Science Thursday

DNA problems were discovered this week in cases in the U.S. and abroad and new information raised doubts about a New York crime lab. Here’s a roundup of this week’s forensics news:

An investigation by the Long Island Press suggests some of Nassau County’s top law enforcement and governmental officials

may have known about the Police Crime Lab’s problems

long before they publicly acknowledged.

A Las Vegas man

was awarded $1.5 million

for spending nearly four years behind bars after he was wrongfully convicted based on a DNA lab mix-up.

And the analyst responsible for the mistake resigne

d.

An independent report

found that international DNA protocols were ignored and basic errors were made by the DNA expert in the Amanda Knox murder trial in Italy.

Detroit has

the largest known backlog

of untested sexual assault evidence kits.

A South Carolina lawsuit questions

whether an autopsy report is a private medical file or a public record

.