A mechanic spent 3 years in jail after being wrongly accused of murder, because a lab mixed up DNA samples from the murder weapon and his washing machine

• A Louisiana mechanic was released from jail earlier this month, after spending more than three years locked up awaiting trial on murder charges due to a DNA mix-up.
• Roy Verret, 54, was accused of murdering 75-year-old Howard Poche in 2016, because Poche's DNA had been found on the lid of Verret's washing machine.
• But forensic experts testified in court that the sample from Verret's washing machine had been accidentally switched with the sample from the knife used to kill Poche.
• Criminal justice reform advocates have pointed to Verret's case to demonstrate the unfairness of jailing defendants for lengthy periods before trial.

A Louisiana mechanic spent three years in jail, facing a potential death sentence, after an accidental DNA mix-up turned him into a murder suspect.

He hadn't even been convicted yet — he was awaiting trial for those 37 months in jail because he couldn't afford to pay the $500,000 in bail money.

Roy Verret, 54, was arrested in April 2017 after a murder victim's blood was discovered on the lid of Verret's washing machine. There was no other direct link between Verret and the victim, 75-year-old Howard Poche, who had gone missing 16 months earlier and was found stabbed to death, his corpse concealed inside a trash can on his porch.

Authorities had searched Verret's home for evidence of his involvement in the murder after two witnesses named him as a potential suspect, though their allegations were based on hearsay, according to The Advocate. Verret was charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery.

But Verret was finally released from custody and cleared of all charges on June 8, after spending three years in the Iberia Parish Jail awaiting trial.

Poche's DNA had been mixed up with a sample from the murder weapon and a sample from Verret's washing machine, forensic science experts testified in court, according to The Advocate.

"I was in jail 37-and-a-half months," Verett told The New York Times. "Other than when I was sleeping, all I could think about was this."

The mistake was spotted when Verret's public defender, Steve Singer, spoke with a forensic chemist from the Acadiana Crime Lab in October 2019, learning that the swab from the bloody knife used to stab Poche appeared to have no blood on it at all, according to The Times.

Singer noted that the knife was labeled "item 19," while the washing machine lid was labeled "item 16," and speculated that the two samples were accidentally mixed up.

The DNA analyst who first tested the items testified in court that she was not certain Verret's washing machine actually contained Poche's blood, according to The Advocate.

After that hearing, District Attorney Bo Duhé conceded that the samples appeared to have been inadvertently switched, and announced that his office would review Verret's prosecution.

Criminal justice reform advocates have pointed to Verret's case to demonstrate the unfairness of jailing defendants for lengthy periods before trial. Though Verret is white, one advocate told The Times that people of color are often disproportionately affected by such arrangements.

"When you look at these protests happening, these are people realizing that when it comes to interactions with police, some lives are valueless," Jonathan Rapping, founder of the nonprofit public defender organization Gideon's Promise, told The Times. "That same story plays out in the courts, without cameras or a spotlight by prosecutors who are more focused on processing people to conviction than they are ensuring that their constitutional rights are respected."

• Read more:
• A man convicted for killing his high school girlfriend was freed by decades-old DNA evidence. Now he's on a mission to find the real killer.
• A man suspected of raping at least 44 women in Florida was apprehended after police got his son's DNA in an unrelated case
• Investigators in Wisconsin used a DNA database to crack a 43-year-old murder case and arrest a man
• A DNA match found through a genealogy website has led to an arrest in a 1999 Alabama murder case