Not “CSI”: Real-life police crime lab problems continue to fester, compromising cases

In the wrongful conviction realm, incompetence and dishonesty at police agency crime laboratories rank among the most difficult problems to repair.

Why?

Because it is expensive to purchase state-of-the-art equipment like what the citizenry is accustomed to seeing on fictional television dramas such as “CSI.”

Because the hiring process for lab workers (who call themselves “criminalists”) has been flawed for decades; after an incompetent or dishonest criminalist is hired, firing becomes difficult.

Because supervisors in many crime labs lack the ability or the budget or the will or all of the above to monitor the day-to-day tests run by the criminalists.

Because the labs are housed within police agencies, where a natural bias toward finding suspects guilty exists.

The poster child for dysfunctional crime labs leading to miscarriages of justice is Houston, Texas. For many years, journalists there have documented the situation. When the city mothers and fathers finally recognized the scope of the mess and vowed to solve it, I hoped they meant what they said. But continuing stories in the Houston Chronicle and other local media show the mess might never be solved without a massive housecleaning of the laboratory, police department supervisors and additional budget allocations.

Just last week (June 22), the Chronicle (www.chron.com) published a piece by reporters Moises Mendoza and James Pinkerton under the headline “Parts of HPD Fingerprint Lab Remain in Disarray.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors live with uncertainty whether they can mount a reliable case against suspects implicated in part or in full by the criminalists, defense attorneys wonder whether their clients can receive a fair hearing, actual perpetrators stand better odds of resuming their lives of destruction, and the risk remains high that more wrongful convictions will occur.