The Broward County medical examiner has been destroying some tissue and blood samples after they are a year old, a policy defense attorneys and prosecutors say could affect untold numbers of criminal cases.
Dr. Craig Mallak told the Florida Bulldog he instituted the policy shortly after taking Broward’s chief medical examiner position in 2012. He says the rule helps ease his office’s overcrowded evidence storage and also conforms to the norms of his industry.
The change was never publicly announced. Instead, Fort Lauderdale defense attorney J. David Bogenschutz discovered it during depositions in a murder case. The Medical Examiner’s Office destroyed a year-old blood sample in that case, and now Bogenschutz believes charges against his client should be dropped.
Attorneys on both sides of criminal prosecutions say other cases could be affected by the destroyed-evidence policy. After learning of the change in 2013, Broward Assistant State Attorney Brian Cavanagh sent an email to fellow prosecutors warning that it “presents a significant destruction of evidence problem.”
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