In con­tin­u­ing a series that DPIC had high­light­ed ear­li­er, the Denver Post has fea­tured more than a dozen news arti­cles and a series of online videos, pro­vid­ing an in-depth look at the han­dling of cru­cial bio­log­i­cal evi­dence gath­ered dur­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. ​“Trashing the Truth: The Hidden Story of Lost Evidence” exam­ined the nation­wide prob­lems with evi­dence stor­age, the destruc­tion of evi­dence, and the rela­tion­ship between miss­ing evi­dence and wrong­ful con­vic­tions. It also addressed how this issue impacts vic­tims and vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers who are wait­ing for answers in unsolved crimes.

In one arti­cle, the Post told the sto­ry of Floyd Brown, who has been in a North Carolina men­tal insti­tu­tion for 14 years with­out a tri­al. Brown, who is men­tal­ly retard­ed, is accused of mur­der­ing 80-year-old Katherine Lynch, but he main­tains that he did not com­mit the crime and did not give the con­fes­sion pros­e­cu­tors have point­ed to as evi­dence of his guilt. In the years since Brown was insti­tu­tion­al­ized, the wood­en stick sher­if­f’s deputies say was used to kill Lynch has been lost or destroyed. Earlier tests on the weapon con­clud­ed that they did not match Brown, and his defense attor­neys say that more sophis­ti­cat­ed DNA test­ing of the stick could have proven their clien­t’s inno­cence and pos­si­bly revealed the iden­ti­ty of the actu­al assailant.

In anoth­er arti­cle, the paper details the exon­er­a­tion of Johnny Briscoe, who served 24 years in prison for rape. For near­ly a deacde, defense attor­neys and oth­ers hop­ing to prove Briscoe’s inno­cence tried to locate three cig­a­rette butts col­lect­ed from the crime scene that were frozen in a St. Louis County Crime Lab freez­er for the pur­pose of future DNA test­ing. During that time, the dis­trict attor­ney and lab tech­ni­cians either refused to look for the evi­dence or said they could not find it after a search of the facil­i­ty. The three cig­a­rette butts were locat­ed only after a pow­er fail­ure shut down the lab and staff were forced to con­duct an inven­to­ry of all of the evi­dence in the freez­er. New DNA analy­sis of the evi­dence revealed that Briscoe was inno­cent and that anoth­er man had com­mit­ted the crime. That man, Larry Smith, had been serv­ing time in the same prison as Briscoe for the rape of a woman in the same apart­ment com­plex as the vic­tim assault­ed in Briscoe’s case.

The series not­ed:
The Denver Post has found 141 pris­on­ers nation­wide who pro­fess their inno­cence but in whose cas­es phys­i­cal evi­dence has been lost, mis­han­dled or destroyed.
…
Their cas­es raise ques­tions about a jus­tice sys­tem that fails to reg­u­late DNA evi­dence and leaves to the whims of clerks and law-enforce­ment offi­cials the fates of inmates try­ing to prove their inno­cence. Their sto­ries also call into ques­tion whether the U.S. crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has strayed from one of its basic prin­ci­ples: that it’s far worse to con­vict an inno­cent per­son that to let a guilty per­son go free.

It’s one thing to be wrong­ly con­vict­ed and doing anoth­er man’s time. But it’s quite anoth­er to have your free­dom hinge on tiny traces from a stranger’s body, only to learn those sam­ples have been lost or destroyed.

(Denver Post, July 22 – 25, 2007). View the ​“Trashing the Truth” Videos Online. See Studies and Innocence.

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