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soothsayer

(38,601 posts)
Thu Mar 25, 2021, 03:19 PM Mar 2021

DC's crime lab is under criminal investigation related to its handling of firearms evidence. Team of

DC's crime lab is under criminal investigation related to its handling of firearms evidence. Team of experts said the lab's firearms unit should immediately cease its casework, citing 'very serious' problems with lab management.

https://wtop.com/dc/2021/03/first-on-wtop-dc-forensic-lab-under-criminal-investigation-over-firearms-case/

Snip

The allegations against the D.C. crime lab managers, and the existence of the criminal investigation into them, are revealed in documents filed in D.C. Superior Court earlier this week. Acting U.S. Attorney for D.C. Channing Phillips is seeking an immediate hearing before Judge Milton C. Lee on the matter.
Last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. and the Office of the Attorney General launched an outside review of cases handled by the forensic sciences lab after the discovery of the botched 2017 analysis that linked cartridge casings from two different murders.

The defendant at the center of the one of those cases, Rondell McLeod, is set to stand trial in June on murder charges, and has sought for months to have the indictment dismissed, citing the faulty analysis.

WTOP first reported last fall that prosecutors had retained an outside “audit team,” made up of some of the top forensic firearms experts in the country, to review the D.C. lab’s firearms casework, evidently triggered by the discovery of the 2017 error.

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