TEXAS:
Crime lab doesn't need to be separated from HPD----Real issue isn't
conflict of interest but bad management
State Sen. John Whitmire recently decided that the crime lab problems of
the Houston Police Department and the Department of Public Safety should
be addressed at public hearings. He even considers requiring labs, because
of a potential "conflict of interest," to be separated from the police.
Though agreeing there is a major problem with the labs, I respectfully
suggest the senator may be throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It's not about a conflict of interest, but it is about bad management.
When dealing with crime, one of the roles of the police and the district
attorney is to identify the guilty and protect the innocent. Labs, as well
as crime scene investigators and detectives, work to collect information
and evidence for identifying, apprehending and convicting criminals. To
remove the lab from the authority of the police would only benefit the lab
administrators by: (1) eliminating the management above them (Who wouldn't
like to be independent in their own work?), (2) the defense when the lab
fails to complete its responsibilities before trial and (3) commercial
labs by shipping more business (and profits) to them.
Who then holds these independent entities responsible for court deadlines?
What determines the labs' case priorities? The investigators and their
supervisors now do but, as soon as the labs are not part of the police,
how would we motivate them to put important cases first? Its kind of like
trying to get the appliance technician to respond to your home when you
are actually there. It ain't going to happen.
And how far do you take this separation? Should crime scene investigators
be prevented from taking fingerprints? Evidentiary photos? What of the
interviews conducted by detectives? Do we create investigators not part of
the police because we suspect there is a conflict when cops do what they
were created for? The lab is a police function by its very definition. Its
purpose is no different than that of an officer collecting and comparing
fingerprints. Its object is to determine the facts - no more and no less.
The real issue is management being held accountable. The HPD lab has been
underfunded and understaffed, as documented by the Chronicle. With a
hiring freeze and limited funding of the lab, one gets the impression that
no one in management was addressing the lab's systemic problems.
Labs don't need to be separated from the police. What they may need, in
the short term, is separate funding so that money for positions, training
and equipment are not diverted to less critical but more immediate needs.
They need to be held accountable for meeting appropriate standards. They
must be audited regularly against those standards to identify
shortcomings. Finally, independent follow-up is required to monitor
compliance. And it needs to be published. Secrecy is an anathema to a
democratic society.
The management of HPD and the Harris County district attorney's office
need to be held accountable. The good news is that a new chief and mayor
are attempting to address the problem. The bad news is that the DA's
office is only now getting on the bandwagon.
If Whitmire is really interested in a conflict of interest, he might want
to look into how the DA, and state law, allowed a Houston police officer
to serve on one of the grand juries that investigated the HPD lab. That's
a conflict of interest.
(source: Houston Chronicle, Viewpoints, (Karson is a lecturer in criminal
justice at the University of Houston-Downtown)
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Woman Set For KFC Testimony Missing
In Henderson, law enforcement officers are searching for a Tyler woman who
was scheduled to testify Thursday before a Rusk County jury hearing
testimony in the 1983 Kentucky Fried Chicken murders.
Kyle Freeman, Rusk County district attorney, said the woman was subpoenaed
to testify, but failed to appear.
"She is a person of interest and she is being looked for," he said.
One source close to the investigation said the woman was a "lady of the
night," that could have information into the unsolved murders.
FIVE MURDERED
The murders of 5 Rusk County residents, who were taken from a Kentucky
Fried Chicken in Kilgore on Sept. 23, 1983, have not been solved.
According to earlier reports of the murders, investigators determined
suspects forced their way into the back door, abducted the five victims
from the restaurant and took them to a rural Rusk County oil field on
Walker King Road.
Four victims were then made to lie on their stomachs with arms folded
under their heads and were each shot at least 2 times.
Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; Joey Johnson, 20; David Maxwell, 20;
and Monte Landers, 19, were found dead near a remote oil field, hours
after they had disappeared from the Kilgore restaurant.
Mrs. Hughes apparently tried to escape, but was shot in the back, then
shot in the back of the head.
Her body was found 200 feet away from the other victims.
CASE MOVES FORWARD
In September 2003, grand jurors heard much evidence by both county and
state prosecutors. But after 5 months of testimony, no action was taken in
the case.
Both state and local officials said, "We are closer than ever to solving
this case."
In August 2002, records obtained by the Tyler Morning Telegraph showed
investigators were focusing on several Texas Department of Criminal
Justice inmates and DNA samples had been taken from them to compare to the
evidence collected at the KFC crime scene.
