Madam Secretary, would you please call the roll?

Yeah, Madam Chair.

I will begin the roll call now.

Chair Woman Cohen.

Here.

Vice Chair Baird.

Here.

Director Vasquez.

Director Hilder.

Director Sudman?

Here.

Director Corrales.

Here.

Director U.

Here.

Director Murzell.

Director Huff?

Here.

Director Whoos?

Here.

And that concludes the roll call.

Madam Chair, we do have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

We will proceed to item three, which is my report.

I'd like to begin by saying happy new year to everyone.

And I hope the holiday season treated you well.

We are excited about all the wonderful work that uh HFSC will do this year and the ways in which this board will contribute to the organization's success.

I look forward to working with each of you in 2026.

And I hope it's a peaceful, safe, uh secure, and um happy and healthy year for everyone.

Particularly peaceful.

Next, I'd like to thank Director Vasquez for taking the time to tour HFSC and the VEB in December with her counterpart from the Texas Innocence Project.

I trust that everything went well, and I'm glad that you were able to do that.

At this point, I believe almost every board member has taken a tour of the VEB, which is great.

Has everyone mostly around the table?

Okay.

Good.

Good.

I'll go.

It is, it's great.

I mean, it really gives you a handle on what's happening.

Thank you, uh Dr.

Stout and uh Ms.

Haley for scheduling these tours, and we look forward to more opportunities to see the amazing work that the staff is doing.

Lastly, I want to remind the board that we are fast approaching budget season yet again.

Please take note that during the March board meeting we will hear the proposed uh FY27 budget as presented by Dr.

Stout and Mr.

Leach, our CFO.

Because this is a time sensitive voting item, we will need all members to attend board meetings if possible.

The meeting is scheduled for March 13th.

As usual, Mr.

Leach will send us an email with a more detailed explanation of the budget, and we look forward to reviewing that.

Members, we have several challenges ahead for us in FY27, and we need everyone's input to ensure the budget reflects the organization's priorities for the coming year.

With that, I conclude my report.

Now we'll proceed with agenda item four.

At this time we'll open the at this time we'll open the floor public comment and invite any member of the public that wishes to speak to come to the podium and address the board.

We ask all speakers to sign it at the front of the room so we are aware of your presence that all comments be limited to three minutes.

You may speak on any matter concerning the board and HFSC at this time.

At this time we have do we have anyone?

Apparently not.

Seeing no members of the public in our audience today, we've signed who signed up for the comment.

I'll close the public comment session.

Natalie, we will have a timer ready for three well, we don't need a so the public comment period is closed at this time.

Now we'll consider meeting minutes from the November 14th, 2025 board meeting.

Does anyone have corrections or additions to the minutes as presented?

No.

At this time we'll conduct a voice vote to approve the minutes.

May I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you get that?

Okay.

Any discussion?

Please unmute your mics at this time for the voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed, nay.

The motion carries.

Unanimously.

Proceed to item number six, which is our president's report.

Peter, it's all yours.

Good morning, y'all.

And I know this meeting will last precisely as long as I talk.

So we have classically used January as kind of a setup for the budget discussion in March and give you some perspectives of what has happened across this last calendar year.

Remember last meeting I really kind of gave more detail about what we saw happened across this last calendar year.

And try and give you at least a little bit of a forward look of what we can see on the horizon in the next calendar year.

All right.

So forensic biology, we'll start there because this is you know the the backlog that everybody is probably nationwide the most concerned with.

And that is a really nice graph to see.

I I Amy and I were talking about this earlier that I don't think across the last 10 years we have ever felt as good about where we're at in biology.

Um we always say that, expecting something to fall from the sky and hit us in the head because biology just there inevitably there is some kind of roller coaster that we see.

Um you can see the bulge in the green line, which are the SAKs.

Uh that was the kaiogen manufacturing issue, and we expected that to go up and come down, but we literally have a hundred ish backlog DNA requests anymore.

And you think about historically what that means from decades ago when there were tens of thousands.

I mean, that is an astonishing accomplishment for the staff.

Um but we have decreased the sexual assault kit backlog by 73%.

