Original Article Houston Police Chief Calls for Halt to Executions Thu Sep 30, 2004 07:00 PM ET HOUSTON (Reuters) - All executions in the Houston area should be put off until a scandal involving tainted evidence in the county police crime lab is resolved, Houston police chief Harold Hurtt said on Thursday. Harris County, of which Houston is the greater part, sentences more people to death than any other county in the nation and currently has 163 inmates on Texas death row. "I think it would be very prudent for us as a system, a criminal justice system, to delay further executions until we have an opportunity to review any of those cases from Harris County where the crime lab played a specific role in the individual being convicted," Hurtt told reporters in a briefing. The crime lab has been under fire since a 2002 audit found serious problems with DNA results that may have led to mistaken criminal convictions, possibly in death penalty cases. On Wednesday, attorneys for convicted murderer Edward Green asked that his scheduled Oct. 5 execution be delayed until it can be determined that his case was not influenced by faulty lab results. At least one person has been freed and 40 other convictions are under scrutiny because of the lab's poor work, officials said. The scandal deepened last month when 280 mislabeled and misplaced cartons containing evidence from 8,000 cases dating back 25 years were found. Hurtt, who was police chief in Phoenix, Arizona, before taking over as Houston chief in February, has said he would seek an outside expert to investigate the lab. Texas is the nation's most active death penalty state with 325 executions since 1982, more than 40 percent from 1995 to 2000, while President Bush was its governor. Since 1982, when Texas resumed the death penalty after the lifting of a national ban, 73 people convicted in Harris County have been executed, which is more than all but two entire states, Texas and Virginia, with 325 and 94 executions respectively. Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.