What can happen when DNA evidence is mishandled

“The Cockfight” is a book about injustice, redemption, and a Teacher of the Year caught in an unfair system — a broken system where DNA evidence is mishandled by lab workers, results are either faked or guessed at, and worse: sometimes evidence is destroyed.

The book’s title may lead some to envision a connection to the University of South Carolina mascot. However, while there are cockfights in the book — which, by the way, are still misdemeanors in South Carolina — the subject matter has more to do with an individual caught in an unfair system where the evidence against him is flawed.

It cuts in both directions.

A few years back, I learned that a crime lab in Louisville, Kentucky, was mishandling DNA evidence.

And there is a direct connection to South Carolina. On May 14, 2020, Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Statewide Sexual Assault Kit Tracking Law (H3309).

This law aims to ensure law enforcement, crime labs and medical facilities keep track of evidence, such as rape kits, and “empower survivors with information, assist law enforcement with investigations and crime prevention, create transparency, and foster public trust.”

South Carolinians pushing for that law included the survivor of a horrific rape and beating in Kentucky, who learned nearly two decades later the evidence in her case had long been destroyed.

It was destroyed at the same Kentucky lab that instilled my writing of the book.

Failure to properly store, handle or analyze evidence can result in guilty people going free, as well as innocent people being wrongfully charged.

As a criminal defense attorney in federal and state matters for 38 years, I envisioned what could go wrong when a crime lab mishandles DNA evidence.

The main character is a Teacher of the Year caught up in the process. The book is fact-based fiction. But the idea that DNA evidence can be subject to mishandling, and that analysis and results can be subject to someone’s laziness, incompetence, deceit, or overworked schedule, is distressing to say the least.

Sadly, it actually happens in the real world.

On Jan. 23 of this year, a Colorado crime lab DNA analyst was charged with dozens of counts of forgery. She’s accused of mishandling and tampering with evidence over 15 years, sending more than 1,000 cases into question.

In “The Cockfight,” the main character loses everything and is sent to various federal prisons, including the one in rural Bennettsville.

The main character in the book, “Teach,” explains the circumstances surrounding his case, and the various facilities he was placed in. The book labels it as “social welfare at the expense of human bondage.”

What’s worse is that we continue to punish offenders even after they are released.

With felony records, there is no real way that they will ever obtain meaningful work or be allowed to become productive members of society.

“The Cockfight” is the story of the teacher’s fight to clear his name. It is a book about injustice and redemption.

It compares how we treat people caught in the system to cockfights.

We make them mean and angry toward each other, and no one wins — not the victims of crime nor those caught in the broken system.

It was written to illustrate what can happen when things go wrong, and it is my hope that the message in the book leads to both a change in attitude and in action.

Further, I hope those who are victims of criminal acts will be comforted with knowing that the perpetrators will be brought to justice and that innocent people will be protected from a flawed system.