We have a grand total of 30 sexual assault kits that are over the state mandated 90 days right now.

We will probably that that that number is you figure we get about 100, 120 kits a month.

So to have 30 kits over 90 days is representative of complex kits that are just complicated testing, stuff that's had to come back around.

I mean, there's always gonna be a handful of them like that.

So that's pretty close to current on everything.

Um we have signed off 13 staff members, six of which are DNA analysts.

That is a massive increase in the number of analysts.

And remember, analysts are the ones that are doing the report writing, the interpretation, the testimony.

They're they're the end product that deals with most of that stuff.

We plan on signing off three more DNA analysts and two screeners in 2026.

They are underway on that, and probably the biggest thing for 2026 will be a shift as we have planned when we started out on this, shifting away from outsourcing to more internal testing.

We're we are at that point where we start bringing stuff in house.

That's going to be the big thing for this year.

Now, things that are a risk for forensic biology over this year.

Um the capacity enhancement backlog reduction, CEBER funding.

We submitted that proposal.

I've had a few conversations with Department of Justice.

They're clearly processing on stuff.

We still have not seen awards, still have not seen funding released.

We haven't even seen the awards.

Did I mention we haven't even seen the awards yet?

That is badly delayed.

Um that's going to have implications.

I don't it's difficult to predict what it is, but the delays in federal funding are going to have issues for us.

They're going to have issues nationwide.

Um managing this transition from SAK's outsourcing to in-house testing.

I mean, it's it's a big change.

Anytime there's change, there's risk.

And we are seeing just like everybody else increases in materials costs, increases in labor costs, increases in all of these things.

Um I mention on here in biology in particular, post-conviction cases.

Um you have to keep in mind that we probably, I can't say, you know, definitively, Texas DPS probably has the most cases that are tend to be in post-conviction testing, so capital cases.

Those are really what a death penalty capital case in Texas is automatically appealed to the CCA.

What's called a mini cap, um, uh life without parole kind of capital case.

You know, those are the cases that people pay attention to, and those are the cases that tend to get appealed, have a lot of post-conviction work.

We have the lion's share of those here in Harris County and that come through us.

So these cases are very complicated.

They are very expensive, they are very lengthy, and we have multiple of these flowing through right now.

Um I'm aware of multiple of these.

There was just an article in the Chronicle last week talking about the number of death penalty capital cases and mini caps that are likely to go to trial in this next year.

Those are complicated cases.

They are also cases that disproportionately affect forensic biology and firearms.

So it's really difficult to predict how big those impacts are, but they can be really substantial.

Any questions on forensic biology?

When you talk about moving to in-house analysis, so what?

Do it a different way.

So what percentage of overall cases are have you been outsourcing?

We have been outsourcing the sexual assault kits.

But what percentage of the sort of thing is basically entirely.

And Amy, you you can probably answer this.

I'm just wondering how much caseload's going to be added on once you start doing everything in-house.

Amy Castillo, the chief operations officer.

Um we get about a thousand to twelve hundred sexual assault kits a year, and we have been outsourcing all of those.

First for several years.

So and right now, it probably is gonna about double our caseload.

Okay.

Um we have in how the in the in-house in-house, non-SAKs.

Sorry.

Non-sa case.

Those right now are processing in-house, but we did outsource over the last year.

We basically outsourced part of our backlog so that we could get current with non-SAKs.

So that part's already transitioned to being back in-house.

The SAKs, like I said, a thousand to twelve hundred a year.

We've been outsourcing those a hundred percent almost since COVID.

So what you've been outsourcing, both SAK and non-SAK has been about half of your caseload.

Yes.

Okay.

That's my question.

I think that's the answer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right.

Seized drugs.

This is the largest just by sheer uh request number backlog.

It is steadily decreasing.

Um, and we expect we will see this continue to steadily decrease across the year.

Now I I put um we've reduced marijuana.

Oh, hemp.

Really paying attention to the non-marijuana backlog.

Um that has decreased by nearly half.

Um foresee that continuing to decrease really pretty steadily.

