Oklahoma! (does #cjreform); HPD raid response doesn't address phony informant; why do probationers die at high rates? And other stories

Here are a few browser clearing odds and ends:

One out of 8 Travis County jail bookings in 2018 was for Class C misdemeanors
In Travis County last year, more than 5,000 people were arrested for a Class-C misdemeanor only - about one out of every eight people booked into the county jail. Between the Freedom Cities ordinance restricting Class C arrests, beginning in January, and the elimination in June of the local no-sit-no-lie ordinance aimed at the homeless, those bookings should decline significantly for 2019.

Post-raid HPD reforms don't address faked informant that got 4 officers shot and killed 2 innocent people
After a no-knock drug raid in Houston this spring killed two innocent people and left four officers shot, HPD Chief Art Acevedo has announced he's creating a special division of the narcotics unit to execute search warrants in drug cases. But as I told the Houston Chronicle:

“His reform is not on point to what caused the problem,” said Scott Henson, policy director with the criminal justice reform nonprofit Just Liberty. “It’s not solving the problem that your investigators are relying on fabricated informants — [it] wasn’t a function of who’s doing the raid, but why you’re doing the raid, and the reliance on this informant, who it turns out didn’t exist. That’s what caused everybody to get shot. It just elides the core issue of what really happened.”

Attacking junk blood-spatter evidence
Check out an amicus brief arguing to disallow blood-spatter evidence in the Joe Bryan murder case that was the subject of Pam Colloff's massive NY Times Magazine/Pro Publica feature. In it, Duke law-school faculty and students argue that, based on current standards, the blood-spatter expert in Bryan's case could not today testify to the main points used to convict him.

Not so natural after all
His death in the Victoria County Jail was attributed to "natural causes." It turns out, he was denied his methadone prescription and died from preventable withdrawal symptoms. Read the excellent Victoria Advocate account from Kali Venable. See also the Advocate editorial board's condemnation of using jails and prisons to treat addiction.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand ..."
"... it never has, and it never will," said Frederick Douglass. So Grits doesn't feel too bad that elected officials in Austin consider criminal-justice reformers excessively pushy, as several implied in this Austin Statesman article about a string of successful, capital-city #cjreform campaigns. Nobody was going to do any of those things if reformers said "Pretty please" and then waited politely for a response.

Own it!
Gov. Greg Abbott's intervention into Austin's homelessness crisis means he now owns the issue. If it isn't solved, it's his fault. Not sure that was the wisest political choice, but it's the one he made. MORE: Now the governor "owns" his own homeless encampment, with neither a budget line item nor any apparent exit plan besides providing still hypothetical services to Austin's homeless ad infinitum. That'll teach 'em! 

Why do probationers die at high rates?
Here's a possible, future, Suspicious Mysteries segment for the Reasonably Suspicious podcast: Grits has long been aware of research showing incarceration in prison reduces life expectancy. But a new study shows that being on probation is associated with a much higher morbidity rate than being in prison or jail, much less in the free world. I don't know how to parse these competing claims. One one hand, while prison healthcare isn't great, being in prison makes it easier to treat chronic conditions because the patient is always available and can't easily decline treatment. On the other, prison can make you sick; e.g., people who contract Hep C in prison  may suffer liver failure later, once they're out. Meanwhile, to the extent criminal laws in general target the poor, the developmentally disabled, substance abusers, the mentally ill, minority communities subject to discrimination, etc., it's not surprising probationers would be an especially sick lot. Or maybe the difference is that people in prison aren't at risk of dying from car crashes! Who knows? Grits would like to better understand this nexus of corrections, health, and morbidity rates. I haven't yet wrapped my head around it. When people die in prison or jail, there is an independent investigation; no one investigates when probationers die, so outside of the above-linked study, we don't have very much information at all regarding why that is.

The Probation Trap
Probation as an institution changes its form and purpose depending on the angle from which one looks at it. Viewed one way, it diverts people from prison. Viewed another, it's a net-widening trap. The Philadelphia Inquirer has published an excellent series expounding the latter view. Via SL&P.

Oklahoma!
As much as it pains me to say so, Oklahoma has now definitely out-paced Texas as the red-state poster child for criminal-justice reform. Also via SL&P:

• Boston Globe, "What a conservative state can teach us about progressive criminal justice reform"
• US News, "Oklahoma Focuses on Criminal Justice Reform"
• Washington Post, "Oklahoma approves largest single-day commutation in U.S. history"

On the ground, #cjreform is not really a red-state-blue-state issue.

