Richland Co. crime lab finds a world of evidence

It’s a series of drab rooms jammed with uncommon devices that have become a place unlike any other in South Carolina’s local police circles.

The crime lab at the Richland County Sheriff’s Department solves crimes as often as deputies do. It also bears a seal of approval that rates it even better than the lab at the State Law Enforcement Division, which services nearly all of the rest of the state’s law enforcement and prosecution community.

The 24-person lab with a $1.6 million budget is a key to getting quick and accurate results that deputies and detectives count on, Sheriff Leon Lott said.

“They’re like Santa Claus. They’ve got presents, and you never know what you’re going to get,” Lott said of their findings. “It’s like Christmas around here when they’ve got the results.”

The lab gets offenders, including those who commit property crimes, off the streets faster, Lott said, protecting residents from repeat offenders. SLED’s lab doesn’t deal with the vast volume of property crimes. In that regard, Lott views the forensic unit as a crime stopper.

In June 2009, the lab achieved a rating that meets rigorous international accreditation standards, said Demi Garvin, who started the unit in October 2000 and oversees it.

The unit is accredited in the analysis of crime scenes, drugs, DNA, fingerprints, firearms and evidence from fires and tools used in crimes.

Garvin, who has a doctoral degree in clinical pharmacy, preaches to detectives that forensic analysis can’t solve crimes by itself. But it can fast-forward good police work and can save investigative time by keeping deputies from chasing evidence that goes nowhere.

“We’re the gravy. The satisfaction is being able to so quickly impact an investigation,” she said from the lab, which is at the sheriff’s department headquarters on Two Notch Road.

Even someone who logically might be a critic lauds the lab.

“They have managed to achieve the gold standard,” said Joe McCulloch, a prominent Richland County defense attorney and the state head of the Innocence Project, which ferrets out police misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions.

One local attorney, Jerry Finney, is a critic.

He has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s department and a former member of the lab for falsely accusing a man in the stabbing death of his wife. Lott has publicly apologized to Justin Mallory, and a second man has been charged.

Mallory’s suit largely alleges misconduct by detectives. But it also faults the lab for delays in analyzing the DNA of Joshua Porch, now accused of killing Nekia Mallory on Mother’s Day in 2006, and for mislabeling DNA evidence from her husband. Mallory was never convicted in two trials but spent about 14 months in jail awaiting his court date.

Lott dismisses the contention that the lab did anything wrong. The case turned on other evidence he declined to disclose because Porch’s criminal trial is pending.

A handful of sheriff’s and police departments in the state have in-house capability to conduct more than fingerprint analysis. But none can do as much as Richland County’s, said Jeff Moore, director of the South Carolina Sheriffs’ Association.

“The other labs that are out there do a little bit of this or a little bit of that, but not the full gamut,” Moore said.

CASE STUDY

The lab has been instrumental in solving innumerable crimes, according to Lott, detectives and forensic staffers.

Its staff discovered a serial rapist in 1996, quickly tied a handgun to the February murder of popular Korean-American restaurant owner Steve Kim and located minute DNA from a sock in the 2009 beating death of an elderly minister, Tryon Eichelberger, that led to an arrest in a case that gone cold. The DNA — from a few skin cells — was found inside a sock that a lab analyst deduced was worn on the hand of Eichelberger’s pipe-wielding assailant.

One of its most memorable cases, which also underscores the relationship between the lab and detectives, involved the brutal beating death in January 2009 of Linda Derrick in her Denny Terrace neighborhood home.

An attacker chased Derrick, 63, throughout her house, pummeling her with a weapon that has yet to be found.

“Blood was everywhere,” said Stan Richards, one of six board-certified crime scene experts on the staff. It took the forensic team three days to gather measurements, take more than 1,000 photographs and video, conduct blood-spatter analysis, take fingerprints and begin examining the evidence.

“There was one drop (of blood) on the living room floor that we happened to see by the victim’s purse,” Richards said. “That one drop is the only one that came back to the suspect.”

The team ran the blood DNA through the database at SLED and got a hit on a convicted felon, said Maj. Stan Smith, who is second in command over detectives. The blood also matched samples from two burglaries committed nearby on the same day that Derrick died. The suspect had cut himself during one of the break-ins, which included one in which another woman was beaten, Smith said. Elbert Wallace, 46, has been charged with murder, burglary, armed robbery and assault and battery with intent to kill.

Deputies already were on Wallace’s trail: They had evidence he had pawned the Sweet Sixteen ring Derrick’s mother had given her — even before anyone had found the body, Smith said.

DISCIPLINE AND TOYS

The lab double-checks its findings before releasing them to deputies or detectives, Garvin said.

“It’s 100 percent peer review,” meaning another lab professional examines evidence looking for anything that conflicts with initial findings.

The lab’s forensic specialists meet face-to-face with detectives and their supervisors within two days of any major crime for an evidence review, said Garvin, who worked in SLED’s lab for 16 years.

Asked whether any of its findings have been overturned in court, Garvin responded, “Zero. None.”

Lott said he fashioned the lab around her and she helped select the rest of the team on the basis of their areas of expertise. “This lab is Demi Garvin,” the sheriff said.

Lott and Garvin share a thirst for pushing deeper into the latest in forensic science.

By this fall, a new $250,000, portable, 3-D laser camera with 360-degree capability will be used at major crime scenes to gather video evidence and take precision measurements. The lab team has spent months training with the camera and testing it, Garvin said.

In addition, DNA specialists have been trying for years to find a way to lift samples from fingerprints taken from thousands of people already arrested by deputies, Lott said.

Another specialty device is a $100,000 combination of two machines that use helium to separate substances such as drugs or fire debris into their components, then bombard them with electron beams to analyze them.

Not all the techniques are whiz-bang. Missy Horne does drug- and fire-debris analyzes. She sniffs with her nose in early tests of evidence brought to her. And she uses paint cans or heat-sealed plastic bags to gather and preserve soil and other burned samples before any accelerant evaporates.

Firearms expert David Collins uses microscopes and an 8-foot-long water tank to examine bullet fragments or firearms. Collins said his work is based in science, but he acknowledged that forensics “always comes down to the fact that it’s opinion evidence.”

Altogether, the lab handled about 6,100 analyzes last year, according to statistics supplied by Garvin. The largest number were from drug cases.

The lab started out 11 years ago doing only fingerprint analysis and grew into what it is today. In the past year, it conducted tests for 12 other law enforcement agencies or defense attorneys, bringing in about $60,000 of income.

FORENSICS UNDER attack

Forensic labs have been under fire, especially since the accrediting agency, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, fell under suspicion in North Carolina, where it is based.

Known commonly as ASCLAD, the organization certified the work of the State Bureau of Investigation lab starting in 1988. An audit last summer by N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper found 229 cases tainted by analysts who omitted the results of tests that favored defendants.

A series of articles in the Raleigh News & Observer exposed widespread troubles inside the SBI, including agents who bullied the vulnerable and analysts who pushed past the bounds of science to deliver results that helped prosecutions.

A National Academy of Sciences report in early 2009 found serious deficiencies in the nation’s forensic science system and the need for a major overhaul.

In January, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a bill that would require that any lab that receives federal money be accredited under standards set by new organizations comprising experts in the field. In addition, it would create an arm of the Justice Department to work with a board that would establish and enforce tougher standards.

All of that does not mean forensics is not a helpful tool in law enforcement, Garvin said. “The support we can give (deputies) will get better and faster.”