Um we've got three analysts in training, and we also have validation work on the LCQ TOF for the probably the big things that are going to happen across this next year.

And I put backlog stabilizing.

I think we are basically always just superstitious about saying we're gonna get rid of a backlog because it seems like we put that out in the universe, something hits us in the head.

Uh so I say backlog stabilizing, but I think it's it's realistic to think with we're gonna make good headway on that backlog across this year.

Um the risks for 2026, validating a big new piece of equipment can be unpredictable.

It's a lot of labor investment, it's a lot of work to do that.

And liquid chromatography and accurate time of flight mass spec is a very new technology to seize drugs.

That's the same thing everywhere.

We have some really good talent in-house over in toxicology that is very familiar with these technologies and can help them, but it's gonna be a steep learning curve for seized drugs on using this technology.

Increased cost of materials.

Uh that this is affecting everything.

Labor costs, materials costs, everything on that, we're seeing increases on all of that in all of the sections.

And I wish I had an answer for hemp marijuana, but uh just don't.

Um December 25th, Department of Uh Health and Safety at the state level issued proposed rules for commercial hemp products.

We are still trying to figure out if those make anything easier or harder.

I I'm not sure.

And that's also if those proposed rules actually stay put and go into effect, which is anything but certain.

Um hemp marijuana, I mean, we we are relatively unaffected here just because hemp and marijuana, the small cases are not uh dare I say a particular priority.

They just aren't what Harris County is has to pay attention to.

We we need to pay attention to violent crime, those types of things.

It's just not the same issue as other things.

The elsewhere in the state, it's much more of an issue in counties that don't have the same kind of other criminal load, they pay much more attention to it, but it still has impacts to us.

And I I just can't quite predict what's gonna happen with it.

Any questions on CS drugs?

All right.

This has been the case for what, the last five years that we've been trying to get people to understand this.

Uh I will I've got to point out we have of the firearms examiners that we have.

We basically have two full-time firearms examiners because the other three are busy helping with training, so they aren't full-time on casework.

So the fact that we have kept the backlog of requests growing at the pretty slow rate that it has across the year is pretty miraculous and a testament to what those people are doing.

And but I get this is a challenge for the rest of the system.

This is evidence in what the courts are trying to try.

Most violent crime involves a gun in there someplace, so it's evidence that the courts are very interested in.

I appreciate that.

I also appreciate nobody wants us doing a slip shod job on this, so we will continue to focus on the quality of it in spite of the pressures.

In 26, we will be recruiting and posting for five new examiners.

We have been finishing up with the contracts around what training we can outsource on that.

Um we have two examiners in training, and we will begin training those five more.

Um, and we will also continue to use what limited outsourcing is possible out there, which is basically the Terrant County situation that we've been able to use.

Keep in mind they have two examiners up there.

Uh so if one of their examiners is down here in Harris County testifying, that means they have one examiner up there doing stuff, and everybody in the state is also looking at Tarrant County for dealing with their backlogs.

And I've said this one before there are a grand total of 72 firearms examiners in the entire state.

It just doesn't add up.

So there is going to continue to be a lot of pressures around firearms.

Um that means the risks for us is continuing with the fantastic work that the DA's office.

I can't give them enough credit on this.

They have been extremely helpful here, and HPD around how we all decide what are the priorities, how do we put them in order, how do we best try and address things to limit the impacts in the courts.

Um we know there are post-conviction cases that will have impacts here.

Again, firearms are involved in most capital cases.

Um I think we've got three right now that involve firearms that are some kind of post-conviction thing, and that involves a lot of time of the same people doing current casework.

There will be continued criticism in the field.

This is a significant reality.

Um tried to push along as much of the publications and the commentary that's out there around this.

Um we have worked hard to try and keep the major critics near at hand and understanding what they're doing.

I don't know if it will affect us directly, but it could easily show up anywhere in the state that could have implications for cases here in Harris County.

I, because of that criticism and because of all of the work that's been going on at Texas Forensic Science Commission and elsewhere, could see some significant changes in the requirements of how we practice, how we report those kinds of things that could have implications.