When smelling pot is pretext for a search
In Philadelphia, police officers who said they searched a car because they smelled marijuana were extremely unlikely to find any and disproportionately searched black people. When the data was gathered, public defenders argued that "the odor of marijuana [should] no longer be considered probable cause for officers to believe a crime has occurred and conduct a search."

Breathalyzer tests as junk science
The New York Times took a trip down the rabbit hole of DWI breath-test forensics. Like DNA mixture software, analysts treat breathalyzers as a magical black box they simply assume supplies reliable results. The problems, however, have been long known.

'Five facts about crime in the U.S.'
Read this from the Pew Research Center.

Forensic follies, Williamson County jury pools, COINTELPRO, and other stories

Grits noticed several items this week that didn't make it into full posts but deserve readers' attention:

Lawsuit over constitutionality of truancy charges
Texas Appleseed is taking Dallas ISD to court. See a lengthier account from the Dallas Morning News, but it's behind their paywall. More from Alternet.

The Michael Morton case and Williamson County jury pools
Because of hometown publicity, a capital murder case was moved from Waco to Williamson County, only to find during voir dire that "About 10 prospective jurors out of 55 questioned so far either were disqualified or excused by agreement because of their feelings of distrust for the criminal justice system spawned by Morton’s 
exoneration," reported the Waco Tribune Herald. That's a pretty remarkable development among Williamson County juries.

Art in public spaces - like utility boxes
Grits has advocated allowing invited, artistic graffiti in blank public spaces from utility boxes to the backs of street signs to highway facades. That seems to be the idea behind what's going on here, with the twist that the artist is a Buddhist monk.

Ellis County may privatize jail
The Ellis County (Waxahachie) commissioners issued an RFP to privatize their county jail, we learn from Texas Prison Bidness. More background here.

Most TDCJ volunteers are faith based
Reported the Conroe Courier, discussing a bill by rookie state Rep. Steve Toth, "TDCJ currently has 20,047 volunteers, including 18,111 who are faith-based volunteers providing religious and other services in jails and prisons statewide"

'Breathprint' as biometric?
Interesting concept. Probably needs more confirming research and field testing before it's ready for use as a practical, reliable, court-worthy forensic method. Despite the statement in the linked article, I'm not yet sure I believe claims that breathprints can be uniquely identified. My understanding is it hasn't even been proven fingerprints are unique in the world, much less "breathprints."

Allegedly fake certifications may compromise 1,200+ DWI cases
Even if "breathprint" biometrics are legit, the technical application of breath forensics must be also be valid. A DPS supervisor in Conroe, "Glenn Merkord was suspended for 30 days this month for renewing certifications for machine operators who had not fulfilled all of the requirements for certification, according to a letter the Department of Public Safety sent Merkord notifying him of his punishment," reported the Houston Chronicle. Up to 1,200 cases could be affected.

Salvador cases keep coming
Nuther case overturned today by the Court of Criminal Appeals based on the Jonathan Salvador case, this one an eight year sentence. By my count, that brings the total to 20, totaling 159.5 years so far. Now that the Coty case has been decided, one suspects we may see many more, similar cases on the weekly hand down lists in the very near future. Salvador worked on nearly 5,000 drug cases.

From the COINTELPRO files
Interesting, timely history lesson from the Austin Chronicle about a time just a few decades ago when the American intelligence apparatus was turned on domestic political dissidents, focusing on events at UT-Austin.

Edward Snowden, NSA phone spying scandal and cell-phone location data
Bruce Schneier lists questions that need to be answered before anyone prosecutes Edward Snowden. Ed Hubbard, writing at Big Jolly Politics, has questions of his own. Interesting post from Fabius Maximus on the meaning of government and corporate protestations the NSA does not have "direct access" to private systems. The telecom providers like ATT and Verizon, incidentally, have issued no such denials. Finally, somebody started a petition at whitehouse.gov asking President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden. Go sign if you support it. If the petition gets 100,000 online "signatures" in 30 days, the White House will formally respond. As of this writing, it had reached 68,435 in just four days.

