August 8 TEXAS: FRUSTRATING DELAY----Funding issues stall long-running Houston police crime lab investigation. When Houston hired former U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich early this year, the outlook seemed brighter that someone would finally get to the bottom of the problems found throughout the Houston Police Department's crime lab. Bromwich, who conducted a similar investigation of problems at the FBI's national facility, assembled a crack team and moved swiftly to complete the first phase of the probe. Bromwich's initial report included allegations that lab analysts produced false results for tests on evidence that were never conducted. Those and other findings prompted Houston police officials to target for further investigation 700 additional cases in which people were convicted on evidence processed by the suspect employees. That in turn led Bromwich to increase the cost estimate for his probe to $3.8 million. City Council budgeted an initial $2.2 million for the total effort, of which about $1 million remains. Rather than allowing Bromwich to begin the next phase of the project using the remaining funds, Houston police officials have put the probe on hold while they analyze the additional costs and prepare a second budget request for City Council approval. The Chronicle's Roma Khanna and Steve McVicker reported that the decision will put the probe of the lab on hold at least 6 weeks. According to an e-mail from Brom-wich, he "is frustrated that we haven't been permitted to do any work for the past month our forensic scientists are eager to start the case reviews, which lie at the center of our work." City Controller Annise Parker expressed similar sentiments, describing police officials as gun-shy and calling on Mayor Bill White's administration to get on with it. Even Crime Lab Director Irma Rios wants the investigation to move quickly to a conclusion in order to clear up remaining issues with operations at her facility. Mayor White responds that he and Police Chief Harold Hurtt want the probe completed as soon as possible, but that Bromwich's request for an additional $1.6 million in taxpayer funds must be justified. "Our project manager was responsible for using his best efforts to keep both phase one and phase two within the scope of the amount of money allocated by council," White said. "The only reason for any delay was a substantial increase in his estimate." According to the mayor, the contract with Bromwich specifies that any major revision in the scope of work needs to be reviewed by Chief Hurtt and the stakeholder committee that hired the independent investigator. "I don't care whether it's a plumber or the pope," White said, "I'm not going to tell anybody that there's a blank check with no oversight from the city of Houston." White's attention to the fiscal issues is justifiable, but there is more at stake than tax dollars. Because of mistakes or fraud by crime lab analysts, innocent people might be in prison, while the guilty walk free. It's intolerable to have investigators sitting on their hands for months over funding questions that should have been foreseen or resolved quickly so the probe could continue. Bromwich should provide the city and the public with a detailed accounting of his cost estimates. The administration should move quickly to get City Council approval for the funds to complete the investigation. The crime lab scandal has lingered for three years. Its legacy of tainted evidence calls into question the fairness of criminal justice in Harris County. This inglorious chapter in the history of the Houston Police Department needs closure without further delay. (source: Editorial, Houston Chronicle) FLORIDA: Married to a murderer, 9-to-5 on the side of killers Remember the story of Rosalie Bolin, the woman who worked at the Hillsborough Public Defender's Office and one day up and married a convicted serial killer? She worked as a mitigation specialist and was married to a lawyer when she met Oscar Ray Bolin. The former carnival worker was in the midst of convictions, appeals and retrials in the murders of 3 women in Hillsborough and Pasco counties. When they married - on speaker phone, her in an apartment, him in jail - people felt something like horror for the families of Stephanie Collins, Natalie Blanche Holley and Teri Lynn Matthews. Longtime friends stopped speaking to her. So if you had to bet, 8 years later Rosalie Bolin would be: a) a regular on Jerry Springer; b) a big-haired, blackhearted woman writing prison romance novels; c) in serious therapy. The answer, like Rosalie herself, might surprise you. In an office near the county jail, she's at her desk, phone in her ear, bracelets clanking as she scratches notes on a legal pad. She's cajoling someone into getting records she needs, pronto. "Thank you, honey," she purrs into the phone. Propped at her elbow is a greeting card signed Oscar, from death row. These days, she's a private investigator who works with lawyers, mostly on murder cases. She sits in jail cells with defendants, goes through their medical and social service records, talks to people who knew them. Were they abused as children? Did they suffer head injuries that damaged their brains? Is there anything that might persuade a jury that this