Image via Shutterstock.

Image via Shutterstock.

The ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board has ordered D.C.’s crime lab to halt all DNA testing after completing an audit and finding that the analysts “were not competent and were using inadequate procedures,” The Washington Post reports.

Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned the review last month after the U.S. Attorney’s Office alleged that the Department of Forensic Sciences’s DNA analyses contained errors. D.C. prosecutors stopped sending DNA evidence to the lab after outside experts reached different conclusions based on the same evidence. From the Post:

“In one federal case, prosecutors said, the D.C. lab concluded that a defendant’s DNA could have been on the magazine of a gun seized as evidence. But an expert who reviewed the data said the lab should have interpreted the results to mean that the defendant was not the source of the DNA. …”

The biggest mistake involved the analysis of DNA found on the stolen car’s gearshift, prosecutors said. D.C. analysts looking at the evidence found that the car owner’s DNA could have been on the gearshift and said the chance that a randomly selected person had the same genetic traits was 1 in 3,290. The outside experts said the more accurate finding was 1 in 9.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office opened up a review of more than 100 past cases and has been paying outside labs to analyze new DNA evidence.

The Department of Forensic Sciences has defended their work and attributed the outside experts’ findings to the use of different measurements.

But the accreditation board’s review confirmed that the crime lab’s practices weren’t in line with the FBI’s standards, and called their procedures “insufficient and inadequate.” They gave the lab a minimum of 30 days to make changes, including “the revalidation of test procedures, new interpretation guidelines for DNA mixture cases, additional training and competency testing of staff.”

“Any deficiencies in the work performed by the CFL must be immediately addressed due to the broader implications of inaccurate forensic testing on the fair administration of justice in our Courts,” said D.C. Council member Kenyan McDufffie, who chairs the judiciary committee. “In the short term, I have asked Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Kevin Donahue to convene an emergency meeting of the DFS Stakeholder Council.

Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a release that she has ordered a “30-day corrective action plan” for the Department of Forensic Science. In the meantime, the city is working to identify outside labs to do DNA evidence testing for the D.C. police, Park Police, Capitol Police and other agencies.

“I am troubled by the longstanding issues at DFS as identified in the audits,” Bowser said. “District residents spent $200 million to build a state-of-the-art facility and expect its work to be beyond reproach. Deputy City Administrator Kevin Donahue will oversee a thorough review of all forensic and scientific practices performed at DFS and implement a corrective action plan that addresses the USAO and ANAB’s concerns.”