TDCJ inmates Darnell Hartsfield, Romeo Pinkerton, Gregory Eugene Muse and
Robert Louis Waters have all had DNA samples taken from them in the past
year, according to the records.
All four men testified before the 2003 grand jury, as did active and
retired law enforcement officers and many others associated with the case.
Lisa Tanner, assistant Texas Attorney General and several state
investigators are also working the case, but Ms. Tanner will not divulge
if there are any new leads.
However, after the conclusion of the grand jury in February, one state
official said the attorney general's office would not take the case back
to a grand jury, unless they had specific information.
TO BE CALLED BACK
Freeman would not say if the grand jury heard any other testimony in the
murders on Thursday, but the panel was adjourned by State District Judge
Clay Gossett.
Freeman and said the jurors would be called back to hear testimony.
"I already let it slip that the attorney general's office only has one
case in Rusk County that they are actively working on," Freeman said when
asked if the jurors were hearing KFC testimony.
Ms. Tanner would not comment on the case or how it was going, but Freeman
said it is a current investigation.
"We are actively investigating the case as has been the story all along,"
he said.
Jurors did hand up 69 indictments, 13 of which are considered secret.
Freeman would not say on Thursday if any of the 13 secret indictments were
related to the KFC murders.
"When the people who have been indicted are arrested then their names will
be released. That is why these cases are secret," he said.
(source: Tyler Morning Telegraph)
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County jail withheld water, medication from mentally ill man
A mentally ill inmate in the Dallas County jail nearly died in April after
jailers cut off his drinking water for at least 13 days and denied him his
psychiatric medications for 2 months, an internal investigation by the
Sheriff's Department found.
James Monroe Mims, 53, was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital on April 9
after jail trusties found him on the floor of his cell, semiconscious,
incoherent and soaked in his own waste, investigators wrote in their
report.
At Parkland, emergency room nurses immediately saw that Mr. Mims was
critically ill, suffering from severe dehydration and kidney failure. He
had pressure sores on his shoulder, back and hip, indicating that he had
been lying unaided for a long period of time, nurses told investigators.
Mr. Mims spent three months in Parkland, the first of those months in
intensive care, before doctors pulled him through, family members said.
His mother, Cleo McGee of Dallas, said that before her son's recovery, a
doctor advised her to consider hospice care because he was expected to
die.
"I said, 'No, my son will live,'" Ms. McGee said.
Sgt. Don Peritz, spokesman for Sheriff Jim Bowles and the Sheriff's
Department, said he could not comment because of a potential lawsuit by
Mr. Mims' family.
The family's attorney, David Finn, described the case as an outrage and
said he wants Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill to convene a grand
jury to investigate.
"If somebody denied water to a horse or a dog for two weeks, they'd be
prosecuted," said Mr. Finn, who lost the 2002 Republican primary for
district attorney to Mr. Hill. "This is sickening."
Mr. Hill's spokeswoman, Rachel Horton, said the district attorney's office
would consider an investigation if Mr. Finn requested one. She said he
apparently had not done so by Thursday.
Mr. Mims was charged in 1978 with 2 counts of attempted murder in the
shooting of two Dallas police officers during a domestic standoff. He was
declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, however, and has been in
state mental hospitals since.
Dallas County judges and juries have repeatedly found him mentally ill and
incompetent to stand trial. It was another such hearing that caused
deputies to return him to Dallas from a state hospital in Terrell on Feb.
9.
>From then until April 9, investigators wrote, Mr. Mims never received the
anti-psychotic and anti-seizure medications that the mental hospital had
sent with him.
The jail's psychiatric staff never saw him, despite what jail employees
said were repeated referrals from jailers, investigators wrote.
For at least 13 days, Mr. Mims had no water because the jail had cut off
water to his cell, and he was too mentally unstable to demand water,
investigators wrote. It was the lack of water that nearly killed Mr. Mims,
Parkland nurses told sheriff's investigators.
Jail employees said they cut off Mr. Mims' water because he had flooded
his cell, but jail records did not support those claims, investigators
wrote. At the time, the jail had no policy limiting how long time an
inmate could go without water or even documenting how long the water had
been cut off, they wrote.
The jail has since changed its water policies, investigators said.
Mr. Mims' hospitalization came less than two years after a head
psychiatrist at the jail resigned amid disclosures that inmates were not
getting their medications and were receiving little or no psychiatric
monitoring.
County officials responded by approving a contract with the University of
Texas Medical Branch in Galveston to provide medical and psychiatric care
to jail inmates. Current medical and psychiatric staff members are
employees of UTMB.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