killer doesn't deserve to die? She also looks for mistakes in past trials, errors by judges or lawyers or detectives that could win a new day in court. "Most people collect antiques," she says. "I collect transcripts of rogue cops." Four years ago, she was there when convicted killer Anton Meyers led investigators to the spot in Lake Mary, where he buried a 14-year-old girl in 1987. There, they found remains believed to be hers; the grandparents who raised her never had her body to lay to rest. In a deal Rosalie helped broker, Meyers confessed, drew a map and traded his death sentence for life in prison. She says inmates trust her because she cares about what happens to them. Forgive the analogy, but it makes me think of people who work closely with caged tigers and get as comfortable as if they were playing with kittens, forgetting they're next to something powerful and unpredictable and capable of great harm. She has worked on hundreds of murder cases; this year judges appointed her to more than a dozen. This year she spoke at a seminar for lawyers and judges on the death penalty. She's not sure how many of them knew about her husband. Lawyers say she's good at what she does. Tampa attorney Anthony Marchese said a client wavering between a deal of life in prison or the risk of the death penalty if he went to trial was convinced when Rosalie "gave him a very personalized account of what death row was like." And about that marriage of hers? The lawyers don't ask. "Never have, never would, none of my business," says lawyer Nick Sinardi. "It's never come up." Never come up? Well, for those of us who do ask, no, no conjugal visits. Bolin - who was sentenced to death in all 3 murders and won retrials in each case twice - finally had a death sentence upheld by the Florida Supreme Court last year. Rosalie will see him through his remaining trials and appeals, and that is all their marriage is. "It works for me," she says. "A man in my life every day would be annoying." She says she doesn't believe in the death penalty, that killers should be studied, not executed. Okay. But marrying one? She still wears the 5-carat diamond from her first, 18-year marriage. "I earned every carat," she says, and that's all you get on the subject. So I can't explain Rosalie Bolin's life. All I can tell you is that she's somehow persevered, and that today, she'll be back in a courtroom with yet another accused killer at her side. (source: St. Petersburg Times) OHIO: Admitted Ohio highway shooter to plead guilty The mentally ill man who admitted committing a series of highway shootings that terrorized central Ohio has agreed to drop his insanity defense and plead guilty, a judge said Monday. Charles McCoy Jr.'s plea would avoid a 2nd trial. Jurors could not decide earlier this year whether McCoy was legally insane during the shootings, which happened over five months in 2003 and 2004. One woman was killed. Barring a last-minute change of heart by McCoy or prosecutors, McCoy will enter the plea Tuesday afternoon, Judge Charles Schneider said after meeting with McCoy's attorney Monday. With the plea, McCoy, 29, faces decades in prison for the shootings. Schneider said he will recommend that McCoy be ordered to serve his sentence in a prison mental health wing so he can be treated for his paranoid schizophrenia. Gail Knisley, 62, died November 25, 2003, while a friend was driving her to a doctor's appointment. Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien refused to confirm a deal had been reached but said an agreement would be discussed Tuesday. Messages seeking comment were left with McCoy's attorneys, who have said they would not confirm anything before O'Brien does. A mistrial was declared in May after a jury deliberated four days and took three votes on whether McCoy was legally insane, meaning he did not understand right from wrong. The defense had acknowledged McCoy was the shooter but argued he was innocent by reason of insanity. Prosecutors say that despite his mental illness, McCoy knew right from wrong. The 24-count indictment had included a possible death sentence. After the mistrial was declared, prosecutors had said they did not plan to seek the death penalty in the 2nd trial. The shootings frightened commuters and residents for months as bullets struck vehicles and houses at different spots along or near Interstate 270, which encircles Columbus and accommodates about 77,000 vehicles a day on average. During the trial, a psychiatrist for the defense said McCoy was desperate to rid himself of humiliating voices in his head that called him a "wimp" for not standing up to mocking from television programs and commercials. Toward the end of the shootings, he believed firing from overpasses would make news coverage of Michael Jackson stop. However, a psychiatrist for the prosecutors said McCoy showed he knew his actions were wrong by the steps he took to avoid capture, such as shooting in other counties when police and publicity focused on the Columbus area. When McCoy's father called him to say police wanted to test his guns, McCoy gave permission, then drove 36 hours straight to Las Vegas. However, he didn't change his license plates -- while the number was being broadcast nationwide -- and was captured there. (source: Associated Press)
