A key element of a groundbreaking DNA project aimed at clearing wrongly convicted people was resolved yesterday by a sharply divided Virginia Board of Forensic Science.

In a 4-4 vote broken by the chairman, the board decided against using volunteer lawyers to locate and notify people that biological material had been discovered in old forensic case files that may be suitable for DNA testing, or has already been tested.

Instead, the board voted 7-3 to notify the people -- convicted of serious crimes from 1973 through 1988 -- by certified mail.

The letter will give the recipient contact information for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which can then put them in touch with a volunteer should they want legal advice.

"This is a first step in a process," said Joseph Bono, the board chairman. "Are we going to stop here? Absolutely not."

The board's counsel said the use of the private lawyers would not be appropriate, given the legislation ordering the notifications -- though two board members, themselves lawyers who work with the legislature, disagreed.

After the meeting, board member Stephen D. Benjamin, a criminal-defense lawyer, complained that the independent verification of identities and addresses by lawyers is essential.

"We may as well just be tossing it up in the wind. Some will go to the right person, others will not and we'll have no idea who got what," he said. Some of the addresses are two or three decades old.

The project, which has proved far larger than first anticipated, is being watched closely around the country.

Yesterday, Peter Marone, director of the Department of Forensic Science, told the board that the effort, "from the beginning, was unprecedented in scope. . . . It was and still is a pioneering effort. We had never done this before -- nobody had."

It was made possible when lawyers for Marvin Anderson of Ashland, wrongly convicted of rape, asked the Department of Forensic Science in 2001 to look for biological evidence that might be tested.

Swatches and swabs holding blood, semen or other biological material were found inside the 1973 through 1988 case files of former state serologist Mary Jane Burton, now deceased, and several other serologists. DNA testing was not widely available at the time.

Anderson has since been pardoned and the real rapist convicted as a result of the testing. Two other men were later cleared of rapes by evidence in Burton's files.

Anderson, who spent 15 years in prison, appeared at yesterday's board meeting and spoke of the difficulty he had clearing his name.

In 2005, Gov. Mark R. Warner had a sample of the cases tested and two additional wrongly convicted people, out of 31 cases tested -- about 6 percent -- were exonerated of rapes. Warner then ordered the full study.

Nearly three years later, with more than half a million case files searched and testing in hundreds of cases completed, no one else has apparently been cleared and apparently few have been notified the potential evidence had been discovered.

This year, the forensic science board decided it would not make such notifications. But in March the Virginia General Assembly ordered them to do so.

A subcommittee of the board decided to use volunteer lawyers to track down the convicts, many of whom have been released from prison. Nearly 200 lawyers volunteered, among them prosecutors, law professors and retired judges.

But the subcommittee stopped further action at the request of board Chairman Bono, leading to yesterday's vote.

Marone reported yesterday that so far 796 cases have been sent to an outside lab, the Bode Technology Group in Springfield, for testing. More than 400 have had results returned from the lab and 156 other cases remain to be sent.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or fgreen@timesdispatch.com.