Boxes of evidence from Dallas Police Department’s investigation into the killing of Marisela Botello Valadez brought in by Detective Christine Ramirez during a hearing inside the 282nd District Court at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas on Feb. 15.
Dallas police reviewed 113 homicide cases this year to look for deleted evidence, the district attorney’s office said Tuesday, but officials released little information about their findings or the status of thousands of other potentially affected cases.
The news release marked the office’s first statement in months about the police department’s widespread evidence storage issues, which The Dallas Morning News revealed earlier this year. At the time, a Dallas police official said the department opened an audit into every pending murder and capital murder case, adding that 450 homicide cases were under review.
“DPD is this office’s largest filing agency,” the DA’s office said Tuesday. “As a result, this video file deletion issue potentially affects thousands of cases. Neither this office nor DPD has the personnel nor capacity to proactively review each case filed during the relevant time period.”
The 113 reviewed cases were those with upcoming trials, and the office did not specify how many were found to have deleted or missing evidence. Dallas police released its own statement Tuesday saying that of the 113 cases reviewed, 572 video files were deleted out of 8,889 total files. The department did not reveal details about the 572 deleted files.
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Both statements emphasized that officials don’t believe any deleted video footage “proved to be material” to any case.
Click here to read more on this report from our partners at The Dallas Morning News.
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