Advocates for the wrongfully accused asked state lawmakers Wednesday to support new measures to regulate crime labs and require electronic taping of police interrogations of suspects.
“There are wrongful convictions everywhere and we should?ve been doing this sooner,” said Shawn Armbrust, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, a group that advocates for defendants who are wrongfully accused of crimes.
Similar measures have been proposed in previous years to require electronic taping of interrogations and to institute federal guidelines at the state level for witnesses to identify suspects in a police line-up. Both proposals died when time ran out on the last legislative session.
A proposal to subject forensic crime labs to regulation by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will make its debut this year. The proposed legislation would set standards for the handling of crime scene evidence and require periodic inspections. Leaders of both the House and Senate judicial committees that would hear all, or parts of, the three bills said the principles behind the bills were good.
“But the lab has already said they have to hire more people,” said Sen. Lisa Gladden, D-Baltimore City, vice chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. She said a large price tag “could kill the bill.”
Armbrust and others who testified at the afternoon briefing in Annapolis said the regulations and standards were needed because of the lack of reliable DNA evidence in most criminal cases.
Tom Sullivan, a lawyer from Chicago who has championed the taping of police interrogations, said electronic taping would eliminate disputes over coerced confessions and reading of suspects? rights. He said state law would be the best way to introduce taping into the system. Armbrust said electronic taping is already in use in Washington, and said the courts ordered New Jersey police to tape interviews with suspects.
