A scathing audit has revealed mistakes made by an HPD crime-scene investigator could affect dozens of cases. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office is now scrambling to reexamine and notify defense lawyers in cases where the criminal investigator was involved. The review showed 88 cases were handled by the investigator and 65 of them had recorded errors. Some of the cases were violent crimes such as murder. Tyler Flood who is the managing attorney at Tyler Flood & Associates, Inc. gave a statement regarding the situation. “We just want to make sure none of those are resolved improperly. Nobody is pleading guilty or going to trial on cases that may be effected by some of this evidence.” The debacle has caused the Houston Police Department to reexamine its relationship with the Houston Forensic Science Center (HFSC). The center took over HPD forensics lab and crime-scene investigators sometime in 2014. Now, Houston Police Officers Union head Ray Hunt is speaking out about how HFSC needs to reassign their officers to the HPD homicide unit. Hunt goes on to state that HFSC fired all personnel in their training division last year. He states this is further proof that the errors were not the officer’s fault but stemmed from inadequate training. HFSC has responded saying they’ve ordered an administrative inquiry into the matter.
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