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Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Yahoo
What will it take to exonerate the R.I. State Crime Lab?
Evidence marked by year awaits testing at the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory in this spring 2023 photo. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current) Rhode Island's troubled state crime lab faces a full accreditation review this week, just as the state Senate considers a bill to restructure the commission overseeing the facility on the University of Rhode Island's (URI) Kingston campus. A six-person team from the ANSI National Accreditation Board started a three-day review of the lab on Tuesday, two years sooner than required in its standard accreditation cycle, said the lab's director, Dennis Hilliard. He had asked for the review to be moved up after the lab suspended a type of forensic testing in gun cases last August to address a discrepancy with a Glock pistol linked to a 2021 Pawtucket murder case. Since then, a second gun case, also from 2021, has been flagged by an out-of-state laboratory that has taken over some of the forensic testing, Hilliard said. Hilliard said the accreditation team is looking to assess policies, examine completed and ongoing casework, and observe examiners in the lab's three sections: firearms, trace evidence, and latent prints. At the end of the week, the team will provide an assessment on what improvements the lab needs to make. 'I don't expect anything major,' Hilliard said. 'We're doing everything in our power to make sure that we get everything corrected and we get back to where we should be in terms of firearms analysis.' The lab at Fogarty Hall stopped conducting toolmark testing on firearms, or how examiners determine if a cartridge or shell is fired from a specific gun, last August after casings matched to a Glock pistol seized as evidence in the Pawtucket murder case matched a different firearm in possession of the Boston Police Department. The suspension of toolmark testing was made public on Sept. 3, 2024, by the Rhode Island Office of Attorney General. A report published last October by California-based consultant Ronald Nichols, who formerly worked for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, found there was a lack of diligence and confirmation bias — the principle that if you know what you're looking for, you're more likely to find it — on the part of all three forensic examiners who performed toolmark analysis at the state lab. All three staffers have since left the lab. Confirmation bias played role in invalid toolmark testing at R.I State Crime Lab, report finds The suspension prompted delays in nearly two dozen criminal cases, which underwent re-testing at labs in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Most of the firearms-related work is finished, though Hilliard said some cases still require verification, technical review, or administrative approval. Hilliard said testing at a Connecticut lab uncovered a problem in tying a Glock pistol to a 2021 shooting. He declined to name the municipality where the shooting occurred or share other details on the case. The state's public defender's office was unaware of a second case being flagged, but the chief public defender says his team is usually kept in the dark by the lab. 'We've never really gotten a list of cases that were examined and confirmed,' Collin Geiselman told Rhode Island Current. 'We kind of find out second-hand from some of the defense attorneys who are informed about it.' Geiselman said the lack of transparency also extends to the five-member commission overseeing the crime lab. The State Crime Laboratory Commission, which typically meets quarterly, includes the Attorney General, the Rhode Island State Police superintendent, a member of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association, and two public members appointed by the governor. Rarely are any defense attorneys picked for the commission that can meet behind closed doors to look over issues involving ongoing trials, Geiselman said. 'A criminal trial happens in a criminal justice system that is, by design, an adversarial system ' he said. 'And we only have one side of that adversarial system privy to that information that is supposed to be coming from a neutral body.' But a remedy could be coming via legislation under consideration in the Rhode Island Senate. The bill sponsored by Sen. Sam Bell, a Providence Democrat, would raise the number of commissioners from five to nine: three with expertise in law enforcement or prosecution, three with backgrounds in criminal defense, and three with experience in scientific research. Each commissioner would be appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate. Geiselman said he supports the bill and was preparing to submit written testimony. 'The makeup here would make it more transparent and more neutral,' Geiselman said. Bell said he introduced the bill because the existing commission 'isn't working.' Reforming the panel would also allow experts to properly assess whether ballistic and fingerprint evidence should continue to be relied upon in criminal cases, he said 'There's a wide array of academic studies that have come out really trashing the accuracy of forensic science,' Bell said in an interview. 'The fact that the lab is at URI gives us a great opportunity to approach this in a more academic way.' The Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association and Rhode Island State Police declined to comment on the proposal. Attorney General Peter Neronah's office acknowledged a request for comment, but did not send a response. Bell's bill is scheduled to have its initial hearing before the Senate Committee on Judiciary on Thursday. Since last October, all new toolmark testing for gun cases have been handled by two former New York City police examiners working at the crime lab after the departure of the three in-house staffers — at the cost of $175,500 for a six-months contract that expires in April. But the exams conducted by Stria Consulting Group still require final verification by examiners at SCL Forensics in Texas and FoCoSS Forensics in New Hampshire. Hilliard said the commission wanted the verification done to avoid any further potential for confirmation bias. Nichols' report detailed that an examiner shared information about testing on the Glock in the Pawtucket case with a coworker who was still testing the gun, giving the other examiner a false lead. Geiselman isn't sold that outsourcing the work will lead to more accurate results. 'These other labs certainly aren't receiving these samples in a vacuum — they're probably hearing about what happened at the lab here in Rhode Island and know things have to be re-tested,' he said. 'And that leads to confirmation bias.' Hilliard lamented the reliance of third-party labs, mainly due to their slow turnaround times. 