It should be noted, the issue of cell-phone "metadata" relates directly to the location-tracking legislation proposed by Rep. Bryan Hughes, Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinonosa and Sen. Craig Estes during the 83rd regular session. In particular, as Grits reported from the conference at the Yale Law School on location tracking and biometrics, Verizon and Sprint use GPS coordinates instead of triangulation (like, say, ATT and T-Moble). The Wall Street Journal reports the NSA is gathering credit card data, too. That's an even greater invasion of privacy IMO than the pen-register/trap-and-trace data (phone numbers in and out) that's been more widely publicized.

High error rates discovered for Austin PD blood tests in DWIs

When the defense had a blood sample in an Austin DWI case retested, a private lab came up with results 20% lower than the Austin PD blood test given on one of the city's "no-refusal" weekends. Reported My Fox Austin:

"My client was arrested on July 4th weekend on a no refusal initiative," said Attorney [and former Forensic Science Commission chairman] Sam Bassett.

Bassett said his client was forced to surrender his blood. The sample was tested at the Austin Police Department's crime lab. The results, in a report 18 days later, revealed the blood alcohol content tested at 0.10, just above the legal limit.

"There's always a question when you are dealing with law enforcement crime labs, in my experience there are errors," said Bassett.

After fighting for 10 months, Bassett finally got a court order to have the blood sample retested. He sent it to the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas, an accredited and nationally recognized lab. And weeks later, he said the results were surprising.

"It was very surprising to me that there was such a difference," said Bassett.

The retest showed a problem, APD's analysis was 20 percent different.

The sample tested by the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences now at a .08, right-on the legal limit.

One sample. Two different results. So what happened? Why did APD test higher?

"At least half of the ones that I have seen were performed incorrectly," said [attorney] Ben Florey.

Florey said he's seen this many times before. He says he's had to help a number of clients fight what he calls "bad science".

"They're back logged, and I would imagine that they make mistakes," said Florey.

"That starts to raise issues about the quality of the machinery, whether it's being properly calibrated. Whether the people doing the calibration are qualified to do it," said Attorney Bill Mange.

Another expert contacted by the TV station said the 20% error rate was too high: "'Twenty percent would not be an acceptable discrepancy with in a laboratory that they can evaluate what is right and wrong,' said Toxicology expert Dwain Fuller." Notably, breath specimens in DWI cases are specifically exempted under the authorizing statute for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, but blood tests such as this would seem to fall under the FSC's purview. This might be a good issue for them to take up.

It's worth remembering that Austin PD arrests many more people per capita for DWI than other large Texas jurisdictions and has a much larger percentage of their cases dismissed. This news perhaps supplies another datapoint helping explain that odd but consistent outcome. In the meantime, Austin is considering shifting to a "no refusal" policy on DWI arrests every day instead of only on holidays and other higher-risk weekends.

Grits is surprised to read this story because blood tests have been touted as much more accurate than breathalyzers. But a 20% error rate (on the high side, no less) means it's possible some borderline cases - where the blood test comes back close to the .08 mark - are being falsely charged.

MORE: From Paul Kennedy, "Blood or Breath?"

It's the coverup that gets you: BAT van edition

In politics, often it's not one's sins that trip you up but the coverup afterward. That appears to be what's happening in Houston as a grand jury investigates whether DA Pat Lykos retaliated against a whistleblower from the Houston PD crime lab. Now, two Harris County prosecutors face contempt charges for obtaining secret transcripts of grand jury proceedings from which they were barred on threat of arrest. See:

• Houston Chronicle: Two Harris County prosecutors face contempt charges
• KTRK-TV: Judge threatens top DA assistants with jail time
• Murray Newman: An interesting docket entry

The whole episode drips with institutional arrogance. Houston PD ignored problems with mobile breathalyzer units until 2 crime lab supervisors quit because they wouldn't sign off on faulty breathalyzer results from Blood Alcohol Testing (BAT) vans. When defense attorneys subpoenaed evidence on the matter, Houston PD defied a court order to hand over documentation. The DA's office insisted that all is well, move along, nothing to see here, but then appeared to retaliate against one of the supervisors, prompting a grand jury investigation. As the grand jury looked into the conflict, they turned their sights on the DA's office and decided to conduct their investigation independently, threatening to have prosecutors arrested if they tried to enter the room. The DA appealed and lost, then appealed again, and lost: They couldn't hear the grand jury testimony. So now it appears the ADAs went directly to the court reporters to secure secret transcripts, thumbing their noses at the grand jury and the judge who empaneled it.

