Letters about fingerprint expert top 2,600

Lawyers warned of examiner’s mistakes

Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office has sent more than 2,600 letters to Orlando- area defense attorneys, warning them that their clients may have been harmed by a fingerprint expert who made mistakes.

The defendants involved include Casey Anthony, acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, and death-row inmate Bessman Okafor, convicted of murdering a man in 2012 to keep him from testifying at Okafor’s-trial. At issue is whether any suspects were wrongly arrested, convicted, jailed or punished because of the work of Marco Palacio, a 18-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff ’s Office.

Last week, the State Attorney’s Office discovered that the Sheriff’s Office was no longer allowing him to analyze prints.

Other print experts at the Sheriff ’s Office scrambled to rework all of Palacio’s active cases, according to an email from an assistant state attorney to staff at the prosecutor’s office, and he had been transferred to a different job: handling evidence.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman

Capt. Angelo Nieves would not answer questions on Monday about the allegations against Palacio, except to say that he is the subject of an internal investigation that began in October.

Nieves said he knows of no cases in which someone has been falsely convicted because of Palacio’s work.

In its letter to defense attorneys, the State Attorney’s Office described the problem with Palacio as “performance issues. … clerical errors, failure to identify prints of value and the mislabeling of print cards.”

Nieves did not explain why the State Attorney’s Office was not told in October about the problems.

Records from the State Attorney’s Office show that lawyers there discovered the problem by accident last week when Assistant State Attorney Linda Drane Burdick asked Palacio to come to a courtroom to fingerprint a suspect and he refused, saying he was no longer allowed to do that.

Assistant State Attorney Mark Wixtrom followed up and learned from Steve Foster, the lawyer for the Sheriff’s Office, that Palacio had been removed from his job as a print examiner and that the sheriff ’s other print examiners were reworking all of his active cases.

“It’s potentially a big deal,” Orlando defense attorney Hal Uhrig said.

“The wrong name on the wrong card, and all the sudden you get confirmation of a print that’s not there. That’s serious stuff,” he said.

There is no indication in the warning letter, Uhrig said, that Palacio intentionally tried to harm anyone — only that he was sometimes sloppy.

On Friday, Eryka Washington, spokeswoman for State Attorney Aramis Ayala, said staffers had identified more than 800 cases in which Palacio was listed as a witness.

Employees worked over the weekend to identify more, and by midday Monday, the total had climbed to 2,640, she said. Of those, 130 are still active. Her office will no longer allow Palacio to testify as an expert, she said.

It is sending notices to everyone whose case had Palacio listed as a witness or potential witness, she said, even if he did not testify or do any print analysis.

The intent, she said, is “to make sure everybody that has been touched by him is notified.”

Her office is not trying to determine whether anyone was wrongly convicted or jailed. That’s the job of defense attorneys, she said.

The Office of Public Defender for Orange and Osceola counties received hundreds of warning letters, said Melissa Vickers, chief assistant to Public Defender Robert Wesley.

“You’re literally going to have to go through each case one by one,” she said.

It will be a huge undertaking, she said. Most of the 2,640 cases were handled by her office.

She and her staff must now determine whether Palacio’s opinion about a print was key to each client’s conviction or guilty plea, she said.

Lawyers from her office could be in court as early as next week, asking judges to require the state to provide more information.

Orlando attorney Lyle Mazin said he has received warning letters on behalf of five clients.

“Any competent defense attorney at this point is going to be looking at his witness list to see if that analyst is on it,” he said.

But he predicted that few of the 2,640 cases are in jeopardy.

Often, law enforcement agencies don’t check a crime scene for prints, he said. They rely on other evidence, such as eyewitness accounts, surveillance video or DNA.

And when they do use prints, seldom are they the sole piece of evidence implicating a suspect, he said.

“I do not see this as being a substantial issue for the State Attorney’s Office,” Mazin said.

It will not be a factor in the Anthony case because she was found not guilty.

Palacio was listed as a potential state witness, said Anthony’s defense attorney Jose Baez, but authorities found no prints at the scene, and Palacio was never called.

In the Okafor case, prosecutors relied on cellphone records, eyewitness testimony and a tracking device Okafor wore on his ankle to help convince jurors that he was guilty.