Miscommunication will require additional DNA testing in as many as 400 Virginia cases in a groundbreaking project aimed at clearing people wrongly convicted of crimes decades ago. The Virginia Forensic Science Board was told yesterday that retesting is necessary because the outside laboratory that performed the initial work did not use up, or “consume,“ all of each sample to get the best results possible.

A convict armed with state DNA test results has asked the Virginia Supreme Court to clear him of a 25-year-old rape now believed to have been committed by a notorious serial rapist. Testing of sperm taken from the scene of the Jan. 3, 1984, crime in Richmond failed to find Thomas E. Haynesworth’s genetic profile, but identified that of Leon W. Davis.

Doubt has been raised about a conviction in a series of rapes and other attacks against women in Richmond and Henrico County a quarter-century ago. Recent testing in the Virginia Department of Forensic Science’s groundbreaking post-conviction DNA project failed to find the genetic profile of Thomas E. Haynesworth, 43, in semen preserved from a Jan. 3, 1984, rape in Richmond.

A first-of-its-kind study has found that forensic experts produced flawed evidnece in the trials of 82 men—four in Virginia—wrongfully convicted of rape or murder in the 1980s.

DNA testing of material found in the old case files of Mary Jane Burton, a deceased state forensic serologist, may clear a sixth man of a rape. Victor Anthony Burnette, 56, of Richmond served eight years for a 1979 rape that he always said he did not commit. He said he first sought DNA testing when he was released from prison in 1987 but was told all the evidence had been destroyed.

No one ever claimed the criminal-justice system was perfect. But until 20 years ago, it was difficult to prove otherwise. Since then, 225 innocent people—10 in Virginia—have been exonerated of crimes by DNA testing. However, DNA is not a factor in most cases, and the rate of wrongful convictions remains unclear. That could change, in part, because of a large, groundbreaking and sometimes hotly contested review of old cases under way in Virginia.