How much simpler would all this have been if, when Houston PD first discovered problems with the BAT vans back in 2010, they'd informed prosecutors and addressed the technical and training problems instead of blaming the messengers? What if, when the DA's office discovered HPD had concealed BAT van errors, they stepped up and took the hit on Brady violations (withholding exculpatory evidence) instead of blowing smoke and attempting to discredit the whistleblowers? And what if, once prosecutors were ordered out of the grand jury room, they'd just abided by the order and waited to see how things turned out?

Odds are, if the HPD crime lab had its house in order a year ago, this would all have been fixed behind the scenes and never been made public. If the DA had owned up to the problem after defense attorneys found out about it, this would have been a one-day story instead of an ongoing drama. And now that the DA's office appears to be defying/circumventing the grand jury, perhaps even illegally violating its secrecy provisions, they've opened up a can of worms that may end up taking DA Pat Lykos down.

MORE: Mark Bennett sees political machinations behind the "runaway" grand jury, with the investigation possibly serving as a stalking horse for Lykos' political foes. He suggests there's at minimum an "appearance of impropriety" from appointing a special prosecutor who was a major contributor to Lykos' 2008 primary opponent, Kelly Siegler, and who is known to have "bad blood" with the DA. That all may be true, but it's also true that if the situation had been handled more forthrightly earlier on, there would be nothing to investigate now. AND MORE: See a followup post from Bennett. Murray Newman predicts delay tactics.

Grand jury investigating BAT van coverup to question DA Pat Lykos

It seems that as a practical matter, examinations of flawed forensics in the justice system virtually never result from the mature, public exercise of judgment aimed at seeking scientific truth but inevitably are cinched up in some taut, emotional knot by whatever painful, uncomfortable or inconvenient memories or secrets may be exposed if the flaw were to come to light in a particular case. So when investigating flawed arson science, for example, the Forensic Science Commission gets sidetracked by death penalty politics. Similarly, flawed breathalyzer forensics at the Houston PD were only exposed when a crime lab supervisor quit rather than sign off on questionable results, then faced alleged retaliation from the District Attorney and the Harris County Commissioners Court, which eliminated her new job soon after she took it. So the question of breathalyzer mechanics gets wrapped up in a nasty employment dispute. For whatever reason, when flawed forensics are exposed the case is seldom as simple as the science.

In the Harris County B.A.T. van case, the Houston Chronicle today reports that DA Pat Lykos herself has been called to testify before a grand jury that's apparently investigating Brady violations (withholding exculpatory evidence) in addition to retaliatory termination regarding whistleblower Amanda Culbertson who exposed flawed forensics on mobile DWI testing units. Wrote Brian Rogers:

The testimony could affect dozens of past and future DWI cases that relied on evidence handled by the testing equipment in the vans.

Even more serious is the possibility that Lykos and other prosecutors had doubts about the tests' accuracy while prosecuting past DWI cases but did not alert defense attorneys.

Culbertson resigned rather than sign off on flawed breath-test analyses and went public with her allegations, taking a job at Lone Star College which held a decades-old training contract for breath alcohol testing with Harris County. If not in response to Culbertson's disclosures then at least soon after them, DA Lykos successfully pressed the Commissioners Court to transfer the contract to the Texas Department of Public Safety. Lisa Falkenberg writes that, "Retaliation, and perhaps even intimidation, seem far more likely motives for the DA's office to want to end Lone Star's contract," but added that "we'd never know for sure without a thorough investigation."

It seems, at least, the grand jury is performing one. What a dramatic turn of events! I'd love to learn the backstory of how it was orchestrated. We could use grand jurors like that in quite a few other Texas counties. The Houston Chronicle has been covering this well, so far, but if you're interested in the straight-up schadenfreude angle on this juicy story, Murray Newman's your man.

