https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna9666591

Saved from the grave
Mary Jane Burton’s unusual habit of saving samples of the evidence she tested led to the exoneration of three men, years after her death in 1999.
Oct. 16, 2005, 9:16 AM EDT / Source: The Associated Press
By Kristen Gelineau

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The forensic scientist cut off the tip of a cotton swab and taped it to a lab sheet next to a snippet of stained clothing.

Always save a piece of what you test, Mary Jane Burton instructed her watchful trainee.

But why? This was 1977, years before the invention of DNA testing. Yet day after day, she repeated this seemingly pointless procedure under the glow of the cramped laboratory’s fluorescent lights — taping swabs smeared with blood, semen and saliva and inserting them into their case files.

The forensic scientist cut off the tip of a cotton swab and taped it to a lab sheet next to a snippet of stained clothing.

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Standard procedure in Virginia was for biological evidence to be returned to the authorities after testing. After a few years, it would be destroyed, except in death penalty cases.

Why Mary Jane Burton insisted on saving such samples is as big a mystery as Burton herself.

Some speculate that Burton had a premonition that science would improve, that the samples she saved would one day prove useful. Her trainee, Deanne Dabbs, recalls a simpler explanation: Burton just liked to have something physical to show to a jury when she testified. Juries like to see what you’ve worked on, Burton told Dabbs in 1977.

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Why would you EVER destroy evidence?

This SOP guaranteed that justice would be impossible.

So sad, for others.

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