Text 12445, 103 rader
Skriven 2005-05-07 05:58:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: DNA testing
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http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va--crimelaberrors0506may06,0,
2037658.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia

Audit: Crime lab erred in exonerated death row inmate's case


By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press Writer

Published May 6, 2005

RICHMOND, Va. -- The state crime lab made several errors when retesting
evidence in the case of a former death row inmate wrongfully convicted of a
1982 rape and murder, according to an independent audit released Friday.

Although retesting of the evidence in 2000 led to the absolute pardon of Earl
Washington Jr., the lab's leading DNA analyst made several mistakes, including
prematurely excluding suspects when he should have ruled the DNA sample
inconclusive, the audit report concluded.

As a result, Jeffrey Ban has been temporarily suspended from certain cases
involving "low level" DNA samples, where the evidence contains amounts of DNA
at or below normal detection limits.

Such samples were used in the case of Washington, who spent more than nine
years on death row and came within nine days of being executed. He was pardoned
by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore in 2000, 17 years after he was imprisoned for the
killing of 19-year-old Rebecca Williams of Culpeper.

In 2004, a California scientist concluded that semen found on the victim's body
was left by a serial rapist, Kenneth Tinsley. Tinsley is serving life in prison
for the 1984 rape of an Albemarle County woman and was twice convicted of rape
in Chicago, according to court and prison records. He has not been charged in
the Williams slaying.

The audit, requested by Gov. Mark R. Warner, places some of the blame for the
errors on pressure from Gilmore's office to definitively answer whether
Washington was the killer. It quoted Ban as saying "inconclusive results were
not an option."

"The added daily pressures to produce a result ... laid the groundwork for
mistakes to be made and procedures to be modified in attempts to gather some
useful information," according to the report prepared by the American Society
of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, the national accrediting
entity for forensic labs.

DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington's guilt, but did not absolutely
eliminate him as a suspect. As a result, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted
Washington's sentence to life in prison.

The audit pointed out errors Ban made during the 1993 retesting.

"If he had correctly reported the 1993 DNA results, Earl Washington would have
been exonerated seven years before he actually was released," said Debi
Cornwall, one of Washington's attorneys. "He's had seven years in prison
because of (Ban's) mistakes."

In 2000, the crime lab used more sophisticated DNA tests on the evidence. The
results excluded Washington as the depositor of the semen and as a result,
Gilmore granted him an absolute pardon. Ban then concluded that DNA appearing
on a vaginal swab came from an unknown male--not from Washington, the victim or
Tinsley.

But the audit found the results of those tests should have been deemed
inconclusive.

"The DNA typing results offered in this case should have, at best, been
reported as inconclusive, rather than attempting to make an interpretation from
poor quality information," the report said.

In a statement, Virginia Division of Forensic Science director Paul Ferrara
agreed that Ban should have declared the sample inconclusive instead of
eliminating Washington, Williams and Tinsley. But he also characterized the
audit's focus as narrow.

"The audit report criticizes the work performed on one sub-sample five years
ago based upon current technologies and standards," Ferrara said. "It also
belies the major body of other work performed by this examiner in this case
wherein he successfully eliminated Earl Washington and identified a new
suspect, Kenneth Tinsley, on evidence found at the crime scene."

The audit included several recommendations, many of which the lab has already
adopted. Among them, the audit recommends defining a process that would
insulate lab workers from outside pressures in high-profile cases. Ferrara said
in the event a similar case arises again, a panel of senior scientists will
review any deviations from normal protocols and help with formatting the
results of the analysis and conclusions.

The report also recommends a thorough examination of Ban's casework over the
past five years, which Ferrara agreed to in his response.

No one at the forensics division would have any further comment on the audit,
according to a secretary who answered the phone. A telephone message left at
Ban's home was not immediately returned.

The implications of the audit's findings are grave, said one of Washington's
attorneys, Peter Neufeld, founder of the Innocence Project.

"It casts a shadow over many of the capital prosecutions and convictions in
Virginia with this laboratory and, in particular, this analyst," he said.

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