2015/03/10

The Washington Post March 6, 2015: D.C. mayor orders audit of crime lab amid dispute over DNA testing

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has commissioned an audit of the city’s new crime lab after forensic experts hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Office said they discovered errors in some of the lab’s DNA analyses, the mayor’s office said Friday.

Bowser (D) has contacted the national governing board for DNA laboratories, the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board, to investigate allegations by the U.S. Attorney’s Office that the lab has misstated the likelihood that a particular person’s DNA was left at a crime scene. Lab officials have defended their work.

The dispute between federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) was first reported Friday by The Washington Post.

The audit is scheduled to begin Monday. “We share the same goal as the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is to have a quality lab that does work that everyone has confidence in,” said Kevin Donahue, the District’s acting deputy mayor for public safety. more