HOUSTON -- Two Houston Police Department DNA analysts, speaking publicly for the first time about the department's troubled lab, say they were led by an unqualified manager and were not kept abreast of the latest technology in the field.

Christy Kim and Joseph Chu had their punishments reduced. During the hearing Tuesday, the commission ordered both workers only be given written reprimands.

The workers appeared Tuesday before the Civil Service Commission to appeal 14-day suspensions without pay they each received after an internal police review of problems in DNA division of the crime lab.

Kim and Chu were disciplined because of errors in four cases, while several other analysts were also recommended for seven-day suspensions after the June review. Two top crime lab officials also resigned.

Kim also faces possible discipline for errors in case of Josiah Sutton, whose 1999 rape conviction was overturned in March after retesting found the crime lab's DNA faulty.

During testimony, Kim, Chu and a third analyst, Raynard Cockrell, described heavy workloads and how they received insufficient help from supervisors.

"Because of our caseload, we could only check each other's work to see if there were any misspelled words or grammatical errors," Cockrell said. "We did not double-check the work."

They also told the commission how the lab's needs were ignored, citing the lab's leaking roof as an example, the Houston Chronicle reported in its Wednesday's edition.

Chu told members of the commission that he didn't learn to how use the latest scientific procedures until after the lab was closed.

"I had no official training for mixture interpretations until March 2003," he said. "We did not use those in our lab. We are all analysts, but we rely on the city and the PD to train us and set policy."

His claims were disputed by Assistant City Attorney Marcus Dobbs, who suggested the analysts didn't to their work properly.

The DNA section was closed last December after an outside audit found serious deficiencies, including a lack of training, insufficient documentation and possible contamination of DNA samples. Retesting of hundreds of cases has been under way since March.

So far, 49 cases have been retested and significant problems have been found in 13.