The Houston Chronicle reports that the Houston Police Department has discovered evidence from perhaps 8,000 cases that was improperly tagged and lost in its property room. The evidence, from cases that occurred between 1979 and 1991, was in 280 mislabeled boxes found in the department’s property room in August 2003.
The boxes sat unopened for a year, even as an ongoing Harris County District Attorney’s Office effort to retest DNA from 379 cases stalled because of missing evidence in 20 cases. Investigators began opening the boxes last week and found an array of evidence that ranged from a fetus and human body parts to clothes and a bag of Cheetos.
Link: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2762448