By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press Writer
RICHMOND, Va.- The state crime lab made several errors when retesting evidence in the case of a former death row inmate wrongfully convicted of a 1982 rape and murder, according to an independent audit released Friday.
Although retesting of the evidence in 2000 led to the pardon of Earl Washington Jr., the lab’s leading DNA analyst made several mistakes, including prematurely excluding suspects when he should have ruled the DNA sample inconclusive, the audit concluded.
Jeffrey Ban has been temporarily suspended from certain cases involving “low level” DNA samples, where the evidence contains amounts of DNA at or below normal detection limits.
No one at the lab would comment on the audit, according to a secretary who answered the phone. A telephone message left at Ban’s home was not immediately returned Friday.
Washington spent more than nine years on death row and came within nine days of being executed. He was pardoned by then-Gov. Jim Gilmore in 2000, 17 years after he was imprisoned for the killing of 19-year-old Rebecca Williams of Culpeper.
DNA testing in 1993 cast doubt on Washington’s guilt but did not absolutely eliminate him as a suspect. As a result, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted Washington’s sentence to life in prison. The audit pointed out errors Ban made during the 1993 retesting.
“If he had correctly reported the 1993 DNA results, Earl Washington would have been exonerated seven years before he actually was released,” said Debi Cornwall, one of Washington’s attorneys. “He’s had seven years in prison because of (Ban’s) mistakes.”
In 2000, the crime lab used more sophisticated DNA tests on the evidence. The results excluded Washington, and Gilmore granted him an absolute pardon. Ban then concluded that DNA appearing on a vaginal swab came from an unknown male.
But the audit found the results of those tests should have been “reported as inconclusive, rather than attempting to make an interpretation from poor quality information.”
In 2004, a California scientist concluded that semen found on the victim’s body was left by a serial rapist, Kenneth Tinsley. He is serving life in prison for a 1984 rape and has not been charged in the Williams slaying.
The audit, requested by Gov. Mark R. Warner, places some of the blame for the errors on pressure from Gilmore’s office to definitively answer whether Washington was the killer.
In a statement, Virginia Division of Forensic Science Director Paul Ferrara agreed that Ban should have declared the sample inconclusive but also said the audit’s focus was narrow.
“The audit report criticizes the work performed on one sub-sample five years ago based upon current technologies and standards,” Ferrara said. “It also belies the major body of other work” performed by Ban, who successfully eliminated Washington and identified a new suspect, Tinsley, using evidence from the crime scene.