STORY: "DNA tech's questionable work delays sentencing," by reporter Thomas Clouse, published in the Spokane-Review on August 1, 2012.
GIST: "A Spokane County judge today postponed the sentencing of a man
convicted almost exclusively on DNA evidence after defense attorneys
learned that tests identifying their client as the killer had been done
by a crime lab technician who later was fired. The technician’s
work was so deficient that a co-worker described it as a “nightmare,”
and an internal report said it could “not be trusted.”
Superior
Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor stopped short of granting a new trial for
Julio J. Davila, 46, who was convicted last month of second-degree
murder in the 2007 killing of a Spokane adult bookstore owner. But
O’Connor called for an evidentiary hearing about the DNA testing
performed by Denise Olson, who was fired last year from the Washington
State Patrol crime laboratory.
Defense attorney Tom Krzyminski
argued that Deputy Spokane County Prosecutor Dale Nagy knew about
Olson’s shoddy work and did not disclose it prior to the trial.
Co-defense
attorney Kevin Griffin filed a public records request seeking
information about Olson’s work history prior to Davila’s trial. But the
WSP didn’t release that information until six days after a jury
convicted Davila on July 13.
Olson “is a loose cannon and her work
cannot be trusted,” the internal WSP report states. “The risk of a
wrongful conviction or the erroneous exclusion of a guilty subject
because of (her) incompetence is far too great for the agency to
undertake. Attempting to work around that fact would only leave (Olson)
open to harsh public and legal criticism and potential lawsuits.”
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/aug/01/murderers-sentencing-postponed-based-shoddy-dna-wo/
