WASHINGTON -- For nearly three years, the military held the key to Roger House's exoneration and didn't tell him: A forensics examiner had botched a crucial lab test used in the Navy lieutenant's court-martial.
In fact, the military had begun second-guessing a decade's worth of tests conducted by Phillip Mills, its one-time star lab analyst.
Investigators discovered that Mills had cut corners and even falsified reports in one case. He found DNA where it didn't exist, and failed to find it where it did. His mistakes may have let the guilty go free while the innocent, such as House, were convicted.
"It cost [House] his family, and it cost him his Navy career," House's attorney, John Wells, said in an interview. "It's certainly outrageous and unconscionable; it's the kind of action that makes you want to scream."
But the problem was bigger than just a lone analyst.
While a McClatchy investigation revealed that Mills' mistakes undermined hundreds of criminal cases brought against military personnel, it also found that the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory, located near Atlanta, was lax in supervising Mills, slow to re-examine his work, and slipshod about informing defendants.
Officials appeared intent on containing the scandal that threatened to discredit the military's most important forensics facility, which handles more than 3,000 criminal cases a year.
Confidence 'shattered'
The military has never publicly acknowledged the extent either of Mills' mistakes or of the crime lab's culpability in those mistakes. McClatchy pieced together the story through dozens of interviews and reviews of internal investigations, transcripts and other documents.
The investigation shows:
Mills made many mistakes. In an extensive review of his work, lab officials disagreed with his DNA results 55 percent of the time in cases they could retest. Law enforcement officials, following military policy at the time, had destroyed evidence in 83 percent of Mills' cases before it could be retested. Those 388 cases include rape and other serious crimes.
Military officials tried to avert a public scandal and protect criminal cases from outside legal attack, in part by keeping their inquiry of Mills in-house. The lab was supposed to alert a prosecutor about its final investigation in 2008, but he says he was never notified.
Even today, more than two years after the lab's review was completed, some defendants remain in the dark. Mills' supervisor also impeded the lab's investigation by failing to produce evidence, adding to delays that hurt military defendants, who faced strictly enforced appeal deadlines.
Taken together, the mistakes shocked veteran military officials.
"My confidence in your entire lab is shattered," Navy Capt. Bruce MacKenzie, a military judge, told lab officials in 2008.
The lab's reputation matters because DNA and other forensics evidence are crucial even beyond solving crimes and exonerating suspects. Forensics evidence can embolden prosecutors to indict, and frighten defendants into confessing. The military's own inquiries have called all of this into question.
"The result," prominent Penn State forensics analyst Robert Shaler summed up, after an independent review of the lab's mistakes, "might have led to a miscarriage of justice."
The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, which oversees the lab's 180 employees, declined to grant a sit-down interview or to provide Mills-related documents. In an extensive written statement, the Army defended its actions and maintained that Mills' conduct didn't reveal systemic problems at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory.
"It is important to point out that this was never a 'USACIL integrity' question per se, but an issue with an employee's integrity," the statement said.
The Army said its $1.4 million retesting of Mills' evidence demonstrated that the lab took the revelations seriously.
"Although this should never have happened, it did, and we feel very strongly that we took immediate corrective action and have done everything possible to prevent this from happening in the future," the statement said.
Mills couldn't be reached to comment, either by phone or mail, over several weeks. But in the past, he has defended his work.
"I've always followed the proper procedure in making sure that I do the same thing over and over in each case," he said at a 2008 court hearing.
Signs of trouble
For almost 30 years, the military trusted Mills and took him at his word, but lab officials overlooked danger signs that might have alerted them to a looming crisis.
In 2002, Mills failed a hair-analysis proficiency test. In 2003, he mixed up DNA samples. By then, he'd begun to get a reputation for sloppiness among those who signed off on the analysts' work.
"Too often the review of Mills' cases takes an extraordinary amount of time, and the reviewing examiner is ultimately performing some of the work Mills should have," lab biologist Thomas Overson wrote in a 2005 memo.
