For four years, Joshua Jackson has been awaiting sentencing for a crime he denies committing. All that time, he’s fought to have an appeals court re-examine his case.
In his appeal, Jackson says that his conviction stems from a beleaguered D.C. Department of Forensic Science’s (DFS) mishandling of ballistics evidence — and its failure to report such missteps to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia.
“You have thousands of cases being reviewed,” Jackson said. “DFS doesn’t want to be reviewing cases and dealing with lawsuits. This affects the lives of victims and victims’ families, but it’s their duty to make sure rights are being served. I think they’re trying to sweep this under the rug.”
However, Greenbelt District Court Judge Lydia K. Griggsby, who Jackson and his co-defendant William David Hill, Sr. appeared before earlier this year, didn’t find such an argument sufficient. She denied their Rule 33 motion for a new trial, saying that DFS’ 2021 lab decertification has no relevance to the findings DFS submitted in Jackson and Hill’s trials.
As such, Jackson is scheduled to be sentenced this summer. This outcome, he told The Informer, reflects poorly on the D.C. government and criminal justice system at large.
“People who are convicted [and] have issues with DFS don’t have the resources to argue their issues,” said Jackson, a 43-year-old father of one daughter. “The courts don’t want to spend more time and money dealing with lawsuits and reviewing cases. This would affect the lives of victims and their families but it’s the duty of the courts to make sure rights are being served. They’re trying to sweep this under the rug.”
Department of Forensic Sciences Under Scrutiny
In 2020, a District jury found Jackson guilty of a Hobbs Act robbery, possession of a firearm, and transportation of a stolen vehicle.
This happened despite Jackson’s attorney’s attempt to call into question aspects of DFS’ evidence collection, including the processing of the Dodge Caravan two days after the incident and away from the crime scene, the chain of custody for the mobile phones entered into evidence, whether DFS tampered with the phones before receiving a warrant, and the degree to which the detectives influenced the scope of the forensics investigation.
Months later, in April of 2021, the American National Standards Institute National Accreditation Board (ANAB) suspended DFS’ accreditation — for the second time in less than a decade — after what a public defender reportedly described to the Washington City Paper as nearly a dozen rulings that sparked skepticism about the efficacy of its ballistics testing.
ANAB withdrew the accreditation of DFS’ firearms examination unit, along with the biology, chemistry, latent fingerprint, and digital evidence units. A report compiled by SNA International, a firm hired by the Bowser administration, cited DFS staff’s lack of expertise, the lack of a collaborative, integrated work environment, and executive leadership’s failure to ensure oversight and accountability and fidelity to standards.
In 2022, the D.C. Council approved — without D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s signature — legislation that aligned with SNA International’s recommendations. Provision included DFS becoming an independent agency, the pivot of the chief forensic sciences officer position toward management, and the expansion and strengthening of the scope of DFS’s Science Advisory Board.
Since DFS lost its accreditation, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has had to rely on independent contractors to test DNA evidence. It has done so at a time when judges are increasing the burden of proof for prosecutors seeking convictions for gun-related crimes.
During a December 5, 2023 D.C. Council breakfast, U.S. Attorney Matt Graves said that those who are suspected of gun-related crimes are initially “no papered” because of the lack of forensic evidence available at the time. He told council members that though the contractors are collecting evidence from crime scenes, they’re unable to test it at a rate that ensures a speedy trial.
Between transporting and testing evidence, the courts can expect evidence to be included in discovery no sooner than 100 days, Graves told council members. In the weeks following the council breakfast, the Forensic Biology and Forensic Chemistry scientific units of the DFS’ Forensic Science Laboratory gained re-accreditation, which exacerbated the agency’s evidence processing backlog.
Months later, agency leaders remain hopeful of DFS’ turnaround. In his April 4 testimony before the D.C. Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, DFS Interim Director Dr. Francisco J. Diaz said that the agency remains “ steadfast” in securing re-accreditation in the Latent Fingerprint Unit.
DFS would have to do so in what’s been described as one of District’s toughest budget seasons. Though Bowser’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget proposal increases DFS’ operating budget by nearly $2 million, multiple divisions experience $1.57 million across-the-board cuts. In the budget report, Bowser administration officials said the cuts stem from a drawback in outsourcing amid re-accreditation gains.
Those cuts include a decrease of $376,000 for training and development and a loss of $6,000 for laboratory administration. Should Bowser’s proposal be approved in its current form, the Public Health Laboratory Administration, which is responsible for the testing of toxins and infectious organisms, would experience a loss of $175,000 in its operating budget.
In his testimony, Diaz mentioned DFS continues to implement recommendations outlined in the SNA International report. He also cited a separate $500,000 capital improvement plan geared toward the funding of equipment and IT infrastructure for the agency.
“The mayor’s Fiscal Year 2025 proposed budget will support increased productivity levels of forensic testing expected by our stakeholders in accordance with our accrediting body standards,” Diaz said April 4. “Under the Fiscal Year 2025 budget, funding for personnel, training, equipment, instruments, reagents, analysts, and forensic outsourcing will ensure that DFS continues to play its vital role in driving down violent crime and keeping our communities safe.”
William Hill Continues to Claim Innocence
In 2016, years before DFS’ current predicament started, the District’s forensics science laboratory lost its accreditation after the federal prosecutors found errors in the DNA unit of the lab. Subsequently, the agency couldn’t conduct DNA forensic work for 10 months.
During the latter part of that year, three law enforcement agencies engaged armed robbery suspects in a chase across the D.C.-Maryland border. The events that took place at the end of that chase would be under scrutiny for years to come.
According to prosecutors, three men robbed an auto repair shop in Clinton, Maryland on November 22, 2016, shooting and paralyzing a person in the process. On November 26, 2016, the three men robbed a barbershop in Seat Pleasant, Maryland and fled in a stolen minivan.
A Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) incident report obtained by The Informer said that Seat Pleasant police officers pursued a vehicle identified in a November 26, 2016 armed robbery. The vehicle, according to the report, had a silver handgun on the driver side floorboard and a black handgun with an extended clip in plain view.
The pursuit, which started at 5:19 pm, culminated on the 5300 block of C Street in Southeast. That’s where, according to the report, three suspects bailed out of the vehicle and fled on foot.
One suspect, identified as Jackson, fell out of the ground upon exiting the vehicle due to a gunshot wound to the chest. Police also apprehended another suspect, identified as Ronnell Lewis, before taking him to MPD’s Sixth District Station for processing.
Two years later, detectives identified Hill as the third suspect who evaded capture after shooting Jackson and firing shots at the police.
In 2019, a federal jury in Greenbelt, Maryland found Hill guilty of the Hobbs Act robbery (similar to Jackson’s 2020 District conviction), the shooting of Jackson and a robbery victim, and shooting at a police officer. Evidence presented at trial included a witness description, his name collected from texts in Jackson’s phone, GPS cell phone data, and forensic evidence that prosecutors placed Hill at the scene where the police pursuit culminated.
To this day, Hill continues to find fault with all of what he continues to call contaminated evidence and junk science. He told The Informer that prosecutors heavily relied on forensics when no one could identify him as a suspect and he didn’t match suspect descriptions released by the FBI.
Hill points to the hair follicle found on the gun that prosecutors used to link him to the crime, saying that it had a total of three people’s DNA on it. He also pointed out that the actual gun that the forensics lab connected to him had Lewis’ DNA all over it, along with that of three other people. In regard to witness testimony, Hill noted that the people who designated him as the third suspect identified other people on three previous occasions between 2016 and 2017.
“I don’t know if they followed proper protocol,” Hill said. “When they got around to examining the hair, the words they used were that they ‘believed this hair came from William Hill.’ The close examination showed two other people’s DNA… They never did find the ratio of the other person’s DNA to my DNA. That would tell whether the DNA was transferred or it came [directly] from me.”
In his motion for a new trial, Hill requested ex-parte communication with the judge to delve deeper into his allegations that DFS and FBI tampered with DNA evidence that secured his arrest and conviction more than two years after the robbery and police chase.
Weeks after Feb. 29 proceeding, Hill recounted to The Informer how Griggsby, at one point of the ex-parte communication, advised him against speaking on his own behalf.
Hill, now 68, continues to maintain that he hadn’t been involved in criminal activity for more than a decade at the time of the 2016 robbery and police chase. While he acknowledged knowing Jackson since 2013, and his mother and stepfather even longer than that, he said that he wasn’t anywhere near the crime scene and the place where the chase ended.
When it came to his name, what prosecutors designated as “Old Man,” in one of the phones found at the scene, Hill described it as circumstantial at best. He denied that phone number belonged to him, telling The Informer that law enforcement had his actual phone number, but failed to check cell phone towers to confirm whether he had been at the site where the car chase ended.
Years after his arrest, Hill still places himself at home getting ready for his job at Safeway on Capitol Hill (14th Street and Kentucky Avenue in Southeast) on the night of November 26, 2016. He told The Informer that he had that job for nearly four years at that time.
Hill also told The Informer that, at his age, he wouldn’t have been able to run away from the scene where the police chase culminated and evade police helicopters.
“There’s something amiss when it comes to the analytics,” Hill said. “How did I ever get convicted and no one said it was me. The person [who did it] didn’t have a mask. No one wants to raise the issue with DNA. One lawyer said it was too much science.”
Joshua Jackson’s Pleas Go Unanswered
A 2021 motion filed by Stuart A. Berman, Jackson’s attorney at the time, details crucial mistakes allegedly made by a DFS crime scene technician who, on November 26, 2016, collected evidence at the scene where a high-speed police chase culminated.
According to the motion, the crime scene technician in question unloaded the gun mentioned in their report and placed it back on the scene instead of securing it. Berman alleged that the technician failed to report the name and badge number of the officer who informed them that the gun was moved from the street to the sidewalk.
Officers on the scene that evening, according to the motion, represented Seat Pleasant Police Department, Capitol Heights Police Department, and Metropolitan Police Department.
Berman’s motion also mentioned that DFS’ report didn’t include photos of a shell casing alleged to have been jammed inside a gun, according to an FBI report. In regard to Jackson’s mobile device, Berman alleges that the call log extracted by DFS shows an officer using the phone before receiving a warrant. The motion also said that DFS neglected to report this misstep to management and OAG.
Jackson recounted unsuccessful attempts to bring these alleged inconsistencies to the court’s attention and that of DFS. He told The Informer that George J. Hazel, the judge at his trial, initially denied the motion to examine evidence collection out of regard for “the bigger picture.”
Similarly, DFS’ Complaint Review Team told Jackson last May that the DFS technician, Danielle Vann, isn’t responsible for maintaining the security of the crime scene. In regard to the phone, the team wrote in its response to Jackson that her arrival at the crime scene more than an hour after Jackson’s arrest absolves her of any involvement of phone usage.
“The gun was part of my conviction,” Jackson said. “The cell phone was a major part [but] it was circumstantial. DFS wasn’t on the scene at the time it was used, but they processed it. They should have reported the issue to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Inspector General that evidence had been tampered with… The fact that they didn’t report these things, it’s as if they helped to cover what the Metropolitan Police Department, and police in Seat Pleasant and Capitol Heights did.”
It’s disheartening to see the persistent failure of the justice system to address systemic issues disproportionately affecting black men. Without meaningful reforms, these injustices will continue to perpetuate inequality and erode trust in the system. Thank you for bringing light to this with this article.