Evidence concealment, DNA switching, and a security issues are just a few of the facts uncovered in a remarkable report from SF Weekly released earlier this week. But, with the San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris in the midst of the scandal and rising to her newly elected position as State Attorney General this coming year, one has to wonder where the complaints should go and what can be done. 

In just one example laid out in their investigation, SF Weekly uncovers a mix-up of DNA test tubes. The evidence technician had switched two vials. Under her supervisor’s approval, they traded the labels and went on with their business, leaving behind “no documentation of the incident.” This in the words of the lab’s accreditation entity, ASCLD, a group with its own host of problems most recently tied to the North Carolina crime lab scandals. No documentation means no way for defense attorneys and even the prosecutor, in this case, to know about the mix-up and any of the cases it could have potentially impacted. Add to this the then-director of the lab, Jim Mudge, denying such a switch ever happened and you have a recipe for major questions as to the lab’s integrity and potentially dozens of appeals.

The DA’s office seems to have been given many opportunities to share the lab’s shortcomings with defense lawyers and other interested parties. In one particular report submitted to Harris’ office, Rockne Harmon, a consultant for the DA’s office, well known former prosecutor and so-called DNA “guru” himself suggested the office disclose issues with Boland’s testimony to defense attorneys. And to date, even in the wake of Massulo’s instruction in the Madden case, the District Attorney’s office has failed to do so. Now, the office is claiming it has no such report from Harmon at all.

New calls are being made to outsource the lab’s work, sending it to perhaps a private lab not caught up in or tied to the SFPD or the DA’s office at all. That significant of a shift could take years, however. In order for the city and the state to recognize the gravity of their problem, a complete investigation into the practices of the DNA crime lab must be completed. Join us in calling on Mayor Gavin Newsom to issue an investigation into the lab, its integrity, its evidence handling procedures, and the cases that may have been adversely affected in recent years. Neither the DA’s office nor its “new trial integrity unit” should play a fact finding role in the investigation because of their potential part in several of the known questionable cases at hand.

Photo Credit: Stephen Mcg