Statement presented to Senate armed services subcommittee by

Christopher Rush. Sept, 12 1996

(1) Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, my name is Christopher Rush.

I am a retired New York City Police officer and former special deputy marshal. since my retirement from the New York City Police Department in July of 1982, I have worked as an investigative consultant.

(2) Since that time I have either personally investigated or consulted on approximately one hundred cases involving unattended death and homicide. I come before this subcommittee today because, over the past four years, I have been retained by families of deceased military personnel, and in this capacity, I have reviewed dozens of cases in which members of the United States Armed Forces have died in non-combat situations. The families ask that I present the problems I have repeatedly identified. I have personally witnessed the distress these families have suffered and have never refused a case.

In some instances, I have been compensated for these services, and in others I have worked on a pro-bono basis. Each of the cases I have investigated or reviewed had been closed and deemed to be suicide or accidental death by the branch of military law enforcement charged with conducting the investigation.

(3) As a former law enforcement officer, it pains me to testify before you today with respect to these cases because I have uncovered significant deficiencies in the manner in which the armed forces have conducted their investigations; however, I believe that the interests of the families involved and the principles of justice on which American society is based compel me to disclose the unsettling information that I have uncovered.

(4) Please understand that while my testimony will focus on a number of cases in which the investigations were at best incompetent, I do not wish you to draw the inference that all military investigations are substandard. In some cases, the officers who conducted the investigations did so in an exemplary manner. in other cases poor communications between the armed forces and the individual family member led to the mistaken impression that an investigation had been mishandled.

(5) I am fully aware that in some instances, a surviving family cannot or will not accept the fact that a relative has committed suicide. I have advised the families that have retained me of this consideration and informed them that a thorough and completely objective review of the cases would be conducted and I have done my utmost to meet this standard and maintain objectivity. In some cases I have been compelled to inform families that I concurred with the military investigators and was convinced that their losses were indeed the result of suicide.

(6) As a former police officer and an experienced investigator, I have not approached these cases with the expectation that any investigation will be perfect, however, in a significant number of the cases reviewed, it is my professional judgment that the minimum standard of professionalism was not attained, and in some instances, murder went unpunished as a consequence.

(7) According to generally accepted principles of police procedure, an officer called to the scene of a death is expected to treat the scene and the death as a crime and to conduct the investigation accordingly. Only after the possibility of homicide has been eliminated, should the officer proceed to an investigation of whether the death was suicide or accident. In the vast majority of cases I have reviewed, the officers called to the scene proceeded from the assumption that the death was either suicide or accident and thereby compromised the investigation from the start.

(8) The cases that were mishandled suffered from a startling array of deficiencies. Crime scene management and the collection and preservation of physical evidence were often perfunctory--in some cases of hanging, ligatures were often destroyed within thirty days, thus foreclosing the possibility of future review; too often, contemporaneous witness statements were poorly documented if they were taken at all; sometimes, it was evident that the interviewer intended to lead the witness into making statements that would point to death by suicide; in many instances, little or no attention is paid to such basic procedures as the taking of fingerprints; crime scene photography is often inadequate and unprofessional; first officer response to and protection of crime scenes and the documentation of first officer observations were frequently inadequate; there was no collection of trace evidence such as blood, hair, fibers, etc.; In one instance, a defective, bloodstained firearm was returned to the family without any indication that the branch in question was aware of the defect or that the firearm had been properly tested. These are just a few examples of the problems that have been identified, but rather than provide you with an exhaustive list, I will do my best to answer your questions.

Thank you. Christopher Rush....