Lost / Tossed DNA evidence in rape cases

Kacey

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The Denver Post is running a 4 day series on lost / tossed out DNA evidence in rape cases - from both sides, the accused and the victim.
Bad faith difficult to prove (the accused's side)
The proof of Clarence Moses-EL's guilt or innocence may well have been written in DNA code on two bedsheets, a sexual-assault kit and a pink and black outfit worn by a Denver rape victim.
From prison, he won a judge's permission to test the evidence and persuaded fellow inmates to pitch in $1,000 for the lab work.
Denver police packaged the items and labeled the box "DO NOT DESTROY."
Then, they threw it in a dumpster.
The move violated a court order and the Denver Police Department's own evidence policies.
More than 19 years after his conviction, Moses-EL remains behind bars, with no way to free himself from a 48-year sentence for a rape he says he didn't commit.
He is one of 141 prisoners The Denver Post has found whose bids for freedom have stalled because officials lost or destroyed DNA. Whether guilty or innocent, they are victims of a U.S. Supreme Court decision justifying negligence in evidence handling. The ruling allows destruction unless inmates can meet the nearly impossible task of proving authorities acted out of malice, or "bad faith."
Nearly two decades after the 1988 decision, DNA analysis has evolved into criminal justice's most reliable tool for uncovering the truth. Yet the system continues trashing samples like the ones that so far have exposed more than 200 wrongful convictions.
"They broke their own rules and threw out the only key to my freedom," Moses-EL said from Kit Carson Correctional Facility in Burlington. "If that ain't bad faith, man, I don't know what is."

Missing rape kits foil justice (the victim's side):

Socorro, N.M. - Bruised and shaking, Joanna watched the doctor prepare the instruments that could cull traces of a gang rape from her body.
At a party the night before, three fellow New Mexico Tech students had drugged her, overpowered her and raped her, she told the hospital staff.
Now, she was lying unclothed on a cold table splashed with bright light, allowing another set of prying hands - a female physician's - to probe her body.
<snip>
Only a week later, the Socorro County district attorney gave her a jolt: the hospital had thrown away biological evidence from her case, in violation of its own policy. Among the casualties: a urine specimen the doctor had characterized as containing a "date-rape drug," according to records.
Because of the lost evidence, the criminal charges against Depesh Patel, Ibrahim Hassan and Sandro Santos were dropped. None has responded to repeated interview requests from The Denver Post.
Today, eight months later, neither local authorities in the tiny town of 5,000 nor hospital officials have provided Joanna and her family a full explanation of how the evidence was destroyed - and by whom.
New Mexico statutes, like those in most states, do not require formal inquiries into the destruction of biological evidence in criminal cases. Nor do they require preservation of biological evidence at the outset of criminal investigations.

<snip>
The problem flows from widespread ignorance, rape-crisis experts say. Ignorance about the kits' forensic value. Ignorance about rape trauma. Ignorance about the small spaces the kits consume. And ignorance about how DNA may render rape statutes of limitations obsolete.
The original articles are quite long, and I've only excerpted small pieces here. Comments?
 

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