There are problems with evidence rooms in other Constable precincts as well.
Constable Mark Herman
With Harris County’s Precinct 4 Constable’s Office mired in scandal over the improper destruction of 21,000 pieces of evidence, serious evidence cataloging and control problems also have been uncovered in the constables’ offices in Precincts 3,6 and 7, according to interviews and audits obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
While there is no proof yet that evidence has been unlawfully destroyed in those other three offices, 2,000 items were initially reported missing in Precinct 3; guns, jewelry, electronics and cash were misplaced in Precinct 6; and Precinct 7’s evidence room has been described as “a shambles.”
In Precinct 4, where the evidence destruction scandal is still unfolding, prosecutors so far have dismissed 100 criminal cases and are still determining how many convictions could be affected by years of careless work blamed on a corporal fired for illegally disposing of drugs, guns and evidence. The episode remains the subject of a criminal probe.
Only time will tell whether chaotic evidence handling practices reported in Precincts 3,6 and 7 will result in case dismissals, appeals or further investigations.
Harris County auditors in May 2015 uncovered evidence problems – never made public – in a review of the overstuffed property room inside the Precinct 6 Constable’s Office in the East End. There, auditors reported finding 28 percent of the evidence missing along with $54,000 in cash in a review of a sample of 799 items, the audit shows. Their visit to the office came only months after the previous constable, Victor Treviño, resigned after pleading guilty to misappropriating money from a charity he ran out of his office.
Constable Heliodoro Martinez, who replaced Treviño, said in an interview Friday that he immediately contacted the Harris County district attorney after receiving those results. It took five months for a team of two Harris County sheriff’s deputies and two of his own officers to locate the missing cash and other items. Martinez said he is still trying to impose order in an evidence room that hadn’t been cleaned out or organized in 26 years.
Unlike the Precinct 4 scandal, neither defense attorneys nor front-line prosecutors have been notified to review cases. So far, county lawyers have not deemed that any notifications or criminal investigations are necessary.
“To this point, we haven’t been made aware of any pending cases that have been affected in any way, shape or form,” Martinez said.
JoAnne Musick, a defense attorney who is past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said she is skeptical that no cases have been adversely affected.
“Every property custodian comes in and testifies how great their system is – but in these audits that’s not what they’re finding,” she said. “They’re having to dig stuff up. … How do you know it’s not been tampered with, it’s not altered, it’s not decayed?”
See here, here, and here for the background. None of the other precincts have had anywhere near the problems that Precinct 4 have had, but it’s too early to say that no cases have been affected. There are also some questions about the way the audits were conducted and the results communicated. The current auditor for the county is retiring, so perhaps there should be a high priority on re-reviewing all eight Constable precincts and ensuring we know what issues there are. And then maybe, as suggested by some people in the story and by commenter Steven Houston in an earlier post, it’s time to take these evidence rooms away from the constables and put sole authority for them in the Sheriff’s office.
This bit, “never made public”, is a huge part of the problem. I know the rush by some to blame the District Attorney for this seems in vogue right now but frankly, given almost all cases result in a plea bargain or outright dismissal, how often is physical evidence asked for by defense lawyers, prosecutors, or judges? That might change but if none of the parties to a trial are requesting the evidence unless they are going to trial, the chances of finding some of these problems is greatly reduced. Perhaps local lawyers will start doing their jobs rather than conveniently point fingers at state attorney’s moving forward.
But given the displayed lack of expertise by half the Constable offices per the articles coming out, I renew my call to consolidate all county evidence storage in a single facility, the one with the fewest problems of any in the area on record, the one run by the HCSO. The only time we hear of problems is when a new constable is elected, either the county refuses to inform us or they manage to luck out until something goes seriously wrong. The article even specifically absolves the DA’s office in some of these latest boondoggles, letting us know that the DA’s office wasn’t notified, but the continued refusal of holding evidence in well run facilities and being able to present it upon demand proves we should save money by consolidating and representatives of those charged with crimes need to step it up moving forth.