And then, like I said before, outsourcing is extremely limited in what we can do.

Questions for firearms.

Toxicology.

Um we've really managed to keep the the primary part that the system is concerned with, alcohols.

Uh, that's that's the major part of the work.

They have kept that at or below 30 days, even with changes in staff turnover.

So that's been pretty good.

Drug turnaround time is floating around 280 days, much longer than we'd like, but that doesn't seem to be disruptive to the system right now, and we can usually address a court priority when it's needed.

Um we have validation work this next year on the new QTOF.

Um that's gonna be a lot of work there.

We also are we reworking some of the drug methods to have more automation involved with them so that ultimately they're more efficient.

And again, we've got talent that we've hired in that's done a lot of this work.

Um, so I think there's the the pieces are there, but it's gonna be a lot of work across the year.

And the turnover, the training aspects of training new people.

Um that is part of the risk, is just you know, staff turnover, and that's the same risk we've got everywhere.

We put all of this effort into training, and then if we lose somebody too soon, that's a big hit.

Um outsourcing costs are going up, and I will mention under outsourcing costs because it's probably we're seeing the impacts of a Supreme Court decision this last year, and I've mentioned this one before.

Smith v.

Arizona was a Supreme Court decision this last year.

It is one in a long line of what are called the progeny of Melinda's Diaz.

They are Sixth Amendment right to face your accuser kinds of cases.

Not a lawyer, definitely not a constitutional lawyer.

I just have to deal with this stuff.

But basically, it affects the demand for who has to testify about what.

And for forensic laboratories, particularly in toxicology and DNA, the processes in commercial laboratories in particular are this kind of assembly line kind of process.

So what that then can commercial laboratories have more exposure to this than necessarily labs in Texas.

We haven't seen a whole lot of impacts directly in Texas yet from Arizona v.

Smith.

But commercial laboratories that have work in other jurisdictions in the country, uh, particularly Connecticut.

Um they are seeing circumstances where they are getting dozens of their analysts subpoenaed to testify in court, and that's increasing their costs.

So I don't know how it's gonna unfold.

Uh when Melinda's Diaz was decided, what, 15 years ago, we went through an episode where there was some pretty significant increases in testimony demand on laboratories, and it kind of settled down.

It's tough to say with this because Arizona v.

Smith makes it even that much more strident about who has to testify about what, and some jurisdictions around the country are taking it kind of to an extreme.

Um what we see out of it is an increase in our outsourcing costs.

Uh QA validation labor cost increases.

Um, yes, all of those things are risks in 2026.

Questions about toxicology.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's it's really difficult for all of us to predict what Arizona v Smith is going to do, but it's gonna do something.

Digital multimedia, no backlogs.

Uh, we've increased our infotainment analysis capacity.

Um, and because of those increases, we now have work to do with both HPD and HCDAO, the DA's office, uh, helping them understand what we can do and where the capacity is.

So we've we've had a number of outreach efforts in there to help them understand what they can request, probably should be requesting, how to help investigators keep that front of mind.

Um probably the biggest risks to us here in 26 are rising costs of data storage and software costs.

We're seeing some pretty sharp increases in the software packages that we use there.

They are already kind of wildly expensive, and they're getting even wildly more wildly expensive.

Um so there is an ongoing discussion of this of a lot of the software producers also like to market the push-button solutions and the things that any anybody can do kind of stuff.

And there's a real balance in that of what is best done and most cost effectively done by an investigator at the front end, what is best done and most appropriately handled in the laboratory, and I think we're going to see a lot of those conversations over this year and how to balance that.

Multimedia questions.

Yes.

Yes, ma'am.

Uh how long is everything stored?

And and how does that eventually increase the costs?

Um, okay.

So what we we would like to store more.

Um it's just not practical because my estimate is we probably generate on a yearly basis well into the three, four, five petabyte kind of range.

It's a lot.

Um largely what we do is we back stuff off on to external media as a forensic copy, and then that gets tagged back into the property room as kind of the the original.

Um we have working copies of things that we store.

Amy, what is it, 60 days or 90 days, something like that?

It's kind of in that range.