'Those people are doing other cases as well,' he said. Hilliard hopes the lab will return its toolmark verification fully in-house after passing the accreditation process, but that's assuming the lab can hire two new examiners, one of whom is a supervisor for the toolmarks team. One of the lab's firearms technicians is being trained to conduct toolmark examinations though Hilliard said that employee likely won't be ready for the job until early next year. Hilliard said a candidate interviewed for the lead examiner role who passed a competency test and toured the lab turned down a job offer, saying the salary was too low. URI's website lists a salary range of $70,971 to $107,830 for the lead examiner position which will supervise a new toolmarks team. Hilliard said the applicant sought upward of $150,000 to consider working at the lab. 'That salary range is above my salary range,' said Hilliard, who makes $143,627. Hilliard said the lab will conduct a study whether to raise the pay rate, but he doubts doing so will attract any additional candidates. 'You're looking for somebody with 10-plus years of experience,' he said. 'And these days, people who do that can work as consultants and make their full amount of salary within half the time they'd normally work at the laboratory.' Hilliard is hopeful about a standard examiner candidate who is scheduled to tour the lab on March 25. The examiner salary ranges from $65,980 to $100,314, according to the online job posting. As the lab continues to court applicants, Hilliard said he will likely extend Stria's contract, which was slated to end in April. The State Crime Lab Commission is next scheduled to meet May 1. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Yahoo
Rhode Island state crime lab faces full accreditation review amid forensic errors
SOUTH KINGSTOWN - A state laboratory that examines and analyzes gun-related evidence in Rhode Island criminal cases is scheduled for its own full-blown examination by an accrediting board this weekend. Last year, the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory suspended certain in-house forensic work after it became clear that employees in its facility had linked spent bullet shells from the scene of a 2021 Pawtucket homicide to the wrong gun. Since then, the lab has relied on mutual aid from other New England states and private contractors for certain work that involves identifying connections between bullets and the guns that fire them. The lab has also learned about another case of misidentification, akin to the Pawtucket case, that also dates back to 2021, said Dennis Hilliard, the lab's director. Two examiners from a private contracting company will help at the lab during the upcoming accreditation assessment on the weekend of March 17, Hilliard said. Those same outside examiners, Hilliard said, have helped with the lab's workload following the departure of three employees who were involved in the "misidentification" in the Pawtucket case. The ANSI National Accreditation Board, which is a subsidiary of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is expected to carry out the accreditation assessment next month. ANAB assesses forensic laboratories, forensic services and police crime units for compliance with internationally recognized standards. The Rhode Island lab, which went through a full assessment in 2023, was due for a partial assessment this year. But due to the recent issues, the accreditation board is providing another full assessment, Hilliard said. Some work performed in Connecticut, Hilliard added, brought attention to another previous misidentification by Rhode Island's in-house analysts. Like the situation in Pawtucket, the misidentification involved a shooting that took place in 2021, Hilliard said. He declined to identify the particular shooting case. The office of Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha has been notified of the misidentification, Hilliard added. The particular work initially handled by some other state facilities received priority status due to the court schedule. It involved 17 cases, Hilliard said. Massachusetts' state police lab handled 13 of the cases, New Hampshire's state police lab handled one and a lab administered by Connecticut's state Department of Public Safety handled three, Hilliard said. The previous lab work that has drawn scrutiny falls into a discipline known as toolmark analysis. A bullet is a projectile. But before its discharge through the barrel of a gun, it's part of an assembly known as a cartridge, which includes not only the bullet but other components, such as the propellant, and the case that holds it all together. Many people casually refer to such cases as bullet cases, but experts scrupulously refer to them as cartridge cases. When someone fires a bullet, different components within the gun, such as the firing pin, leave distinctive marks on the case, which typically falls on the ground. Then, if the shooting itself is a crime, investigators are likely to collect the cases as evidence at the scene. The mark left by the firing pin is like a fingerprint. If detectives recover a suspected gun, analysis at a crime lab with microscopes can often determine, very authoritatively, if the firing pin of that particular gun, and only that gun, created the toolmark on the case. Due to its reliance on contractors right now, the lab is not positioned to do as much work with microscopes, Hilliard said. In general, a full examination with the scopes is not happening in non-homicide investigations when investigators haven't identified a suspect or they haven't seized a gun as evidence, he said. The lab is open to making an exception in a special circumstance, he said. The lab continues to process evidence into a system maintained by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network catalogues images of the marks on cartridge cases. The system detects similarities in the images. It can tip off investigators if a particular gun is responsible for cases discarded at a particular crime scene or at multiple crime scenes. The work handled by counterpart labs in other states was part of an overall caseload of about 30 pending cases, involving 36 defendants, which the lab focused on last year after suspending its in-house firearms examinations and analysis. Most of the firearms-related work is complete although some of it awaits verification or technical review or administrative review, Hilliard said. The presence of outside examiners represents a deliberate strategy to shift away from certain firearms-related lab assistance that the counterpart-labs in other states provided to Rhode Island last year without charging for it on a mutual aid basis. The only expense to Rhode Island taxpayers stemmed from shipping the firearms or other types of evidence, Hilliard said, adding that Rhode Island must cover any travel costs for out-of-state examiners who appear in local court. But Hilliard didn't want to abuse the good intentions of such mutual-aid support. The lab has taken steps to rely more heavily on private contractors and to pay for that it has tapped money that became available after the departure of three in-house staffers. New York-based Stria Consulting Group has supplied the two examiners working under a six-month contract. The lab, which has a budget of $1.7 million, in the fiscal year that ends June 30, continues to seek qualified candidates for jobs requiring firearms examination and analysis. This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Fallout of forensic errors: RI crime lab faces accreditation review