See related Grits posts:

• Current, former prosecutors in Williamson, Harris Counties forced to testify about alleged misconduct
• 'We've had enough of courthouse cronyism'
• Holy junk science BAT van!  Houston portable breathalyzers' accuracy questioned
• Paycheck vs. Integrity: Houston PD lab supervisor resigns over faulty breathalyzers, feared retaliation

Current, former prosecutors in Williamson, Harris Counties forced to testify about alleged misconduct

In a pair of extraordinary cases in Williamson and Harris Counties, prosecutors are being forced to testify regarding alleged misconduct and as one might expect, they're not universally happy about it.

In Williamson County, reported the Wilco Watchdog last night, "In a hearing on Monday morning, [visiting Judge Sid] Harle ruled against the Motions to Quash filed by Davis and Anderson, which meant the depositions [will] go forward" to determine the cause of alleged Brady violations in the wake of Michael Morton's DNA exoneration.  Further, the investigation has already begun: "Retired Detective Don Wood, the lead investigator did not challenge his deposition and testified in deposition today. However, John Bradley said a few weeks ago Wood has a "health issue effecting his memory."

Rightly notes the Watchdog, "A powerful sub-plot in this drama involves the calendar. If Davis and Anderson can frustrate the deposition process until the final exoneration of Morton is filed and perfected by the Third Court of Appeals, then the discovery in the case—including the depositions—would cease, based on a crafty provision in the AGREEMENT constructed by Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley. Given the legal games now being played to delay the process, it is becoming clear why Bradley was insistent on including this provision in the agreement."

The Statesman reports that  second-chair prosecutor Mike Davis has relented and agreed to be deposed, but District Judge Ken Anderson, first chair in Morton's prosecution, has filed an additional litany of motions hoping to stall until after time runs out on the discovery agreement with Williamson County. Reported the Watchdog::

Ken Anderson filed:
1. A Motion to Leave For File
2. A Petition for Writ of Prohibition
3. A Petition for Writ of Mandamus
4. A Motion for Temporary Injunction
5. A Motion to Quash
6. A Motion for Protective Order
7. A Motion for Stay of Discovery

Meanwhile, in Harris County, a rogue grand jury has refused to allow Harris County prosecutors to participate in their questioning of witnesses related to alleged retaliation surrounding a whistleblower who wouldn't sign off on results from the Blood Alcohol Test (BAT) van testing. But they have called four prosecutors to testify as witnesses and asked for a special prosecutor not affiliated with the Harris Couty DA's office. This could turn on DA Pat Lykos quickly and provide Murray Newman, who has already dubbed the event "Watergate on the Bayou," enough additional fodder to last the rest of his bloggerly days.

'We've had enough of courthouse cronyism'

The Houston Chronicle has an editorial today with the same title as this post criticizing alleged cronyism among judges in how they select attorneys appearing before their courts, particularly in juvenile arena, reacting to a pair of recent stories by columnist Lisa Falkenberg which found state Sen. John Whitmire on the warpath. See:

• We've had enough of courthouse cronyism
• Former judge Pat Shelton just won't go away
• A case of 'Oh no, not again'

The Chron reported that Judge Pat Shelton left office in the face of criticism "for directing most of his court appointments to attorneys who contributed heavily to his re-election campaigns. One of them, Glenn Devlin, won election as Shelton's successor in the 313th District Court last year when Shelton declined to run." Sen. Whitmire and others had criticized Shelton's "cozy relationship with attorneys he lavished with lucrative appointments, his hiring of bad attorneys over the more experienced, board-certified variety, and his apparent preference to adopt out children to foster families rather than consider placements with blood relatives first, as the law requires."

So "how did Shelton find his way back onto the bench and into the limelight?," asks the editorial board. "Turns out that although he is not on the approved list of visiting judges for the region, [Judge Glenn] Devlin had named him as a substitute judge using local rules that allow juvenile judges to appoint friends and former colleagues without oversight. Apparently one good ol' boy was rewarding a former judicial patron for past favors."

True that. (More soon, perhaps, on court appointment systems in Harris County.) But Chronicle editorial writers could have tagged the same title onto a series of nascent stories about an apparently rogue grand jury that may be investigating misconduct in the firing of former Houston crime lab supervisor Amanda Culbertson after she identified flaws in breathalyzer systems used in mobile blood alcohol testing units, colloquially known as B.A.T. vans.

