DAs call for more staff at crime labs

Spurred by the discovery of more than a dozen wrongful convictions in recent years, Massachusetts' district attorneys have issued new guidelines about how quickly forensics evidence should be analyzed and how suspects should be interrogated.

The Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, in a report released Friday, recommended the state beef up staffing at the State Police Crime Lab to slash the time it takes to analyze DNA samples used to identify suspects or exonerate them. It also urged the state to increase the number of chemists at the crime lab from 30 to 80.

Geline W. Williams , executive director of the association, said the hiring would help reduce the backlog. While the district attorneys would like to see a one-month turnaround on DNA samples, the analysis now takes about 10 months, she said. And that's an improvement: a year ago, the analysis took 18 months, she said.

``We always have to be scrutinizing what the police do and what the prosecutors do to make sure we obtain justice," Williams said. ``It's not just about convicting the guilty, but exonerating the innocent."

The report is the outcome of a 2004 initiative launched because of wrongful conviction concerns . At least 15 erroneous convictions surfaced in recent years, mostly from Suffolk County, which includes Boston.

The report also includes instructions on how police should handle suspects and eyewitnesses. Police officers should electronically record all interrogations conducted when the suspect is in custody, the report said. The association also urged police to follow federal guidelines that require having an officer who is not involved in a case handle line-ups to avoid influencing eyewitnesses. Also, at least six people, including the suspect, should appear in a live line-up.

The district attorneys stressed that police should give witnesses clear instructions when identifying suspects, including the fact that the suspect may not be included in the lineup and that the witness should not feel compelled to identify a suspect .

Stephen Hrones, a Boston defense attorney, said he is surprised and pleased by the recommendations, which he called ``progressive." But he said they do not go far enough.

Police should also ensure that witnesses do not contact one another before a lineup, he said. Witness identifications should be tape-recorded to guard against any influence by the officer conducting the lineup, he said .

Hrones represented Donnell Johnson, who was freed in 1999 after spending five years in prison for the murder of a 9-year-old boy caught in gang crossfire on Halloween. The state's recommended safeguards on witness identification, coupled with his own suggestions, could have prevented Johnson from being wrongly pinpointed, he said.

``The toughest thing of all is changing the mindset of the police," Hrones said. ``They still believe that once they have a suspect, their whole effort is centered on getting as much evidence against that particular suspect instead of thinking the suspect might be innocent and getting leads on someone else who may have done it."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com., Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.