Criminal cases in jeopardy by snafu

4,200 more cases reviewed after property room sprinkler breaks

More than 4,200 criminal cases are being reviewed after a sprinkler malfunctions in the Houston Police Department’s property room, criminal defense attorneys say.

More than 4,200 criminal cases involving 15,000 pieces of evidence are being reviewed after a sprinkler malfunctioned in the Houston Police Department’s property room, according to Houston’s criminal defense bar.

Tyler Flood, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said Thursday that defense lawyers in the organization have been given unofficial estimates by prosecutors overseeing some of the cases that may be affected.

“It could really affect a lot of cases,” Flood said. “It’s an administrative nightmare for the DA’s office.”

The cases join more than 1,000 others under review at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office caused by evidence problems, including what is believed to have been the improper destruction of 21,000 pieces of evidence by the Precinct 4 constable’s office.

The evidence destruction, which began with deputies trying to clean out a stuffed property room, prompted District Attorney Devon Anderson to call for a centralized evidence room depository to house evidence from the multitude of law enforcement agencies across Harris County.

In the latest snafu, officials would not estimate how much evidence could have been damaged by the sprinkler but said it is likely to be far less than the 15,000 pieces of evidence affected — if any.

Most of the evidence was kept in sealed plastic bags that had been stored

in cardboard boxes, officials said.

“The sprinkler system damaged only a portion of the first row,” acting Police Chief Martha Montalvo said Thursday, as she explained the layout of the room. “It’s not going to be 15,000.”

The entire facility on Washington Street holds about 500,000 pieces of evidence in secured rooms and walk-in freezers, she said.

In this case, one sprinkler head went off about 12:15 p.m. Tuesday in a corner of a walk-in freezer. The entire freezer holds about 15,000 articles of evidence, like blood samples and clothes or weapons with DNA, on rows of shelves in the room.

She said initial reports are that no rape kits were on the shelves.

Just blocks away in the Harris County Criminal Courthouse on Thursday, prosecutors were alerting defendants and their lawyers their cases may be affected, but the district attorney’s office administration was saying little about the possible scope of the problem.

“At this time, we have no comment other than we have made the defense bar and the public defender’s office aware of the situation,” said Jeff McShan, spokesman for the district attorney’s office.

Because of the way evidence is typically stored, it could be days before an accurate tally emerges.

The police chief painted a picture of a piece of evidence with DNA on it, like an article of clothing, sealed in a plastic bag, then put in a sturdy manila envelope and finally boxed up with other similar pieces.

One box could contain dozens of pieces of evidence, and none of the actual evidence might be affected.

Those different layers of wrapping are generally sealed with tape bearing the initials of crime scene investigators or lab workers that stays on until it is unwrapped in court for a jury to examine.

Montalvo said property room technicians are being aided by lab workers with the Houston Forensic Science Center to ensure evidence is handled properly and to repackage everything that was affected.

“Until all affected items are opened and inspected, there is no determination if any evidence has or has not been compromised,” Montalvo said.

The Houston Forensic Science Center, which was created in the wake of widespread problems with HPD’s crime lab, is an independent crime lab.

Ramit Plushnick-Masti, a spokeswoman for the agency, said lab workers were invited in to help clean up and ensure that evidence is not cross contaminated.

Evidence in criminal cases has to adhere to a strict chain of custody to be admissible in court, and the lab workers are qualified to maintain that chain.

In the Precinct 4 constable’s office, more than 20,000 pieces of evidence were destroyed, forcing the district attorney’s office to dismiss more than 150 pending criminal cases and potentially endangering more than 1,000 others.

Evidence control and cataloguing problems also have been uncovered in Precincts 3, 6 and 7, according to interviews and audits obtained by the Houston Chronicle.