"Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday that he'd ask the Defense Department's inspector general to scrutinize the work of former Army analyst Phillip Mills and determine whether the military mishandled problems at the Georgia-based U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory.
"Was key evidence destroyed even as Army supervisors were aware of serious problems in the lab?" Grassley asked. "Did supervisors cover up the alleged problems to spare themselves embarrassment, to the benefit or detriment of criminal defendants?"
McClatchy detailed mistakes made by Mills at the Army laboratory in a story published this month. The story revealed that Mills' errors undermined confidence in hundreds of criminal cases brought against military personnel across the country.
The McClatchy investigation also found that the lab, near Atlanta, was lax in supervising Mills, slow to re-examine his work and slipshod about informing defendants."
REPORTERS MARISA TAYLOR AND MICHAEL DOYLE; MCCLATCHEY NEWSPAPERS;
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"WASHINGTON -- A U.S. senator has called for an independent investigation of the military's premier crime lab to ensure that innocent people weren't wrongfully convicted on the basis of work by a discredited analyst," the McLatchey Newspapers story by reporters Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle published earlier today under the heading, "Independent review of military crime lab sought," begins.
"Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Wednesday that he'd ask the Defense Department's inspector general to scrutinize the work of former Army analyst Phillip Mills and determine whether the military mishandled problems at the Georgia-based U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory," the story continues.
""Was key evidence destroyed even as Army supervisors were aware of serious problems in the lab?" Grassley asked. "Did supervisors cover up the alleged problems to spare themselves embarrassment, to the benefit or detriment of criminal defendants?"
McClatchy detailed mistakes made by Mills at the Army laboratory in a story published this month. The story revealed that Mills' errors undermined confidence in hundreds of criminal cases brought against military personnel across the country.
The McClatchy investigation also found that the lab, near Atlanta, was lax in supervising Mills, slow to re-examine his work and slipshod about informing defendants.
More than two years after the lab's internal review, some defendants remain in the dark. McClatchy, for instance, found two defendants who'd never been told that the military's retesting cleared them.
Forensic and legal experts told McClatchy that they were shocked that the military had not detected Mills' mistakes earlier and then failed to uniformly tell defendants that evidence might have been tainted.
"The military should have done better in its oversight," said Michelle Lindo McCluer, executive director of the nonprofit National Institute of Military Justice.
Mills, who's now 65, resigned shortly after being told in November 2005 that he'd be fired, according to court records.
Instead of asking for a full-blown independent audit of the lab, the military asked the Defense Department's inspector general to narrowly review its internal affairs investigation of Mills. A spokesman with the inspector general's office said his office concluded the internal affairs inquiry had been conducted in a "thorough and corroborative" way.
The lab didn't involve the inspector general in its $1.4 million retesting of Mills' work and insisted on retaining control of that three-year effort.
"It can't be the lab investigating itself," said Barry Scheck, a co-director of the nonprofit Innocence Project. "That's astonishingly wrong in principle."
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, added that problems such as those uncovered at the Army laboratory underscored the need for better oversight: "All forensic evidence used in criminal investigations and prosecutions should be reliable and trustworthy," he told McClatchy.
Mills hasn't been able to be reached for comment. TheArmy told McClatchy on Wednesday that it thinks the lab handled Mills' mistakes appropriately and "took numerous important steps when the information was discovered."
N.C. case reviews
When similar scandals have erupted elsewhere, however, independent investigators have been brought in and their findings made public.
In North Carolina, two retired FBI managers reviewed a laboratory's serology unit after the nation's first innocence inquiry commission declared a Raleigh man innocent of a murder. The managers found that the State Bureau of Investigations lab withheld or misreported test results in 227 cases. Prosecutors have since released the names of affected defendants, and a nonprofit law firm is reviewing their cases.
"I was really struck by the contrast in how North Carolina handled it versus how the military handled it," said Chris Swecker, one of the retired managers. "North Carolina said: 'Let's get it out there to everybody who might have been impacted.'"
In Detroit, defense attorneys and prosecutors are involved in a similar notification effort more than two years after the city's crime lab was shut down because of problems with evidence testing.
In Dallas County, Texas, a series of DNA-related exonerations spurred the district attorney to collaborate with Scheck's Innocence Project to review hundreds of previously denied post-conviction requests for DNA testing.
Still, the Justice Department has done little to enforce a law that requires federally funded crime labs to set up outside auditing processes, the department's inspector general has found.
"Now that we've seen so many laboratories come under scrutiny, you'd think the message should be out there that these audits should be routine," said Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who's written on the subject. "But many labs have no procedures on how to handle this."
Staff writer Joseph Neff contributed to this report."
The story can be found at:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/03/31/1093603/review-of-military-crime-lab-sought.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
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