HAMILTON COUNTY DA’S COLD CASE UNIT DISCOVERS UNPROCESSED HOMICIDE EVIDENCE

December 8, 2015

The Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office has learned unprocessed evidence collected from an undetermined number of autopsies has been stored untouched in the Medical Examiner’s Office for up to thirty years. We believe a significant number of these cases to be previously prosecuted homicides. While working on a cold case, the DA’s Cold Case Unit learned an employee of the Medical Examiner’s Office had discovered unanalyzed evidence from a substantial number of homicides, suicides and accidental deaths spanning the years 1986-2002. An initial review of the 1986-1988 autopsy files revealed 35 cases with unanalyzed evidence. Of those, thirteen (13) are suicides or accidental deaths, two (2) are cold case murders and the remaining twenty (20) are homicides that have presumably been prosecuted. The full scope of the problem is not yet known and ensuring the evidence is properly inventoried will be a tedious process. Evidence such as bullets removed from bodies, fingernail clippings, hair, and DNA swabs are put in small envelopes and labeled with an ME intake number which is assigned as a body arrives at the Medical Examiner’s Office. Someone must pull the corresponding autopsy report and the original incident report to determine the victim’s name and which law enforcement agency worked the death investigation. For each homicide case, the law enforcement agency must review the investigative file to determine a suspect’s name. That information must then be relayed to the DA’s office so we can search for the defendant’s court file and then notify the defendant and the judge who originally handled the case (or his/her successor). If the homicide has not been prosecuted, the DA’s Cold Case Unit must make sure the evidence is sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Tennessee Supreme Court Rules of Professional Conduct rule 3:8 requires “prosecutors who learn of new, credible, and material evidence” to “undertake further investigation, or make reasonable efforts to cause an investigation, to determine whether the defendant was convicted of an offense that the defendant did not commit.”

To ensure conviction integrity in the prosecuted homicides, District Attorney General Neal Pinkston will create an external oversight committee to supervise the inventory and review of unprocessed evidence. The sitting Criminal Court judges have offered their recommendations for who should be appointed to the committee, which will be comprised of an out of district and/or retired Judge, a defense attorney, a civil rights advocate, and a law professor. The Committee should be appointed by January 15, 2016, at which time District Attorney General Neal Pinkston will provide the members with a proposal for conducting the evidence inventory. Responses from the committee members will be used to finalize the protocol that will be followed to account for all of the unprocessed evidence. We anticipate the inventory process will be lengthy but are hopeful it will be completed by the end of 2016. In the meantime, any defendant convicted of a homicide between the years 1986 and 2002 who wants to know if his or her case has unanalyzed evidence should contact our office at 423-209-7400. Contact: Melydia Clewell melydia.clewell@hcdatn.org 423-991-6569