Back on Wednesday, I mentioned how North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation is under fire for twisting evidence and relying on hoakum masquerading as science. Today's (Raleigh) News and Observer hints at one reason how things got this bad--the state crime lab is an arm of law enforcement.
State law puts scientists at the lab on the prosecution's team, instead of assigning them as independent seekers of fact. Analysts sometimes don't run DNA or blood tests that might threaten prosecutors' theories. And they shield themselves from scrutiny, fighting against turning over records and forbidding defense experts from observing their work.
North Carolina is one of 38 states in which the state forensics lab is controlled by police or prosecutors. And yet, a group of prominent forensic scientists wrote that there is an inherent conflict of interest whenever forensic science takes place in a law enforcement setting. Based on what the N&O dug up, it's hard not to conclude otherwise.
All too often, according to the N&O, forensic experts hired by the defense find ghastly blunders by the SBI's forensics people. And the taxpayers wind up footing the bill for the extra review.
The lab's bloodstain pattern unit has been temporarily shut down while state attorney general Roy Cooper reviews the analysts' practices and training. As I mentioned yesterday, all too often the analysts performed tests that are scientific in name only. I initially thought that abuses like this could happen regardless of whether the lab answered to prosecutors. But then I read this shocking story about a murder case in Greenville.
Greenville lawyer Ernest "Buddy" Conner experienced the alignment with prosecutors in 2004 when he called to question an analyst about a lab report he suspected was faulty.
Conner, a veteran defense attorney, was certain his client, Leslie Lincoln, had nothing to do with her mother's killing. He was sure the SBI lab report would confirm that. Instead, it locked on Lincoln as the suspect. A bloodstain found near her mother's bed bore Lincoln's DNA profile. It was a match so sure that statistically, it could belong to no one but Lincoln.
Conner couldn't believe the results and called the lab to ask the analyst to double-check her work.
Conner said he was told that the lab wouldn't rerun the test at his request. Only if a prosecutor or judge demanded it would the lab repeat the test, Conner said he was told.
Conner said he was so flabbergasted by the resistance that when he went to court, he asked the judge to order that the evidence be sent to an independent lab for a retest.
Only then did the SBI analyze the tests further.
When it did, analysts found an egregious error: The analyst had swapped the victim's sample with Lincoln's. The DNA at the crime scene was her mother's, not hers.
When it takes a court order to do something any self-respecting lab ought to do on its own, there's something fundamentally wrong. But that may be because SBI analysts are trained to be biased in favor of the prosecution.
To SBI analysts, defense attorneys are often the bad guys. Training manuals and directives paint defense attorneys as tricksters who are driven to let criminals go free.
"Tell the D.A. in advance of any weaknesses in the case so that the trial of the case can be planned to minimize the weaknesses' impact," says a 2007 manual used to teach analysts how to testify in court.
Cooper was shocked when he saw the manual, and said flat-out, "There's some language in this document that should not be there."
This story, to my mind, is all the more reason that the SBI should be placed under court supervision. When you have such fundamental bias at the heart of an agency, only a root-and-branch cleaning can restore public confidence.