According to a new report on the work per­formed by the Houston Crime Lab issued by inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tor Michael Bromwich, at least one cap­i­tal case is among the 43 DNA cas­es and 50 serol­o­gy cas­es processed at the lab since 1980 that have now been iden­ti­fied as hav­ing ​“major issues.” This clas­si­fi­ca­tion is defined as ​“prob­lems that raise sig­nif­i­cant doubt as to the reli­a­bil­i­tiy of the work per­formed, the valid­i­ty of the ana­lyt­i­cal results, or the cor­rect­ness of the ana­lysts’ con­clu­sions.” Bromwich, who leads a team of foren­sic experts hired by Houston to exam­ine the crime lab’s prob­lems, issued his fifth report on May 10th and not­ed that the case of death row inmate Derrick Lee Jackson is among a grow­ing list of cas­es in which lab employ­ees may have erred.

The report states that ini­tial DNA test­ing in Jackson’s case was per­formed by DNA lab chief James Bolding, who found the evi­dence was ​“incon­clu­sive.” When Jackson became a sus­pect, Bolding’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the evi­dence changed. ​“Without per­form­ing any addi­tion­al test­ing, Mr. Bolding altered his work­sheets … and issued a new report stat­ing that (blood evi­dence) con­sis­tent with Mr. Jackson’s (blood) type was found in two blood stain sam­ples recov­ered from the crime scene,” Bromwich’s report not­ed. Jackson was sub­se­quent­ly sen­tenced to death in March 1998 for the mur­ders of two Houston Grand Opera tenors. The major piece of evi­dence link­ing Jackson to the 1988 slay­ings was a bloody fin­ger­print found on the door in the singers’ apartment.

In addi­tion to the find­ings in Jackson’s case, Bromwich’s report detailed sev­er­al per­va­sive prob­lems at the crime lab. Those prob­lems includ­ed:

- The fail­ure of serol­o­gists and DNA ana­lysts to report reli­able results — which in some cas­es might have helped to prove that sus­pects were inno­cent.

 — The fail­ure to per­form serol­o­gy test­ing (blood typ­ing) in the 1980s in cas­es where there was avail­able evi­dence that, if test­ed, might have devel­oped infor­ma­tion about whether sus­pects could have been includ­ed or exclud­ed as poten­tial donors of blood evi­dence.

 — Strong evi­dence of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion fre­quent­ly affect­ing the results of DNA test­ing.

Since the Houston Police Department’s crime lab was shut down in December 2002, two men have been released from prison, includ­ing one who received a par­don on the basis of inno­cence.

(Houston Chronicle, May 11, 2006). See Innocence.

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