A new D.C. Council bill would overhaul the city’s troubled Department of Forensic Sciences, turning it into an independent agency with a new leadership structure and a different process for handling complaints about negligence, misconduct, and scientific errors.

The bill’s introduction comes after years of serious complaints about D.C.’s crime lab, which lost its accreditation last year amid concerns about the accuracy of its analysis of crime-related evidence. D.C. officials have agreed to conduct an extensive review of criminal convictions from the past decade after a city-commissioned report found that the agency had poor management, inexperienced staff, and a culture that “discouraged candid feedback.” The review will examine whether people were wrongfully arrested, prosecuted, or convicted as a result of the crime lab’s errors.

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen introduced the legislation today. It also has the support of a majority of the D.C. Council: Nine other D.C. Councilmembers, including Chairman Phil Mendelson, co-introduced the bill with him.

Allen, who chairs the committee that conducts oversight of DFS, said in a press release that “it’s hard to overstate the harm that the collapse of the District’s Department of Forensic Sciences has caused to the District’s criminal justice system. The ripple effects are massive and will take years to fix.”

Allen said the bill “makes significant changes to the structure and operations of the Department to restore trust in its work and get it back on track, as well as completely reforming how complaints and allegations of misconduct or testing errors get addressed.” The bill draws heavily from recommendations made by SNA, the forensic consultant the city hired to look into DFS’s operations.

DFS is currently housed under the city’s executive branch. The bill would turn it into an independent agency. In a press release describing the legislation, Allen said making DFS independent would make it “more receptive to the concerns brought forth by all entities in the District’s criminal justice system, less susceptible to political pressures, and committed to fulfilling its mission of providing independent, high-quality, timely, accurate, and reliable forensic science services.”

The bill would also restructure the agency’s advisory board and require more technical and quality assurance experience of its members.

It would also require the lab to report any allegations of professional negligence, misconduct, misidentification, or other testing errors to the newly-restructured board. The board would then decide whether to investigate the complaint. And, notably, the bill would require the board to make certain correspondence and reports about these investigations public.

“The Laboratory would now be completely cut off from the complaint review process and be unable to dictate or influence the outcome of a complaint,” said the press release from Allen’s office.

The bill would also adjust the term of the lab’s director from four years to six, “to make the position less susceptible to political influences and transition.” It would also require the director of the lab to have more management experience. And the bill would establish a new, Council-confirmed leadership position: a Chief Forensic Sciences Officer who would oversee the lab’s forensic sciences.

The bill would also require the lab to post all of its quality assurance documents in a publicly-accessible online database.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said in an emailed statement that his office was “encouraged” that the Council was taking steps to address “serious and longstanding failures” at DFS.

“For the past two years, my office has been raising the alarm about deficiencies at DFS, and how the serious problems at the crime lab have hurt public safety, undermined the credibility in and fairness of the criminal justice system, and will cost taxpayers millions of dollars as they shoulder the burden of funding a complete review of forensic evidence that has been used in criminal cases over the last several years,” wrote Racine. “We look forward to working with the Council and Councilmember Allen to make needed reforms to DFS and restore the integrity of scientific testing and results in the District’s criminal cases. District residents deserve nothing less.”

Issues with the crime lab, which opened in 2012, date back to at least 2015, when the U.S. Attorney’s office stopped sending evidence to the lab, citing errors in DNA analysis. In response to those concerns, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser ordered an audit — which ultimately found that the lab’s procedures for DNA testing were “insufficient and inadequate.” In response, the national accreditation board ordered the crime lab to pause all of its DNA casework.

Then, in 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s office identified issues with the crime lab once again — this time related to its work with firearms. WTOP reported that prosecutors hired outside experts to reexamine ballistics evidence that D.C.’s crime lab had analyzed after they identified that the lab had mistakenly linked two murders to the same gun. The USAO and D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General started reviewing other evidence and found that in multiple other cases, auditors were coming up with different conclusions than those made by experts at D.C.’s crime lab. The discrepancies had prosecutors concerned about the reliability of evidence in dozens of cases. Prosecutors also determined that they could no longer rely on D.C.’s crime lab to analyze evidence in ballistics cases and they needed to instead hire outside experts.

D.C.’s Office of the Inspector General ultimately launched a criminal probe into the lab’s activities. The allegations against the lab were serious, and included a claim that managers at DFS pressured examiners to cover up the lab mistake that falsely linked two murders to the same gun. Through the audit and investigation, prosecutors learned that DFS had ordered additional testing of the evidence in the homicide cases that resulted in the same conclusion as the USAO’s independent examiners: that the initial D.C. crime lab findings were wrong, and that the two homicides could not be linked to the same weapon. But DFS management did not tell prosecutors at USAO that they had confirmed the mistake and USAO did not learn of the additional testing until a judge ordered DFS to hand over certain documents.

“DFS management concealed and withheld important information about its operations, including exculpatory evidence in a homicide case,” said D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine in testimony to the D.C. Council last year. “This undermined our confidence in the lab as a whole and in our ability to comply with our ethical and constitutional obligations. This was a very difficult place to arrive at, and one we tried hard to avoid. But I want to be clear about what is at stake here: the integrity of scientific evidence in the District’s most serious criminal cases, faith in the validity of criminal convictions, and public safety in the District of Columbia.”

During an appearance on WAMU’s The Politics Hour last month, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves said the department losing its accreditation had “a tremendous impact” on how his office operates.

“It’s really hard when the whole system is set up that if we need any support — DNA analysis, fingerprints, firearms, analysis to confirm that suspected controlled substances are in fact drugs — we were supposed to be able to go to them … and now we do not have them,” Graves said on the show. “So that has left us in a place of having to scramble.”

DFS Director Jenifer Smith resigned last spring amid mounting pressure for a leadership change at the lab. And because the lab was no longer accredited, the city began using private and federal labs to handle evidence.

Anthony Crispino, who stepped in as interim director of DFS after Smith’s resignation, has said the agency is committed to regaining the crime lab’s accreditation and implementing reforms.

Allen spokesman Erik Salmi says the bill is expected to get a hearing before the council’s summer recess.

Previously: 

Troubled DC Crime Lab Loses Its Accreditation

Director Of D.C.’s Troubled Crime Lab Resigns

Report Calls For Review Of Cases From Troubled D.C. Crime Lab