Caracterización de la Calidad de Agua a Nivel de la Cuenca

In early 2003, the District Attorney’s Office and HPD began a process with the goal of re-testing all cases resulted in a conviction -- whether at trial or

through a guilty plea -- in which DNA evidence analyzed by the Crime Lab may have played a role. The central purpose of the re-testing program has been to identify any cases in which the results of DNA analysis performed by the Crime Lab cannot be confirmed.

The first step in the post-conviction re-testing process involved the Crime Lab’s identifying all of the cases in which some DNA testing was conducted by the Lab. By April 1, 2003, the Crime Lab had identified offense reports related to 1,322 such cases. The next step in the re-testing project was to match these 1,322 offense reports with “cause numbers” (cases) associated with prosecutions, which are maintained by the District Attorney’s Office. In the end, the 1,322 offense reports tied to just over 1,000 cause numbers.

The next step in the process involved prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office reviewing each of the cases associated with the over 1,000 cause numbers to determine whether the case was appropriate for

re-testing. The guidelines provided to prosecutors for determining whether the DNA-related evidence in the case should be re-tested were as follows:

(1) Determine whether, if there was a trial, DNA evidence analyzed by the Crime Lab was introduced at trial. If it was, then the DNA evidence would be re-tested.

57 _{Mr. Krueger recalls that Mr. Bolding refused to attend this meeting with Chief Simmons.} 58 _{At the time of the KHOU-Channel 11 reports and the DPS audit of the DNA/Serology}

Section, Chief Bradford was on administrative leave pending his prosecution for perjury, and Mayor Lee Brown had appointed Executive Assistant Chief Oettmeier Acting Chief of Police.

(2) If there was a trial and the DNA evidence analyzed by HPD was not introduced at trial, then the case would not be selected for re-testing.

(3) If there was a guilty plea and the case involved any DNA analysis performed by the Crime Lab, then the evidence was selected for re-testing.

Ultimately, the District Attorney’s Office identified 407 cases to be re-tested. Four of these 407 cases identified for re-testing have subsequently been withdrawn from the re-test list because the District Attorney’s Office

determined that they did not belong on the list, leaving 403 cases to be analyzed. HPD has been responsible for sending the DNA evidence related to the 403 post-conviction re-test cases to one of the following three outside laboratories for re-testing: Identigene in Houston, Reliagene in New Orleans, and Orchid- Cellmark in Dallas. HPD reports that, as of June 13, 2005, re-testing has been completed on 333 of the 403 cases.

For obvious reasons, the optimal evidence for re-testing purposes is raw evidence, such as stains on clothing or bedding, that have not been processed by the Crime Lab. In cases where such raw evidence does not exist, the next best alternative is to test DNA that already has been extracted or already has undergone some form of processing. The bulk of the cases reviewed -- 248 -- have confirmed with raw evidence the original Crime Lab findings. Seventy-five cases have confirmed the Crime Lab’s findings with DNA extracted or processed evidence. In one case, there apparently was no remaining sample to be re-tested and only the Crime Lab’s case file was available for review. The results in eight cases have been confirmed by outside laboratories, but with significant

differences in the statistics reported by the outside laboratories from those originally reported by the Crime Lab. In one case, involving Josiah Sutton, the Crime Lab’s findings were reversed by the outside laboratory.

The distribution of the 333 post-conviction re-tests in which HPD’s tests have been confirmed across these four categories thus is as follows:

Confirmed with raw evidence 248

Confirmed with DNA extract or processed evidence 75

Confirmed through case review only 1

Confirmed, but with significant statistical differences 8

Crime Lab’s findings reversed 1

Re-testing in 70 cases is still in progress. In 14 of these cases, HPD has not yet received any results from the outside laboratory. Sixteen of the 70 cases will have to be evaluated on a paper review basis because, apparently, no DNA evidence remains to be re-tested.

The remaining 40 cases have undergone an initial round of re-testing with inconclusive results. At this point it is not clear whether the Crime Lab’s results in each of these 40 cases will be confirmed.

Finally, the District Attorney’s Office has retained its own outside laboratory, Bode Technology Group of Springfield, Virginia, to review the analyses performed by the three laboratories originally involved with the post-conviction re-testing project. The Assistant District Attorney coordinating the re-testing for the prosecutor’s office told us that the purpose of Bode’s involvement is to serve as a second check on the cases and to assist the District Attorney’s Office in reviewing the reports generated by the outside laboratories involved in the re-testing program.