The headline on an excellent editoral in The Enterprise today is “A Broken Link at State Police“. Highlights:
DNA identification is probably the biggest advance in criminal investigations since the advent of fingerprinting a century ago. DNA can pinpoint a criminal suspect with extreme accuracy, but if the technology is misused or abused, it becomes essentially worthless…. But like all technological advances, it is only as useful as the weakest link in the chain – the human being responsible for handling the evidence. At the Massachusetts State Police lab, that link wasn’t weak – it was broken.
The Herald’s Casey Ross also has an arresting article under the headline “Deluge of Challenges Will Follow DNA Lab’s Blunders“. Highlights there are:
A top public defender is already calling for a review not just of the cases handled by the administrator, but of the rules governing procedures employed by police and prosecutors. The attorney, William Leahy, wrote a letter to [Public Safety Secretary Kevin] Burke requesting that a special commission be created to investigate the causes of wrongful convictions.
“The larger issue is the continuing threat to the accuracy of verdicts in Massachusetts criminal cases caused by both human error and deeply-flawed but long-established procedures which virtually guarantee a . . . stream of wrongful convictions,”wrote Leahy, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