Um local storage.

Uh, but we've had a lot of conversations, and there is ongoing conversations, particularly with HPD about where and how do we have shared storage that investigators can get at that we can get at?

It gets really expensive.

Um there we have had conversations over the years as well, how to handle some of this stuff because cloud systems.

I I know there have been some probably really entertaining conversations within Microsoft of even if it's all encrypted and they don't actually have any means of getting at it, they still really don't want the child pornography on their systems.

Um I can't blame them.

Uh so there's additional complexities in that.

But the the scale of storage we're talking about is mini multiple petabytes, and it gets expensive.

Any way we do it.

Does that answer your question?

Okay.

Peter, what does expensive mean?

Give us a range.

I think you're good.

Oh, it can it easily run up into the millions of dollars in terms if we're really trying to store if we were trying to store petabytes of material over long that's that's millions.

It's just not practical.

Um petabyte, so you you have um gigabytes and terabytes.

Uh petabyte is a thousand terabytes.

Okay.

It's it's a it's a lot.

And we generate easily.

I mean, i I mean, uh I probably have close to a terabyte of storage sitting on me just right now.

So imagine now not only am I making a forensic copy of that terabyte of information directly, I've got working copies of it, so I may have multiple different versions of it.

So if you were processing just what I've got sitting here, that could easily be several terabytes on just one individual in one case.

Okay.

Thank you.

It gets big really quick.

I do have one more follow-up.

Yeah.

How how long ideally would you like to keep page?

Yeah.

Especially if you have to go back to it potentially.

Well, ideally we would keep it for years.

Um it's just not realistic.

And so everything we're dealing with, I mean, the the backing stuff off onto external media is imperfect as well because external media has an age limit.

I mean, any kind of external media that we're using ages and ultimately decays.

So all of that it's it's a risky, imperfect way of dealing with it as it is.

But yeah, we we buy terabyte external media by the case.

So I have a question.

So what is the policy of the lab for how long you're gonna maintain different?

So, like I say, what we what we do is we back stuff off onto that external, and that becomes the the raw evidence, and it's retained indefinitely at the property room.

The the working copies of things that we have worked through to process, have done transforms to those kinds of things, that's where the real conversation is of how long and how do we store that stuff.

And that's what we say.

We store locally, basically as long as the investigation is going on, but it gets really difficult to store that stuff past about 90 days.

And so I mean you're gonna have different you'll have misdemeanor cases where you don't have to worry about post-conviction remedies.

Is there any policy you have in place to distinguish evidence that you're going to store from, for example, we have a misdemeanor case capital murder.

Yeah, we try to.

But it it gets real and then you also think, and this is where we start getting into this conversation about what has an investigator pulled off.

It gets really, really complicated really, really fast.

What happens if you have an investigator that has gone and law enforcement?

Like law enforcement or an investigator in the DA's office.

They've gone, they have done an initial dump.

Well, this is all volatile memory, so any time you touch it, it changes.

So they've already done a dump.

So if we go do another dump, it's not the same dump.

And which dump or anybody actually working on, which dump is actually retained, who's retaining it.

How does it change?

So, like on okay, again, toxicologist, not a multimedia guy.

But like on this, it the the memory that's on this, it's not like there's a physical disk that stuff's stored on.

So you can think of it that things on this are always moving around all the time.

And any time, even just simply having my screen come on has changed the information that is being stored in the the memory of this device.

So if I go in and now do a extraction of that information, the simple act of doing the extraction has changed the information that's in there.

As far as just storage.

Right.

Okay, got it.

Okay.

Now that's asked by a lawyer.

Well, it's you know, is that change material?

Well, we can argue about that a lot, but it it has changed.

And so from the standpoint of the evidentiary value stuff, there's there's a discussion to be had around how material is that.

Doesn't seem seem like a problem.

Right.

But those those are the things we have to think about with it.

And it makes an impact of how we deal with stuff.

Thank you.

Any other questions on this?

Wow, didn't think multimedia was going to be the place where all the questions were.

Latent prints.

Again, no backlog.

They have held steady for the last year, both in processing and comparison.

