DNA Review Yields No New Exonerations

RICHMOND -- More than two years into a massive, unprecedented review of biological evidence that could free wrongly convicted people, Virginia's crime lab has spent $1.4 million to search 534,000 old case files, identifying 2,167 that contain forensic evidence with named suspects and submitting 316 samples for DNA testing, state officials said.

The decades-old samples include strands of hair, blood-stained cotton swabs and quarter-inch cuttings from semen-stained clothing from an era when DNA testing was not widely used in criminal cases, lab director Peter M. Marone said. Not all of the 2,167 samples will be tested, because the state has decided to focus only on cases involving violent offenses that triggered lengthy prison sentences. So far, 10 of the 316 samples sent to a private lab for testing contain DNA that does not match the felon's, Marone said.

But although the review is far from over, none of the samples has proven the innocence of any felons, he said. And in a recent interview, he distanced himself from a 2005 prediction by his predecessor that dozens of people would be exonerated within two years.

"This isn't easy," Marone said. "This isn't a TV show like 'CSI.' "

The review of the 534,000 files has been more complex than many experts had imagined, with multiple state agencies playing a role, defense attorneys questioning how it is being handled and Marone's Department of Forensic Science scrambling to secure additional funding.

"Have you ever seen a TV show where they say, 'We can't find anything'? Have you? That's the problem," Marone said. "In every one of those instances, they find evidence, and it's all done in 47 minutes. You know, it doesn't happen that way, especially in these older cases. The evidence isn't necessarily there."

The review flows out of a discovery made in 2001 by Marone's predecessor, Paul B. Ferrara. A new law had given felons the right to request DNA testing of old evidence. That fall, Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, which works on behalf of people it believes were wrongly convicted, asked Ferrara if any biological evidence had been preserved in the case of a Hanover County man convicted of rape. Marvin Anderson wanted to clear his name after spending 15 years in prison for a crime he insisted he did not commit.

Digging into Anderson's file, Ferrara found some yellowed cotton swabs, which he tested. Anderson, he determined, was not the rapist.

And the longtime lab director found something else: hundreds -- and later thousands -- of other manila folders that contained physical evidence. Most forensic analysts at the time simply threw away evidence after a defendant's appeals had run out. But Mary Jane Burton made a practice of stapling the samples to her worksheets.

"She was very big on demonstrative things," said Marone, who worked alongside Burton. "She wanted to be able to hold [samples] up to the jury and say, 'And these are the samples I collected from the pants. See here? And the checkered tablecloth? Here. It's red and white.' "

In September 2004, after further DNA testing of Burton's samples exonerated two other men, then-Gov. Mark R. Warner ordered additional testing.

A year later, Marone reported that two more men who had served long prison sentences were innocent, bringing the total number of exonerations from Burton's cases to five. So he broadened the review to include all cases handled by the state lab from 1973 through 1988, when Burton was on the job. There were 534,000.