The Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory spent a little more than $394,000 on third-party contractors for certain firearms testing after losing three of its examiners last year.
That’s still less than the state would have paid had the lab retained those employees who conducted toolmark exams, Director Dennis Hilliard told the commission that oversees the facility Thursday morning. Toolmarks are the impressions left on cartridges or shells after they’ve been fired. Examiners test them to determine if they’ve been fired from a specific firearm.
“Their annual budget for salaries and benefits was over $400,000,” Hilliard said.
Still, Hilliard told members of the State Crime Laboratory Commission he is eager to have an in-house toolmarks team again, which he expects to happen by mid-2026.
The lab temporarily suspended toolmark testing in August 2024, after discrepancies were found in test results for a pistol seized as evidence in a 2021 Pawtucket murder case. Cartridge casings were flagged as matching a different firearm in possession of the Boston Police Department.
The three technicians who were responsible for testing that firearm have all since left their jobs, with all subsequent exams being handled by two former New York City police examiners from Stria Consulting Group.
Since November 2024, Stria’s two consultants have worked on 232 cases ranging from evidence comparison, test fires, and matching firearms’ serial numbers. Stria has been paid $262,350 so far, according to an expense spreadsheet Hilliard shared with commissioners.
The consulting firm was initially contracted to handle toolmark testing for Rhode Island gun cases for six months, but Hilliard struggled to find replacements for its lead and standard examiner positions.
Hilliard did have a candidate for the lead examiner position lined up late last year, but that applicant dropped out over pay. At the time, the University of Rhode Island offered a salary range of $70,971 to $107,830 for the lead examiner’s position. The salary was increased in May to range between $82,082 to $125,379.
That bump appears to have finally paid off. Hilliard said the most recent lead examiner at Connecticut’s state laboratory will start working in Rhode Island come Jan. 5 — even though the job does technically require approval from the commission, which was not on Thursday’s agenda.
“If I had that information in advance, I think we could have done it now,” Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein, who chairs the panel as a designee of the AG’s office, told Rhode Island Current after the meeting.
Commissioners are expected to vote on the new lead examiner in mid-January. While approval is customary, Hilliard noted that past technicians have started work before the panel’s official sign-off.
The position of standard examiner will be filled by an in-house candidate who recently passed training from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). He is expected to begin work no later than May of next year, Hilliard said
He told commissioners the third examiner position will be cut in order to offset the recent pay scale adjustments.
‘It’s very difficult to ship a gun through FedEx’
Hilliard again made a pitch to the commission to reduce the number of cases verified out of state.
Final verification of Stria’s work has been handled by examiners at SCL Forensics in Texas and FoCoSS Forensics in New Hampshire, which the lab’s expense sheet notes were paid a combined $58,101.
The additional verification was deemed necessary by the commission to minimize the risk of confirmation bias — the principle that if you know what you’re looking for, you’re more likely to find it.
A report published in October 2024, by California-based consultant Ronald Nichols, who formerly worked for the ATF, found a lack of diligence as well as confirmation bias on the part of the three forensic examiners who previously performed toolmark analysis at the state lab.
Hilliard maintains that it’s not cost-effective to continue shipping evidence across the country for testing. The expense spreadsheet notes the lab paid nearly $4,500 to ship evidence — which comes with its own set of logistical hurdles, Hilliard told Rhode Island Current.
“It’s very difficult to ship a gun through FedEx,” he said.
Hilliard proposed working with state crime labs across New England on a mutual aid basis, with each sending out 5% of cases, randomly selected, for external testing. He said the cost would be minimal.
Commissioners are still hesitant to reduce third-party verification, especially since the lab has saved money by not doing work in-house.
“The biggest consideration for me is the confidence in the results of the lab,” Goldstein said. “We’ve now seen and you’ve reported a tremendous reduction in the backlogs.”
But she’s not totally opposed to Hilliard’s idea. Goldstein tasked him with formally checking whether other New England labs would want to provide mutual aid and to craft a policy proposal for a future vote.
Another nonconformity
Hilliard’s lab remains under the commission’s microscope as he and his staff updated members on a newly flagged issue in a 2022 federal gun case now headed to trial.
The case was reported to the commission in a letter dated Dec. 4, and involved an incorrect elimination of latent prints found on a shotgun. Mark Zabinski, the lead latent print examiner for the lab, described the evidence as having little clarity due to a smudge.
“The region that was clear enough to identify was in the upper right area,” he told commissioners. “This particular case was a complex print.”
He said he looked through the state and federal fingerprint database, but was unable initially to tie it to the suspect. A second examiner at the lab had verified that information, but also had access to Zabinki’s conclusions. That’s a no-go under the lab’s new blind verification policy, but was fine when first being looked at in 2022.
With the case headed to trial, the prints were again fed into the database and there was a match to the first suspect, Zabinski said.
Ken Zercie, former director of the Connecticut Division of Scientific Services and now owner of Forensic Consulting of New England, independently looked into the discrepancy and agreed that it was a difficult print to verify.
Still, Zercie said he believed there could have been less of an issue if there was a third-party assessor who looked at the case with no prior knowledge.
“By sending out to an outside source, you’re taking some of the bias away,” Zercie said, speaking to commissioners virtually.
Hilliard said all involved parties were notified of the initial misidentification and no additional problems arose.
“As far as I’m concerned, case closed,” he told Rhode Island Current.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
