DNA chief fired over crime lab problems

The embattled administrator of the DNA database at the State Police crime laboratory was fired yesterday, three months after the agency suspended him for allegedly mishandling test results in about two-dozen unsolved sexual assault cases, according to the lawyer for his union.

Robert Pino, a 23-year civilian employee of the lab who testified in more than 240 criminal cases and helped set up the state database, was sent a letter yesterday saying he was terminated, said Ann Looney, general counsel to his union, the Massachusetts Organization of State Engineers and Scientists.

Colonel Mark F. Delaney, superintendent of the State Police, sent the letter two weeks after the agency held a closed-door administrative hearing about Pino's performance.

Pino is the second laboratory employee to lose his job over problems with the handling of DNA test results, including the alleged failure to report positive DNA matches before the statute of limitations ran out. On March 9, Carl Selavka, the civilian director of the lab since July 1998 and one of Pino's supervisors, abruptly resigned under pressure, after what Public Safety Secretary Kevin M. Burke described as an unfavorable assessment of his performance.

The problems have embarrassed state officials and prompted inquiries by the State Police, the FBI, and a private consulting company, Vance, recently hired to conduct a $267,000 top-to-bottom review of the crime lab.

Pino, who was suspended with pay Jan. 11, did not return phone calls yesterday seeking comment. Shortly before the March 30 hearing, he said he did not know what he had done wrong, characterized his dismissal as a "done deal," and vowed to fight to get his job back through the union.

Looney struck a similar stance yesterday, calling the firing "a travesty."

"The department of State Police has destroyed this man's 23-year impeccable career of outstanding service for violations of policies that never existed and fallacies that have no substance and therefore no consequence," said Looney, who added that Pino's union intends to file a grievance challenging his firing.

A State Police spokesman, Lieutenant Detective William Powers, declined to comment late yesterday afternoon, except to say that Pino was still listed as an employee.

Pino, who started at the lab as a chemist, allegedly mishandled evidence in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, the FBI-funded computer system that serves as the registry of 3.1 million DNA samples of convicted criminals and arrested individuals that have been collected by law enforcement nationwide. CODIS matches crime scene DNA to genetic profiles in the database, often leading investigators to suspects.

So far, the internal investigation has found three categories of problems.

First, it determined that Pino told law enforcement officials too late about 13 positive DNA matches in unsolved sexual assault cases dating as far back as the late 1980s, and the statute of limitations ran out.

In another eight cases, the statute expired because the lab took too long to load profiles of crime scene DNA into the database, according to a February affidavit by State Police Detective Captain Gregory J. Foley prepared in case of potential legal challenges.

Second, Pino allegedly prepared four reports about near-matches between DNA profiles of convicted felons and crime scene DNA, apparently to alert law enforcement officials that a relative of a convict might have committed the crime, said the affidavit. Pino allegedly reported two of those near matches incorrectly as perfect matches to law enforcement officials, although no one was wrongly arrested.

State officials say that familial searches, a controversial practice that genetics researchers and prosecutors contend could prove to be an important crimefighting tool, are prohibited at the lab. But Pino and officials from his union have disputed that, citing, among other things, a July 2006 e-mail from a legal counsel to the State Police as evidence that such searches were allowed.

Third, the State Police collected DNA profiles of 12 people convicted of misdemeanors, even though state law limits the database to convicted felons. Burke has said it was unclear why the profiles were in the database.

Looney, who defended Pino at his administrative hearing, said yesterday that the State Police lacked policies concerning matters for which Pino has been faulted.

"They wanted someone to blame" for the problems at the lab, she said.

Selavka, who is well known in the tightknit forensic community, has declined to comment since his resignation was announced on March 9. But several prominent figures in the field nationwide have rallied to his defense and characterized him as a victim of circumstances that afflict many crime labs nationwide.

They said years of inadequate funding by the state made it hard to run the lab. They also said that a 2003 law that expanded the state's DNA database to include samples from all convicted felons -- instead of the 33 serious and violent felonies in the 1997 law creating the computerized archive -- led to overwhelming backlogs and administrative problems similar to those in other states that broadened their databases.

W. Mark Dale -- director of the Northeast Regional Forensic Institute at the University at Albany, which has run three academies for newly hired DNA scientists from the Massachusetts lab -- said recently that the problems that surfaced this year are "really a symptom of the stress and pressure that's almost routine in the labs across the country today."

The Legislature has increased funding to the lab, from $6.2 million in fiscal 2005 to $16.2 million in fiscal 2007. But it takes years to turn around a lab, Dale said.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.