Discovery of Lost Evidence Is the Latest Embarrassment for Nation’s Leading Death Penalty Jurisdiction

The dis­cov­ery of 280 unopened and mis­la­beled box­es of evi­dence found in the Houston Crime Lab’s prop­er­ty room could impact as many as 8,000 cas­es, includ­ing many cas­es where defen­dants have sought evi­dence to prove their inno­cence. Investigators began sort­ing through the box­es this month, find­ing an array of evi­dence that ranged from a fetus and human body parts to clothes and a bag of Cheetos. Although the box­es were locat­ed near­ly a year ago, the cat­a­loging of their con­tents has just begun and could take up to a year to com­plete. Some of the evi­dence may be linked to the 379 cas­es in which pris­on­ers con­vict­ed in Harris County have request­ed the retest­ing of DNA evi­dence to estab­lish their inno­cence. If new evi­dence in these cas­es is found, pros­e­cu­tors will have to go back to court and admit that some of the evi­dence pre­vi­ous­ly deter­mined to be lost or destroyed is avail­able after all. District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is now seek­ing a full-scale inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the lab, an action he had pre­vi­ous­ly resist­ed. Houston Mayor Bill White not­ed, ​“It’s hard to get away from the fact that slop­pi­ness in any­thing of this mat­ter is inex­cus­able.” Barry Scheck of the New York City-based Innocence Project added, ​“This is in a league by itself…(it’s) unpar­al­leled in the Houston police lab’s lega­cy of fraud, incom­pe­tence, and con­fu­sion.” The Crime Lab’s tox­i­col­o­gy divi­sion, which test­ed DNA, blood and hair evi­dence, was shut down in January 2003 for poor work habits and inac­cu­rate find­ings deter­mined by an unskilled staff. The inves­ti­ga­tion of that depart­ment has led to at least one exon­er­a­tion on the basis of DNA evi­dence retest­ing. (New York Times and Houston Chronicle, August 27, 2004). The dis­cov­ery of this lost evi­dence is the lat­est devel­op­ment in an on-going inves­ti­ga­tion of the Houston Crime Lab and Police Department in Harris County, Texas, the nation’s lead­ing juris­dic­tion in exe­cu­tions. See Innocence.