You know, latent prints, there's capacity there.

They're after having had a gigantic backlog for a lot of years, it's been kind of nice to see latent prints be steady.

And I think through this next year, what we'll see is continued no backlog there.

Again, the irony, once we get rid of a backlog, then we seem to have to go around educating people that, hey, we've got capacity over here, and you need to make requests.

Seems like we're kind of in that period of needing to re-educate uh investigators of there is capacity here and you you can ask for stuff.

Uh in 26, the risks.

So APIS is the automated fingerprint identification system.

I wish it were a single system that worked seamlessly through all of its various layers.

It is not.

And there are changes that have happened at the state level.

There are changes that have happened at the county level that have affected how the system works and how well it works.

Um we'll see how that all shakes out.

Uh interoperability.

The used to be 20 years ago, the the gigantic joke in all of forensics was if I did a burglary in Manhattan and I scooted across the river to New Jersey, nobody would ever know because across the river, the fingerprint systems didn't communicate.

Um there's been a lot of work in the last 20 years about the interoperability of various levels of the API system, but it still is got a lot of siloed data within the system.

And there are system updates, system software, system hardware that's specific to various levels and can create some real headaches for us in terms of how those systems work.

And we got some of those going on right now.

Questions about latent prints.

All right.

Again, another section that after lots of headaches over the years, um, they've been keeping up pretty well.

Uh we're current on scenes and on vehicles, they seem to be keeping up with that fairly well.

Now, that said, bear in mind it is a small unit that is way too small, and we've talked about this for years.

It is way too small for really what the need is here.

But for the scenes that we seem to kind of have a steady state with HPD about what we need to make, homicides, child deaths, officer-involved shootings.

We do okay.

Um, I think across this next year, we've had a lot of change there with Karina's departure.

We've restructured the management, we've got a new management team.

They're settling in nicely, really encouraged by it, but it's a lot of change for the group.

Um we have seven CSIs currently in training.

That's a lot of the group that's in training.

Um we've got continued transition of this management team across this next year.

On the good news side of things, and it's not that past performance is any indicator of what the future is, but 2025 across the nation, homicide numbers went down.

So they've got a little bit of a breather right now.

Uh that trend has been there for the last couple years, a homicides decreasing nationwide.

Um, so maybe with a little luck, they'll stay that way, and they might get a little bit more of a breather.

Um risks.

It's a lot of change here recently for the group.

Um that's just gonna take them time to absorb that.

Like I say, I'm really encouraged about the new management structure, but it's gonna take time.

Labor costs and turnover, typical risks that we've got everywhere.

And you know, I've hit that a few times.

Labor costs, and this is a nationwide thing.

Labor costs are increasing.

Uh included on here about the property stuff since we've got that right at the end here.

Uh we have completed that construction, we've begun moving stuff over.

Uh this is a long series of basically musical chairs that are necessary to ultimately solve some of the serious issues that are in property writ large.

We have basically gotten the first step in that done, and the transition team is starting to move on to the next.

So that next big step is an inventory of the sexual assault kits that are currently in inventory.

I think it's something in the neighborhood of about 40,000 kits.

And with a bit of luck finalizing what really these transition plans look like between the city, us and HPD.

So I would say the biggest risks in property are we get stuck in figuring out what the transition really looks like.

That's that's a risk.

Hopefully we can mitigate that one.

Labor costs, like everywhere else.

And then we know we look hard trying to find where unexpected costs may be, but if there is an unexpected capital cost that comes from some facility change or something like that, that that lurks out there as a risk.

Um looks like I already got yes, ma'am.

Yes.

Um about drugs.

About drugs.

Oh, truck.

And other flammable stuff that the rats like.

What's the situation with that?

Um so that's that is when I say the big challenges that we're ultimately really trying to solve, that kind of sits at the end of this long sequence of musical chairs because we've got to create space in the main property room, because that's ultimately where we want those drugs to go.

Uh, but that means several stages of clearing out the space, making the construction changes that are necessary to handle those hazards over there all the while while still working with the rest of the system, the courts and the DA's office about how we dispose of drugs.