• Grand jury may be targeting DA in HPD van probe"
• Retaliation, contracts and the DA
• Harris County DA's Office accused of retaliation

Murray Newman chimes in with a snarkily titled but probative explication of what's known from recent court filings in a missive headlined "Pat Lykos' Star Chamber Rebels." KTRK's headline was "Grand jury kicks out DA's office in BAT van case." At one point the grand jury apparently ordered the bailiffs to arrest Harris County prosecutors if they tried to enter the room while testimony was being taken related to alleged retaliation over exposing flawed DWI forensics.

Go read their coverage: Grits has little to add to either story for the moment except to find them both as remarkable as they are disappointing.

Holy junk science, BAT van! Houston's portable breathalyzers accuracy questioned

From typical discussions of forensic errors in DNA exonerations, etc., you might think they occur mainly in the most serious crimes like rape, murder, etc., but law enforcement's use of flawed science may extend to more workaday crimes like DWI as well. Reported the Houston Chronicle recently ("Controversy continues to dog BAT vans," Sept. 8):

A driving while intoxicated case that sparked doubts on the accuracy of test results from the Houston Police Department's breath alcohol testing vans has been dismissed, while evidence from the vans in at least two other cases has also come into question.

A former HPD crime lab supervisor testified during a court hearing in July that she quit because she could not trust the accuracy and integrity of breath alcohol tests from the department's breath testing vehicles. Since then at least two other defense attorneys ...  say evidence in DWI cases they are handling could have been compromised because of the problems with the vehicles.

During the testimony in July, the former HPD lab supervisor, Amanda Culbertson, said the breath alcohol testing vehicles, also known as BAT vans, incurred such electrical problems as overheating. Those problems affect gauges, she said, and can alter the control sample used to calibrate the breath-test machine in the vans, possibly affecting the accuracy of test results.

HPD officials have acknowledged there have been problems, including air conditioning, in the BAT vans since they were purchased in 2008, but said that no cases should be compromised as a result of the temperature in the BAT vans.

But defense attorney Mark Thiessen said he does not believe that the breath testing machines were working properly in the BAT vans and that the tests were not run under proper protocols.

Paul Kennedy had an excellent post in August explaining how changes in temperature can affect such tests if the comparison sample isn't just right. Notably, the company that makes the breathalyzer won't actually reveal the source code behind its analysis, nor guarantee beyond one year that their products will be free from defects in material and workmanship. Even when working properly, the margin of error for some versions of the instrument is up to 25%.

Concerns about the accuracy of breathalyzer tests have been raised for several years now in Houston and elsewhere, but the practical implications of how many cases would be affected if they were deemed untrustworthy have scared away elected judges from closely interrogating the technology. Between the political clout of groups like MADD and the fact that so much government employment, fine income, and even trauma hospital funding ride on a steady stream of DWI revenue, judges are no more likely to question breath-test results than officials in Salem would have questioned that dunking in water might expose witches.

See also: Paycheck vs. Integrity: Houston PD crime lab supervisor resigns over faulty breathalyzers, feared retaliation

Paycheck vs. Integrity: Houston PD lab supervisor resigns over faulty breathalyzers, feared retaliation

Yet another bombshell out of the Houston crime lab, as reported over the weekend in the Houston Chronicle ("HPD crime lab faces more heat," July 29), this time regarding breath-alcohol tests. The story opens:

Under intense scrutiny for shoddy work during the past decade, the Houston Police Department crime lab faced renewed criticism Thursday when a former HPD lab supervisor dropped a bombshell, testifying she quit because she could not trust the accuracy of breath alcohol tests from the department's testing vans.

Amanda Culbertson said electrical problems including overheating in HPD's six breath alcohol testing vans were well-documented before she and another supervisor quit. The vans are used as satellite offices for Houston police officers to give breath tests to suspected drunk drivers.

"We could no longer choose between a paycheck and our integrity," Culbertson said during a hearing in a DWI case in court-at-law judge Pam Derbyshire's court.

Culbertson, who resigned in May, said she and another supervisor quit because they could not trust the integrity of the results they use to prosecute cases.

Culbertson testified they feared retaliation from Irma Rios, HPD's crime lab director, for disciplining officers and civilian technicians who did not follow strict rules to keep breath-test machines from overheating and measuring alcohol levels inaccurately.

Rios did not respond to calls for comment. The revelations from Culbertson follow recent reports by the Houston Chronicle about thousands of rape kits sitting untested in the HPD property room.