Political Wires reports:
A federal judge has said that "injustice" was done to a former Navy officer who was wrongly convicted with the help of a discredited military lab analyst, but he also concluded that the court can’t do anything about it.
House had been a highly regarded officer, tapped as executive assistant to the Navy’s surgeon general. His Navy career collapsed, though, after he and two other officers were charged with sexually assaulting a female sailor. The officers were acquitted of assault but convicted on lesser charges, including conduct unbecoming an officer.
The evidence deployed against House in his 2002 court-martial was processed by a subsequently discredited Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory analyst named Phillip Mills. House and a fellow Navy lieutenant were exonerated when Mills’ DNA examination results later were shown to be wrong.
Lab officials disagreed with Mills’ DNA results 55 percent of the time in cases they could retest. They also found errors in "thoroughness" in 13 percent of the Navy and Marine Corps cases that Mills handled.