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LAB TECH IN BOTCHED CASE PROMOTED

By Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong

A laboratory analyst whose testimony helped convict a man on rape
charges despite blood test evidence that showed he couldn't have
committed the crime has been promoted to oversee biochemistry testing
at the Illinois State Police crime laboratory.

The promotion of Pamela Fish from her position as a $62,184-a-year
training coordinator was effective last week, just days before Cook
County prosecutors dropped rape charges against John Willis, who was
wrongfully convicted after lab reports exonerating him were not
disclosed.

Fish testified at Willis' trial in 1992 that the tests she
performed on evidence from the rape victim were "inconclusive." But
last year, defense lawyers unearthed Fish's laboratory notes, which
said the tests showed Willis should have been excluded as a suspect.

Willis, who was serving a 100-year prison term, was released from
prison Feb. 24 after new DNA testing confirmed that he could not have
committed the crime.

On Thursday, state police confirmed that Fish is the crime lab's new
"section chief for biochemistry" but said they were not yet sure what
her new salary would be.

"Due to her job performance with the state--she's been very efficient
and effective--she's very deserving of a promotion," said Lincoln
Hampton, a spokesman for the Illinois State Police. "She supervises
about 40 people. . . . I assume she will be checking the works of
others, signing off on reports."

Fish's promotion underscores how prosecutors and other law enforcement
officials involved in what are later determined to be wrongful
prosecutions across the nation often face few repercussions.

Fish could not be reached for comment.

The Cook County Board recently settled a lawsuit filed by four men,
known as the Ford Heights Four, who spent years in prison for a murder
they didn't commit, paying $36 million to avoid an embarrassing trial.
But several of the police officers who were accused of falsifying
evidence in that case continue to work for the Cook County Sheriff's
Department.

A total of 13 convicted defendants in Illinois--some of them on Death
Row--have been exonerated through DNA testing in the past decade.
Among those cases, only that of Rolando Cruz, who was wrongly
convicted of murder, spawned a grand jury investigation that led to
the indictments of three prosecutors and four police officers.

Those defendants, known as the DuPage 7, are now on trial in Wheaton
on charges of framing Cruz for the 1983 murder of 10-year-old Jeanine
Nicarico.

In the case of John Willis, Assistant Cook County Public Defender
Gregory O'Reilly filed a motion last year asserting that in 1992, Fish
testified at Willis' rape trial that tests on semen recovered after
the assault were inconclusive, meaning the results could neither rule
out nor positively identify him as the rapist.

Years later, O'Reilly said, he found Fish's handwritten notes of the
test results, which showed that Willis could not have been the source
of the semen because he had a different blood type.

In his filing, O'Reilly cited a forensic expert who analyzed Fish's
testimony in a separate case and characterized her testimony as
"incomplete and present(ing) a narrow, prejudicial view."

The two defendants in that case, Donald Reynolds and Billie Wardell,
were convicted in 1988 but exonerated through DNA testing last year.



"The petition showed patterns of similar abuse in another case
involving (those) two other men," O'Reilly said in his filing. "One
would think that this would merit a very serious investigation."

In Toronto, similar charges prompted an investigation and overhaul of
that nation's premier center for forensic science. In that case, a
convicted murderer was exonerated by DNA testing in 1995, nearly 10
years after he was first arrested, amid allegations of incompetence
and a cover-up.

The laboratory has regained its reputation and performed the DNA
analysis that exonerated Willis.

The situation was similar to one in West Virginia in the early 1990s,
when the state's Supreme Court authorized an investigation of a crime
lab after Glen Woodall, a cemetery worker convicted of sexual assault,
was cleared by subsequent DNA testing.

Investigators discovered that crime lab serologist Fred Zain, who
testified against Woodall, had falsified blood-test results in as many
as 134 cases. About a dozen convicted defendants were subsequently
exonerated or granted new trials, and West Virginia has paid more than
$4 million from lawsuits.

Zain, who later moved to Texas and was accused of falsifying evidence
in cases at a crime lab there before being fired in 1993, has been
criminally charged over some of his actions, but never convicted.

Cook County State's Atty. Dick Devine said it would be "inappropriate"
for him to comment on whether Fish's work in the Willis case was the
subject of an investigation by his office.

"Nobody has taken the view that, `Gee, we got the DNA back, he's gone,
the case is closed, we're not going to think about this anymore,' "
Devine said.

He said he did find it "troubling" that physical evidence in the
Willis case--including evidence suitable for DNA testing--disappeared
after being last checked out by Assistant State's Atty. Earl Grinbarg,
who also prosecuted the case against Wardell and Reynolds.

Devine said he has ordered "not just a review but a revamping" of how
case files and evidence are checked out in all cases to ensure that
such evidence doesn't disappear again.

Devine also declined to say whether his office has or is investigating
the forensic work performed in the Ford Heights 4 case, in which two
of the four men were sentenced to death. Michael Podlecki, a forensic
examiner for the Illinois State Police, provided incriminating
testimony about hair and blood evidence that was later discounted by
other scientists.

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