A supervisor at the Illinois State Police crime lab...

A supervisor at the Illinois State Police crime lab gave false testimony in 9 cases, including trials that resulted in wrongful rape convictions of 3 Chicago men, according to an analysis by a leading forensic expert for a lawsuit against the City of Chicago. The report comes amid increasing scrutiny of the criminal justice system in Illinois and, particularly, in Cook County. 13 death row inmates have been released in the state, and several other inmates serving prison terms have been released after DNA tests proved their innocence. The exonerations have highlighted several fissures in the legal system, such as false testimony from witnesses, including jailhouse snitches; police and prosecutorial misconduct; and incompetent defense lawyering. This report focuses attention on forensic testing, an aspect of the criminal justice system that so far has escaped intense scrutiny and that is supposed to be impartial. Although the report may not exonerate all the defendants whose cases were examined, it suggests that forensic fraud could be a more serious problem than originally believed. The report was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Chicago in connection with lawsuits brought by attorneys Kathleen Zellner and David Gleicher on behalf of 2 of the exonerated men, Billy Wardell and Donald Reynolds. They were convicted of rape in 1988 and cleared in 1997 after DNA tests showed they were innocent.