2022/06/13

Forensic Magzine June 6, 2022: Bill Proposes Making Troubled D.C. Lab an Independent Agency

Seven years after ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) forced the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences to suspend DNA casework due to “inadequate practices,” and one year after the board revoked the lab’s accreditation, there is finally movement on the future of the once-heralded lab.

Late last week, nine D.C. Councilmembers introduced legislation to completely overhaul the Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS), which has been unaccredited and unable to analyze evidence since April 2, 2021.

“It’s hard to overstate the harm that the collapse of the District’s Department of Forensic Sciences has caused to the District’s criminal justice system,” said Councilmember Charles Allen, chair of the Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. “The ripple effects are massive and will take years to fix.”

The $220 million facility was built in 2012 to much ado, including praise that it would help quickly process evidence all around D.C. But by early 2015, two audits found that the lab’s DNA procedures were inadequate, jeopardizing nearly 200 cases. At the time, D.C. district prosecutors within the U.S. attorney’s office alerted city officials to what they described as numerous errors with DNA analysis performed at the lab. After an almost complete personnel overhaul, a new director said the lab was meeting industry standards again by 2018. more