Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston has seated an external citizen committee to oversee inventory and review of recently discovered unprocessed evidence that has been stored in the Medical Examiner’s Office for up to 30 years.
The members are as follows:
Buddy Perry, retired judge, 12th Judicial District of Tennessee
Hugh Moore, former civil rights prosecutor, U.S. Department of Justice
Lee Davis, former Hamilton County prosecutor
Professor Dwight Aarons, University of Tennessee College of Law
Eddie Holmes, past president of Chattanooga NAACP
General Pinkston established the committee to supervise the process of ensuring conviction integrity in an unknown number of prosecuted homicides that have unanalyzed evidence, said officials.
General Pinkston is drafting a proposal for conducting the evidence inventory. That proposal will be submitted to the committee for review by the end of the month. Once the committee finalizes a protocol, it will be followed to account for all of the unprocessed evidence.
It is anticipated the inventory process will be lengthy but hope it will be finished by the end of this year. In the meantime, any defendant convicted of a homicide between the years 1986 and 2002 wanting to know if his or her case has unanalyzed evidence should contact the office at 209-7400.