The stunning discovery of piles of evidence in a rotting old building last week put Detroit on a growing national list of crime labs accused in recent years of making big mistakes, says the Detroit Free Press. Detroit joins labs in Houston, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington state plagued with similar problems. “This is just another glaring example of what is now an epidemic in crime lab negligence,” said Drew Findling, chairman of the Forensic Discipline Committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Many legal experts want to see federal oversight . The Detroit Police Department has been under federal oversight since 2003 for incidents involving excessive force. Gerald Lorence, an appellate criminal defense lawyer, said, “Get a special person in here to examine what happened and why. From the very beginning, it was a complete whitewash.”