Not the Television Version of CSI: Another Crime Lab Mess

The causes of wrongful convictions are multiple in nature, as readers of  postings on this blog already know. One cause: Crime laboratories run by law enforcement agencies, akin to the laboratories on the fictionalized television dramatic series CSI (the original, in Las Vegas), CSI Miami and CSI New York. Some crime labs hire incompetent analysts and dishonest analysts. Some crime labs lack adequate budgets, leading to outdated and/broken equipment. Some crime labs are overwhelmed by the number of cases spawning evidence delivered by police agencies for analysis.

The police department lab in Houston, Texas, has been especially troublesome. Even after in-depth investigations, budget increases and personnel manuevering, the lab is still a mess, according to the very police department that is the lab’s parent agency. The newest scandal, reported this month by the Houston Chronicle newspaper and other news outlets, revolves around the fingerprint unit.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, fingerprint evidence is not definitive,  not infallible. Interpreting fingerprints accurately is sometimes as much art as it is science, which means the analysts must be especially skilled. A newly completed audit of the fingerprint analyses in the Houston lab revealed inadequate procedures in hundreds of cases, and that number could reach the thousands.

So far, the inadequate analyses have not led to new revelations of wrongful convictions in Houston/Harris County. What seems certain as of today is that numerous criminals have not been prosecuted because of fingerprint evidence never analyzed, or analyzed inadequately. That is the opposite of the wrongful conviction problem, but no less disturbing.

I wrote at length about troubled police crime laboratories in the July-August 2009 issue of Miller-McCune magazine, www.miller-mccune.com.

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