Um, actually last night I got a little bit of good news uh from Representative Lidsey Fletcher's office that I had made uh a proposal to them on dealing with some of the drug aspects, uh, because we have a large set of cases that have kind of been hung in the system.

They're old cases, and we've actually been dealing with these for a little bit more than a decade.

Um they're old cases that had field tests done on them, but had never had a laboratory test done on them.

So the concern is without that laboratory test, how many of those cases weren't drugs?

Um they're false, false positives.

So somebody took a plea agreement on something that wasn't drugs, and how do we address that?

It's a lot of cases.

It is way more than anybody has the resources to test directly.

It would be tens of millions of dollars to try and test them directly.

So we've been trying to think of smarter, more effective ways to deal with those.

And this was part of what I proposed to Lizzie Fletcher's office, and last night they let me know that it had at least made it out of the house.

Uh it's now over to the Senate with maybe some luck of actually being funded.

Uh so that would be some resources to try and think about these things a little smarter to deal with that particular aspect.

So would that be for testing or disposal?

Um well, ultimately it's to be able to dispose of them.

Um very rightly so.

The DA's office is concerned.

We don't want to dispose of those materials until we kind of have a clear way of understanding whose drugs really weren't drugs.

Um, so we kind of need a better way of finding that before we authorized destruction.

So it all kind of leads to how do we destroy dispose of these things more effectively.

So follow up on that, and I'm not a lawyer, so from the legal standpoint.

Is this kind of like going back and scratching something that already had?

That's been that's been taken care of a lot of these cases.

And undoing them and kind of is that where the the funds are gonna be going to testing and then reopening some of these cases?

The short answer to that is probably yes.

Um if you uh history history lesson here, and I know I don't have to be too long on time here.

Back, and there's uh there's a series.

If you Google Propublica and Busted, and we can find you the links to these.

There's a series of articles in ProPublica, um, and there's actually a number of articles around about this.

There was uh a period in time there where um should have James come explain this because James was a huge part of this.

Um cases that had had a field test, so the little the little nick kit kind of thing.

Um somebody took a plea agreement on those, and we had continued to test the materials after that.

This is going back to like 2010 to 2014, that kind of that kind of time range.

And we started to see um disturbing number of cases that were coming back negative, no actual controlled substance.

There is a false positive rate associated with those field tests.

Um much to the credit of the DA's office and to the laboratory, they did something about it.

And there were about 300 exonerations that happened in that time frame based off of the testing that was there, the fact that the DA's office realized this isn't right, so they went and actually opened those cases back up, dealt with an exoneration of somebody that was charged, had taken a plea agreement when there weren't actually drugs.

That gave rise to what's called the no lab no plea policy that's been in place for the last close to 15 years, where the DA's office won't even consider a plea agreement until there's a until there's a laboratory-based test.

So forward looking, and since that point, it's not been an issue.

And in about 2019, largely field testing in Harris County stopped altogether.

Um if we look back at cases before, there are cases where people have taken pleas that there was never a laboratory test.

So what do we do with those cases?

That's the part that we need a solution to.

It's just not practical to have that policy.

My opinion, that people plead without lab test because it happens all the time.

So if somebody the reality of the system is, and I've been handling cases in the county for 27 years, is that you'll have somebody that maybe is a habitual offender, you know, facing life in prison, and they show up on day one in court, and it's uh less than a gram of cocaine case, and the state offers them you know 60 days in the Harris County jail reduced under 044A, and it's it's the accused person's right to plead without a lab test, without an indictment.

And um, and that's a lot of times what those people want to do.

And I just don't think it's a good policy where you have somebody in that position, an accused person, you're not like, well, we can't do that until we get the lab back.

It's just how it is.

It's kind of affects a person's uh uh sixth amendment.

There they're really complicated things.

And if you're right if they want to plead.

If they want to plead guilty, it's their right.

Now, if the lab tests it, then the DA's office is gonna send you a Brady notice, and then your obligation as the attorney is to reach out to the person and say, hey, by the way, and you know what?

Sometimes you'll have people you'll never hear from.