Overson reviewed Mills' work after the 2003 incident and thought it suggested a pattern of mistakes. He recommended a broader review. Mills' supervisor, Clement Smetana, suspended Mills but declined to open a wider inquiry.
Since the military didn't preserve evidence, it also missed a chance to retest work that Mills might have gotten wrong.
Ivor Luke, for one, has been thwarted in his effort to challenge his 1999 conviction because of the destruction of evidence. An enlisted woman had accused the Navy hospital corpsman of sexually assaulting her aboard the USS Port Royal while he was conducting a medical exam.
"The government ... destroyed the physical evidence, ... thereby precluding the type of retesting that might have restored some level of confidence in the process," Chief Judge Andrew Effron of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces noted earlier this year.
Mills' work was flagged again when co-worker Dr. Timothy Kalafut found that he falsified DNA paperwork, and Kalafut alerted supervisors.
Though they seemed slow to react, lab officials were deeply alarmed by Mills' errors. The Army criminal investigation lab's reputation was at stake.
Lab officials could have authorized an independent review. Instead, they decided that the lab would investigate itself.
"If perception is truly the paramount concern (and confirming Mills' results is essential), then USACIL needs to retain control of retesting decisions in each case as they come up," lab attorney Lisa Kreeger wrote in a 2005 e-mail.
The lab originally envisioned a six-month review, but it grew into a three-year endeavor.
One reason is that some investigators balked at reopening old cases.
Military higher-ups struggled with their legal obligation to share evidence that had the potential to clear defendants. Rather than individually notifying every defendant implicated by Mills' testimony, they took a narrow approach.
The lab sent a general notice to each military branch's legal division in August 2005, reasoning that individual notices were required only if all the evidence was to be destroyed by retesting.
A cache of lost evidence
In interviews, lawyers said they were troubled that many defendants weren't told of the lab's review. Military law generally allows only two years to petition for retrial based on new evidence, less time than in civilian courts.
It wasn't just the defense that was undermined by Mills' errors. Prosecutors might have missed the chance to detect the guilty. The lab review found 49 cases in which Mills' testing didn't identify stains or DNA. Investigators called these questionable because of his lack of thoroughness.
In April 2008, three years after Mills' falsified report, lab employees found a trove of lost evidence. In Mills' old locker, they found four containers of slides. Inside a closet, they found more slides. And in a refrigerator, they discovered evidence from 36 Mills cases.
Over many months - perhaps even years - Smetana had known about the material but had never turned it over to investigators. Smetana, a lab employee of 30 years, resigned in July 2008, shortly after investigators found him "derelict" in his duty.
All the newly discovered evidence had to be retested, delaying the investigation.
In September 2008, the lab completed its review, and it was withering. Mills often "did not follow good scientific practice." His paperwork documenting his analyses was "lacking." He used up too much evidence, making it impossible to retest. In nearly one-quarter of the cases, reviewers identified problems.
Not every disagreement meant Mills got it wrong. Some evidence could have degraded over time. Technology has become more refined.
Still, Mills' errors cast doubt on every DNA profile he submitted to a national database. Lab officials had to withdraw 67 suspect profiles, complicating police work.
'Intellectual dishonesty'
Shaler was even more critical, government documents show. He attributed Mills' errors, in part, to "an innate intellectual dishonesty." He also blasted lab management. He warned that the lab lacked proper safeguards, and permitted analysts to invent laboratory procedures that allowed mistakes to go unnoticed.
In its statement, the Army defended its handling of Mills' mistakes, disputed some of Shaler's criticisms, and said it "took the situation very seriously." The lab has made changes, including replacing managers and imposing stricter case reviews.
The lab committed to providing its final review to David Leta, a federal prosecutor, so he could determine whether Mills' conduct violated federal law, including the prohibition against making false statements to federal officials. Lab officials say they mailed the report in 2008. Leta, though, says he heard of it only in February, when McClatchy informed him. He's now reviewing the case.
Some defendants implicated by Mills, meanwhile, seek justice on their own.
House filed a federal lawsuit seeking back pay and a promotion he was denied. Luke is preparing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McClatchy researcher Tish Wells contributed.
