II. Houston Police Department (HPD) Crime Lab
A. Tainted DNA Evidence: The Beginning
In Houston, according to a report by the Houston Police Department's crime laboratory, the DNA recovered in a 1998 rape case convicted 16-year-old Josiah Elijah Sutton of aggravated sexual assault.6 The report stated that Sutton’s DNA recovered from the crime scene had matched and the probability of such a match was 1 out of 694,000 African-American males from the population of the United States.7 The jury based on the DNA evidence sentenced Sutton to 25 years in prison.
In 2002, superb undercover research by several journalists and academic professionals shed light to problems in the crime lab which had existed and were well known to city officials. Houston’s CBS partner, KHOU-Channel 11 aired a series of investigative undercover reports on the poor and unethical forensic practices of the Houston Police Department's Crime Lab that may have led to hundreds of wrongly convicted innocent individuals going to prison. The report led to a series of accusations and scandals in the HPD’s Crime Lab, which …show more content…
People essentially rely on their criminal justice system to exonerate a guilty culprit or incarcerate an innocent person. It keeps them from taking the law in their own hands and carrying out unchecked self-governed trials. However, uncontrolled abuse of forensic DNA evidence by crime labs not only destabilizes our entire justice system but also demoralizes people’s faith in society and leadership. Many supporters of reform agree that to truly fix the problem it is becoming increasingly necessary that crime labs around the country should be self-governed and independent of law enforcement agencies. The need for tougher regulations, reforms and improvements in forensic laboratories around the country is extremely crucial to assure fairness, justice and liberty for
A. Tainted DNA Evidence: The Beginning
In Houston, according to a report by the Houston Police Department's crime laboratory, the DNA recovered in a 1998 rape case convicted 16-year-old Josiah Elijah Sutton of aggravated sexual assault.6 The report stated that Sutton’s DNA recovered from the crime scene had matched and the probability of such a match was 1 out of 694,000 African-American males from the population of the United States.7 The jury based on the DNA evidence sentenced Sutton to 25 years in prison.
In 2002, superb undercover research by several journalists and academic professionals shed light to problems in the crime lab which had existed and were well known to city officials. Houston’s CBS partner, KHOU-Channel 11 aired a series of investigative undercover reports on the poor and unethical forensic practices of the Houston Police Department's Crime Lab that may have led to hundreds of wrongly convicted innocent individuals going to prison. The report led to a series of accusations and scandals in the HPD’s Crime Lab, which …show more content…
People essentially rely on their criminal justice system to exonerate a guilty culprit or incarcerate an innocent person. It keeps them from taking the law in their own hands and carrying out unchecked self-governed trials. However, uncontrolled abuse of forensic DNA evidence by crime labs not only destabilizes our entire justice system but also demoralizes people’s faith in society and leadership. Many supporters of reform agree that to truly fix the problem it is becoming increasingly necessary that crime labs around the country should be self-governed and independent of law enforcement agencies. The need for tougher regulations, reforms and improvements in forensic laboratories around the country is extremely crucial to assure fairness, justice and liberty for