Other times they'll come running in, but that's just that's the reality of the system.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Other questions.

All right.

That's what I had.

Thanks, y'all.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

All right, we'll proceed to agenda item seven.

Testimony.

Good morning.

Happy New Year.

Uh, my report is going to be short this time around.

I don't have any updates, which is a good thing.

So my first topic for today.

Can you press next?

It's to give you an update on last year's uh assessment.

Uh the last board meeting I mentioned that we were prep we were prepared and ready for our C SEM evidence property and evidence accreditation.

We had a reassessment.

And uh well, that happened last year in December.

We had a reassessment completed during the uh during December 10th.

This audit was pretty encompassing because it focused on all of the accreditation requirements for the 3181 accreditation program.

So we had to show conformance and records and uh this, even though it was one day we had to do we had to go to the property room so the assessors could witness evidence transactions.

Uh we had to do audits from the different evidence faults that we had.

So it was very in immersive, but we were able to finalize it and complete it on that day.

Uh we just got word there was no nonconformance as noted, and we just got our certificate and scope emailed last week that made it official.

So one of the things that ANAB does is once the lead assessor completes their assessment, they have another accreditation manager look over the report to make sure that everything is confirmed.

You know, there's nothing missing before they let us know, like officially that yes, for sure your accreditation is um is is given and you you can continue to read um your accreditation cycle.

So that's one of the things that we had to kind of wait, but now it's official for me to tell you.

Um so we are updating that on the website and whatnot, and so we just wanted to update you on the good news.

So we're this accreditation um cycle is for two years, so we'll just um it's a continual.

Can you move on to the next slide, please?

Thank you.

It's awkward.

Uh so my last topic is just kind of giving you an overview of testimony data.

I know that Dr.

Stout talked a little bit about Irison and Smith and you know the implications of testimony and whatnot.

Uh testimony is one of the important services that we provide to our stakeholders.

This is sort of um joined to put the analysis of our casework, so I just kind of want to give you an overview of you know the outputs of the time that warrants for this type of service that we provide.

As you can see for 2025, we had a total of 977 hours dedicated for this service.

As you can see, 793 of those were just waiting, you know, prior to the testimony, and the actual testimony was 100, I think and 84.

It's a bit pretty a bit small from here.

Um, and then I also am depicting in the pie chart next to it the kind of the um how this was broken down by section, and this is specific to the waiting hours, right?

If we in my next slide, I wanted to give you another overview of the testimony monitoring data.

So in late 2024, we started tracking the time that it takes for a monitors to go and evaluate the testimony of the analyst to go and testify.

Our HFSC requirement is every annual year, um, every analyst that goes and testifies needs to be monitored by somebody from their section that is technically competent as well as they are.

Um they need to be evaluated at least once per year.

There are other sections who are more stringent and they require monitors to go in every testimony or whatnot, but the quality manual requirement is at least once your testimony per year.

And so now that we've been able to collect the data, I can present it for 2025.

So what I mentioned is the 977 hours are the analysts themselves testifying for the case.

But in addition, the instances where a monitor had to go to court and monitor, that was an additional 256 hours, and I broke it down by section uh for you to see how this you know it how this um how the breakdown is by section for this monitor's time.

Now, for the end of 2025, this was really good.

We actually ended up with 95% of the staff that testified in 2025 being monitored.

Uh we only had four people, but we already requested those transcripts, so this is a really good number, but it's just to show how you know we do monitor this output or you know, or service that we provide.

Um, it's an additional mechanism that we do.

And then for my last slide, this is just a breakdown to kind of give you an overview of this the testimony time over throughout the years.

As you can see, we're kind of almost there with 2023.

And 2023, we had 900 and 77 hours.

No, 997 hours versus 977 for this year.

So we're 20 hours a little bit below, but it's sort of like equilibrating now from last 2024 to kind of predict that.

Um, and with that, that's my last topic.

Short and sweet.

Is are there any questions?

Any questions?

No.

Okay, thank you.

Succinct, but to the point.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

No other questions.

In that case, we are calling for a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All right.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

We are adjourned.