Criminal Law Blog by Defense Lawyer John Floyd and Mr. Billy Sinclair
Criminal Defense Attorneys Must Request and Analyze Procedures for Testing, Accepted Protocols and Handling of Forensic Evidence
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John T. Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
A criminal defense attorney’s worst nightmare is that the prosecution will rely upon bad evidence to convict his/her client. Defending against relevant, admissible evidence is difficult enough, but there is no real defense against shoddy law enforcement’s collection, processing, and storage of the evidence the prosecution will rely upon in criminal cases. The Houston City Police Department (“HPD”) has a long, sordid history of destroying, botching, and even manufacturing false evidence in criminal cases. The HPD crime lab had to be shut down by the Mayor’s Office in 2002 in the wake of disclosures that lab analysts had mishandled DNA evidence, destroyed evidence, and misrepresented evidence in criminal trials. The fallout from the crime lab scandal still reverberates in our criminal justice system with the exoneration of at least six individuals.
Now the Houston Chronicle informs the public about the results of an adult released in October detailing how HPD’s fingerprint comparison unit mishandled fingerprint evidence in thousands of cases, many involving violent offenders, over the past six years. Taxpayers will now have to subsidize a review of at least 4000 violent crime cases. City Councilwoman Anne Clutterbuck told the Chronicle an amended contract with the firm that conducted the original audit, Ron Smith and Associates, could costs taxpayers between $2 million to $8 million.
This latest “bad evidence” scandal is having its own rippling effect across the political and criminal justice systems in Harris County. Houston Mayor Bill White told the Chronicle he believes criminals went free because of the deliberate mishandling and negligent ineptitude of the fingerprint comparison unit. “I think it’s unacceptable the quality of work the chief and the command staff found in the fingerprint unit,” the Mayor told the newspaper. (more…)
Gary Alvin Richard; Wrongly Convicted Man Released after 22 Years
By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
They are called “experts.” Prosecutors parade them into court dressed in respectful suit ware and carry resumes packed with a laundry list of degrees. They then testify about the science of “forensic evidence” in ways that more often confuse rather than clarify the issues being tried in a criminal case. Worst yet, many of these “CSI” experts testify falsely, or in misleading fashion, about test results they either did not perform correctly or whose results they manufactured to fit a given prosecutorial objective. Incompetent or unethical “forensic experts” are a criminal defense attorney’s worst nightmare.
The Houston Chronicle (April 25, 2009) carried a report about yet another Harris County case where an potentially innocent person spent 22 years in prison for a rape and robbery he did not commit because of false testimony and faulty “forensic evidence” from the now thoroughly discredited Houston Police Department’s (HPD) crime lab. The case involves Gary Alvin Richard who was released after 22 years in prison on his personal recognizance. Mr. Richard was convicted by a jury in connection with a 1987 attack on a nursing student who was abducted from a local Laundromat, robbed, and taken to an abandoned apartment where she was repeatedly raped.
During a seven-month period after the attack, the victim called the police twice to report that she had seen the man who assaulted her. The HPD did not respond to these calls. Seven months after the attack the victim called the police department a third time to report that she had just seen her attacker in a store. This time the police responded to the call and arrested Richard. Although Richard had a minor criminal history involving petty drug use, there was no violence in his record.
The victim’s mistaken identification of Richard was supported by forensic evidence developed by the HPD crime lab. New tests conducted on that same evidence on April 24 revealed that the crime lab analyst not only lied to the jury but withheld evidence that was exculpatory to Richard. (more…)
Subscribe
