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An independent investigation of the Massachusetts State Police (MSP)
Crime Lab conducted earlier this year helped focus attention on
4,000 unprocessed rape kits. The investigation was initiated
after officials learned in January that a lab administrator
failed to alert prosecutors that he had matched DNA samples to
suspects before the statute of limitations had run out in 27
cases, including fourteen sexual assaults according to the
Boston Globe. As a result, criminal charges could not be
brought against the identified suspects in those cases. Since
the story broke, the administrator of the lab’s DNA database was
fired and both the head of the crime lab and the state’s top
forensic official who supervised the crime lab resigned under
pressure, according to the Boston Globe.
The subsequent investigation ordered by the state and conducted
by the consulting firm Vance Global turned up additional
problems in the lab. Their report found that evidence from
16,000 criminal cases was never analyzed, including 4,000
unworked and unassigned rape kits. The scope of the backlog is
in some dispute, however. In a Boston Globe Op-Ed piece,
Jonathan Blodgett, Essex County district attorney and president
of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association stated that
10,000 of the 16,000 referenced cases “are simply old and
inactive evidence referrals warehoused in long-term storage at
the lab” preserved in the event they are needed later.
Furthermore, Blodgett says that federal grants have already
allowed the lab to reduce the backlog of rape kits to 2,081.
In contrast with the
Houston Crime Lab investigation covered in SATI e-News over
the past two years, the Vance report did not find fault with the
science conducted by the MSP Crime Lab crime lab. In fact, the
consultants felt that the science conducted by the MSP Crime Lab
was so rigorous that it exceeded the national standards,
contributing to decreased productivity by lab analysts. The
report stated that MSP Crime Lab chemists worked on an average
of four cases a month, which is about half the national average.
An official from the administration of Governor Deval L. Patrick
told the Boston Globe that the administration intends to
overhaul the MSP Crime Lab lab and implement many of the
consultant’s recommendations, including an allocation of $6
million to analyze samples from cases where the statute of
limitations has not expired.
Sources:
“Mass
Crime Lab Administrator Suspended,” Boston Globe,
January 13, 2007.
“Crime
Lab Neglected 16,000 Cases; Evidence Was Never Analyzed, Probe
Finds,” Boston Globe, July 15, 2007.
“Final
Report and Recommendations Regarding Vance’s Comprehensive
Operational Assessment of the Massachusetts State Police Crime
Laboratory System,” (PDF) June 29, 2007.
“State
Crime Lab’s Reliability,” Op-Ed by Jonathan Blodgett in the
Boston Globe, August 5, 2007.
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