(Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle)
The City Council agreed Wednesday to hand control of Houston’s scandal-plagued crime lab to a nine-member board of lawyers, academics, business people and a state legislator in hopes that plucking it from the police department will protect it from a pro-prosecution bias.
On a 15-2 vote, the council approved creation of a publicly funded nonprofit organization that will run the city’s $21 million annual evidence-testing operation.
As in most major American cities, the crime lab currently is operated by the police department. For the past decade, Houston’s crime lab has been the subject of credibility-damaging headlines about leaky roofs allowing contamination of evidence, audits that raise questions about the integrity of the testing and exonerations of people wrongfully convicted, in part, on the basis of the crime lab’s work.
Mayor Annise Parker has pushed for a measure of independence for the crime lab to insulate it from pressure by police, prosecutors and politicians. Doing so, she said, is crucial to serve justice.
“We have to continue to make progress to restore faith in our forensic activities here in Houston,” Parker said after the vote. “It is just as evil, just as evil, to allow someone who has committed a heinous crime to go free to, perhaps, commit another as it is to incorrectly and wrongly convict someone who is innocent.”
(Read the full story at The Houston Chronicle)
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