Virginia Beach Police used forged DNA reports to get confessions, investigation finds

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/13/ [login to see] /virginia-beach-forged-evidence-investigation
The Virginia Beach Police Department used forged documents with fake DNA evidence in interrogations in order to get confessions on at least five occasions, the state Attorney General Mark Herring said.

Herring's Office of Civil Rights concluded an investigation last April that found that the police department was forging documents pretending to be from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science. The department used these forged documents on at least five occasions between March 2016 and February 2020, according to the investigation.

"This was an extremely troubling and potentially unconstitutional tactic that abused the name of the Commonwealth to try to coerce confessions," Herring said in a statement on Wednesday.

"It also abused the good name and reputation of the Commonwealth's hard-working forensic scientists and professionals who work hard to provide accurate, solid evidence in support of our law enforcement agencies. While I appreciate that Virginia Beach Police put an end to this practice and cooperated with our investigation, this is clearly a tactic that should never have been used," he said.