to hire more workers because once the money ran out, the department would have to pay them. His phone number has been disconnected.

Meeting with reporters after the report's release, the current police chief, Harold L. Hurtt, said: "We know that we have to regain the public's trust and confidence in our crime lab and its operation. To that extent, we will do whatever it takes to make sure that we achieve that goal."

Mayor Bill White said he found the report sobering "because the city ran the crime lab." It showed, he said in an interview, "that good scientists are not always good managers and good managers and not always good scientists." But he said he was encouraged by the growing accreditation of the laboratory and cited an allocation for a new $10 million police property room.

Barry Scheck, a lawyer with the Innocence Project working on criminal defense appeals in cases of questionable evidence, said he was eager for the results of the next phase of Mr. Bromwich's investigation into evidence reviewed by the laboratory. "They haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet," he said.