Union defends suspended DNA database administrator

The union representing a suspended DNA database administrator at the State Police crime laboratory yesterday blamed any delays or DNA mismatches at the lab on a longstanding problem of understaffing and inadequate funding.

The Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists confirmed that Robert E. Pino, the administrator in charge of the Combined DNA Indexing System, was suspended with pay. On Friday, State Police officials said the administrator, whom they have not identified, failed to tell prosecutors of DNA matches in a number of unsolved rape cases and falsely report ed links between crime scene DNA and suspects. The FBI is now conducting an audit of the state's DNA testing procedures.

Pino could not be reached yesterday, but his wife, Gwen, who also works in the crime lab, said in a telephone interview that he was unable to comment because of the active investigation.

News of the lab's problems outraged some defense attorneys yesterday because they say it could lead to a lack of confidence in the state's criminal justice system. State Police officials say at least 10 cases could be in jeopardy, some of which date to the 1980s. The lawyers said they feared it could be many more.

"This puts their credibility at issue in every single case where the prosecution attempts to introduce DNA evidence from that laboratory," said defense attorney Robert Griffin, former chief of Superior Court prosecutions in Suffolk County. "It's a big deal. It could be false convictions, and it could be guilty people walking free."

Pino, a 1983 graduate of Boston College, has worked at the crime lab for more than 22 years and has been the administrator of the DNA database for the last seven, according to a short biography on the BC website. Pino has played a role in several thousand criminal investigations involving evidence submitted to the crime lab and has testified in state courts more than 240 times, the biography says.

Yesterday, the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists defended Pino and said in a statement that any problems at the Sudbury lab were the result of the state's unwillingness to properly staff and fund it. The union said the State Police recently loaned Pino two employees with no forensic training to help with his workload, an indication that there is a staffing shortage.

"Years of underfunding have left the State Police Crime Lab seriously short - staffed," Joseph Dorant, president of the union, said in the statement.

In 1991, Pino, then a State Police chemist, testified that he found blood in Henry L. Meinholz Jr.'s Kingston garage, where Meinholz was accused of killing his 13-year-old next-door neighbor. Meinholz was later convicted.

Pino told the Globe in an August 2003 story that the DNA database could be law enforcement's most effective tool against repeat criminals such as the serial rapist police were searching for at the time who had raped or assaulted four women in the western suburbs of Boston.

"It can take a rapist off the street very quickly," Pino said in the interview. "And with improvements in technology, it's only going to work quicker and quicker."

The DNA database matches profiles of convicts with samples collected at crime scenes and analyzed by scientists. The FBI might find more errors involving old cases, a State Police spokesman said Friday, but the State Police internal investigation did not find problems with DNA testing in ongoing criminal cases.

Griffin said that last year, he defended one of three young men charged with the murder of an elderly great aunt to receive an inheritance. The state crime lab report indicated that semen was found on the victim's body, but the autopsy gave no evidence of sexual assault, Griffin said. The DNA sample did not match any of the defendants.

Ultimately, as the trial date approached, Griffin said the lab concluded that the DNA sample was not semen, but that it had come from one of the chemists in the lab who had contaminated a sample of protein found in the victim's urine.

"It's a glaring example of how they screw up," Griffin said. "If [Pino] was the boss, he was ultimately responsible for it. It's like the sign on Harry Truman's desk: The buck stops here."

Stephen Hrones, a Boston defense attorney who has represented four people convicted of crimes and later exonerated , said news of the investigation jolted the law enforcement community and could bring disastrous consequences for district attorneys and defense attorneys.

"You have rapists going free out there in society, and you have individuals in prison who are innocent or who didn't get a fair trial," Hrones said. "Either way, it's shocking."

John R. Ellement of the Globe staff contributed to this report.