ROK Drop

By on March 22nd, 2011 at 7:00 am

Army slow to act as crime-lab worker falsified, botched tests

This news makes me sick.

For nearly three years, the military held the key to Roger House’s exoneration and didn’t tell him: A forensics examiner had botched a crucial lab test used in the Navy lieutenant’s court-martial.

In fact, the military had begun second-guessing a decade’s worth of tests conducted by its one-time star lab analyst, Phillip Mills.

Investigators discovered that Mills had cut corners and even falsified reports in one case. He found DNA where it didn’t exist, and failed to find it where it did. His mistakes may have let the guilty go free while the innocent, such as House, were convicted…

But the problem was bigger than just a lone analyst.

While a McClatchy investigation revealed that Mills’ mistakes undermined hundreds of criminal cases brought against military personnel, it also found that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory, near Atlanta, was lax in supervising Mills, slow to re-examine his work and slipshod about informing defendants. Officials appeared intent on containing the scandal that threatened to discredit the military’s most important forensics facility, which handles more than 3,000 criminal cases a year.

The military has never publicly acknowledged the extent of Mills’ mistakes nor the lab’s culpability. McClatchy pieced together the untold story by conducting dozens of interviews and reviewing internal investigations, transcripts and other documents.- McClatchy

Go to the link and read the whole article. Mills work has been a problem for almost a decade before anything was done. How many careers did he destroy and lives were ruined by him? It’s not just service members lives that got ruined but the effect that had on those people’s families. The lab did nothing. As I said, this news makes me sick.

Hat tip- The Agitator

- 84 views
5
  • someotherguy
    11:57 am on March 22nd, 2011 1

    This is so messed up.

  • ChickenHead
    1:02 pm on March 22nd, 2011 2

    How did they get by with these capers

    of mismanaged lab tests and papers?

    But despite all these fails,

    justice prevails,

    'cause we know all accused men are real rapers.

  • Korea Beat
    1:06 am on March 23rd, 2011 3

    Nothing new unfortunately, many crime labs have had nearly identical problems. There is a lot of housecleaning to do nationwide.

  • setnaffa
    5:48 am on March 23rd, 2011 4

    And others refused to point out the increasingly erratic nature of the murderer who gunned down the folks at Ft Hood.

    There is something wrong with the leadership…

  • Bill
    7:01 am on March 23rd, 2011 5

    There is little accountability the higher one is up in the military.

    Lt. Colonel Paul Yingling once wrote- "a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."

 

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