4 gaffes leave blot on DNA files – ex-staffer

OVER THE past year, the state’s DNA data bank has botched identifications in three murder cases and falsified a key document in a fourth case, an ex-official told the Daily Newson Friday.

The revelations emerged in an open letter sent by Brian Gestring, a member of the state Commission on Forensic Science, to the panel.

The three alleged errors didn’t cause any false arrests or convictions, according to Gestring. But the bungled IDs should serve as a wakeup call for data-bank officials, he said.

“This has to be fixed. This is a huge problem,” Gestring (photo) said in the letter, which was reviewedbyTheNews.

“Four catastrophic failures in one year. Would you fly that airline?”

According to Gestring, the botchedmatchesby the data bank — which is maintained by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services — affected cases in the city, Nassau County and Erie County.

Gestring did not reveal the spe- cific cases that were affected. But red-faced officials had to call prosecutors and disclose the errors, he said.

Janine Kava, a spokeswoman for the Department of Criminal Justice Services, which oversees the data bank, sharply disputed Gestring’s claims.

“This missive by a disgruntled former employee misrepresents the facts,” she said.

“The division isunaware of any instances in which an incorrect DNA identification has resulted in a wrongful arrest or prosecution. Mr. Gestring also fails to mention that DCJS has internal processes in place to identify errors and address them. It is telling that this individual waited months until after he was fired for inappropriate behavior to raise this nonissue and extol his own virtue.”

The falsified certification involved the Suffolk County murder investigation of John Bittrolf, imprisoned in 2017 for the killing of two prostitutes, Gestring said. The Legal Aid Society immediately called for an investigation of the foulups. “He raises some troubling and frightening issues and we want an investigation by the governor’s office and the inspector general’s office,” said Julie Fry, a lawyer in the society’sDNA unit. Gestring was fired in March as the department’s director of forensic science after being accused of sexual harassment. He claims the allegations were trumped up and came from the counsel Gina Bianchi and Kim Schiavone, the manager of the data bank who oversaw the errors. He said it was retaliation for the fact that he was raising concerns.

“Schiavone and Bianchi created a toxic culture within (forensic science) that I spent years trying to fix,” he wrote.

However, it was a state police employee who made the allegations against Gestring, a Cuomo administration source said.

Gestring said that forensic panel chairman Mark Green, a senior official in criminal justice services and former Monroe County district attorney, was aware of the failures and the false certification but did not disclose them because Green was close to Bianchi.

“The problem here is that DCJS wants to do oversight, but doesn’t want oversight itself,” he said. “It’s clear that . . . the state DNA data bank must have significant oversight and must be transparent to avoid catastrophe.”

That potential catastrophe could be a person wrongly convicted of a crime or a guilty man allowed to walk the street and hurt someone else, he said. “These cases are canaries in the coal mine,” he said. “Other people can make mistakes. We can’t.”