GIST: "A senior analyst with the New York City Medical Examiner’s office and two criminalists have been suspended amid an investigation into signing off on their own DNA analyses — a forbidden practice in forensic labs — and cheating on a promotional exam, the Daily News has learned.
Veteran criminalist Matthew Benintendo and two junior criminalists, Steven Kranes and Luke Dalto, were suspended from casework for the alleged promotion test cheating, records obtained by The News show.
A fourth, Melanie Goldsmith, was removed from casework for discrepancies in her time sheets.
An internal investigation then broadened into allegations that in more than 30 criminal cases, Benintendo authored the case analyses but had Cranes or Dalto sign them, records show.
Benintendo then did the technical review of his own work.
According to standards set by the FBI, the National Accreditation Board and the MEs office’s own policy, the author of a forensic analysis cannot also be the technical reviewer.
The city’s six local prosecutors and the federal prosecutor’s offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn were notified on Oct. 11, records show.
Word of the budding scandal started trickling out to the defense bar in mid-November when a hint was picked up by a public defender representing a client in a trial in Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
“Given these egregious integrity issues, OCME should review every single criminal case, both closed and pending, that involve the four criminalists in question,” said Jenny Cheung, supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s DNA Unit.
Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, Director of the Brooklyn Defenders Science and Surveillance Project, said the problem goes beyond simple misconduct and an independent probe is needed.
“What’s happening here is Benintendo is doing the analysis and someone else is swearing to the report — that’s a blatant, first level lie. It’s a path to perjury,” Vasquez said.
“It also raises questions about the internal oversight and culture of the lab and what pressures they were under that they felt they needed to do this. There’s a recklessness there that risks having scientific error introduced.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Julie Bolcer, a spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner’s office, confirmed the staffers have been removed from casework. “All required disclosures (have been) made to stakeholders,” she said.”Following prompt discovery of the suspected cheating, disciplinary actions were taken within weeks.”
Bolcer said the promotion exam was done in-house, rather than by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services which administers most city agency promotion tests.
After the promotional exam took place in August, the first inkling of the scandal outside the Medical Examiner’s office came on Oct. 11, when Chief of Laboratories Timothy Kupferschmid sent a confidential letter to city and federal prosecutor’s offices and the city Law Department.
The letter disclosed only that Benintendo, Dalto and Kranes were removed from case work over “potential integrity issues” in the promotional exam.
Benintendo has been with the ME’s office since at least 2008. He made $153,143 in fiscal 2023, city payroll records show. Kranes made $76,872 and Dalto made $83,449.
The letter also disclosed that Goldsmith was removed from casework for “integrity issues” with her time sheets. She made $75,915 last year.
The letter was marked in small type, “not for redistribution.”
“At this time, the investigation is ongoing and disciplinary procedures have not yet been initiated,” Kupferschmid wrote.
Under Kupferschmid, the lab has become known for the speed that it turns around forensic analyses, often in a few weeks rather than months, said two sources familiar with the lab’s operations.
“You wonder whether the practice of getting things out fast came at the cost of looking at things carefully,” one of the sources said.
At some point after the initial letter, the Manhattan DA’s office made a disclosure to defender groups about the promotional exam allegations, two sources familiar with the sequence of events said.
On Dec. 1, Kupferschmid sent a second confidential letter to county and federal prosecutors and the Law Department notifying them that a new problem had emerged during the review.
In 26 cases, the letter said, Benintendo authored the forensic analysis but had Dalto sign off on them. Then Benintendo performed the technical review.
In seven cases, Benintendo had Kranes sign the report he had compiled.
Then Benintendo signed the technical review — in apparent violation of long-established industry standards.
Kupferschmid wrote he ordered those 33 cases to be reviewed again.
Other cases handled by the three criminalists were under review, though he insisted no other problems emerged.
The agency is also doing a broader internal review to find other instances where a report author was also the reviewer, the second letter said.
But Vasquez said there should be an external review, comparing the scandal to others in Massachusetts, Houston and Washington, D.C. that led to lab shutdowns.
“What this tells us is their quality control systems are not working,” she said. “A full independent scientific audit overseen by an independent entity is necessary.”
The city Medical Examiner was previously wracked by scandal in 2013, when it emerged a lab technician had mishandled evidence in more than 800 rape cases.
The ensuing investigation led to the resignation of a top OCME official.
In November, after public defense groups began to hear about the scandal, they included a one-sentence reference to it in a Dec. 1 letter to the state Forensic Science Commission about an unrelated error by the NYPD’s Latent Print Section that was not disclosed for eight years.
“This laboratory error and lack of disclosure is not an isolated occurrence,” the defender groups wrote. “Only a couple of weeks ago, it was revealed through discovery in a trial case that three criminalists were taken off casework and (are) under investigation for cheating on an OCME internal promotional exam while another was taken off due to irregularities in her timesheet.”
The union representing the criminalists did not immediately reply to emails from The News Thursday.
The state Forensic Science commission is expected to discuss the matter in its next meeting Friday."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
