Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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Former Lab Technician Denies Faulty DNA Work in Rape Cases

A former New York City laboratory technician whose work on rape cases is now being scrutinized for serious mistakes said on Friday that she had been unaware there were problems in her work and, disputing an earlier report, denied she had resigned under pressure.

The former lab technician, Serrita Mitchell, said any problems must have been someone else’s.

“My work?” Ms. Mitchell said. “No, no, no, not my work.”

Earlier, the city medical examiner’s office, where Ms. Mitchell said she was employed from 2000 to 2011, said it was reviewing 843 rape cases handled by a lab technician who might have missed critical evidence.

So far, it has finished looking over about half the cases, and found 26 in which the technician had missed biological evidence and 19 in which evidence was commingled with evidence from other cases. In seven cases where evidence was missed, the medical examiner’s office was able to extract a DNA profile, raising the possibility that detectives could have caught some suspects sooner.

The office declined to identify the technician. Documents said she quit in November 2011 after the office moved to fire her, once supervisors had begun to discover deficiencies in her work. A city official who declined to be identified said Ms. Mitchell was the technician.

However, Ms. Mitchell, reached at her home in the Bronx on Friday, said she had never been told there were problems. “It couldn’t be me because your work gets checked,” she said. “You have supervisors.”

She also said that she had resigned because of a rotator cuff injury that impeded her movement. “I loved the job so much that I stayed a little longer,” she said, explaining that she had not expected to stay with the medical examiner’s office so long. “Then it was time to leave.”

Also on Friday, the Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal defense lawyers for most of the city’s poor defendants, said it was demanding that the city turn over information about the cases under review.

If needed, Legal Aid will sue the city to gain access to identifying information about the cases, its chief lawyer, Steven Banks, said, noting that New York was one of only 14 states that did not require routine disclosure of criminal evidence before trial.

Disclosure of the faulty examination of the evidence is prompting questions about outside review of the medical examiner’s office. The City Council on Friday announced plans for an emergency oversight committee, and its members spoke with outrage about the likelihood that missed semen stains and “false negatives” might have enabled rapists to go unpunished.

“The mishandling of rape cases is making double victims of women who have already suffered an indescribably horrific event,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker.

A few more details emerged Friday about a 2001 case involving the rape of a minor in Brooklyn, in which the technician missed biological evidence, the review found. The victim accused an 18-year-old acquaintance of forcing himself on her, and he was questioned by the police but not charged, according to a law enforcement official.

Unrelated to the rape, he pleaded guilty in 2005 to third-degree robbery and served two years in prison. The DNA sample he gave in the robbery case was matched with the one belatedly developed from evidence the technician had overlooked in the 2001 rape, law enforcement officials said. He was recently indicted in the 2001 rape.

Especially alarming to defense lawyers was the possibility that DNA samples were cross-contaminated and led to false convictions, or could do so in the future.

“Up to this point,” Mr. Banks said, “they have not made information available to us, as the primary defender in New York City, to determine whether there’s an injustice that’s been done in past cases, pending cases, or allowing us to be on the lookout in future cases.” He added, “If it could happen with one analyst, how does anyone know that it stops there?”

The medical examiner’s office has said that the risk of cross-contamination was extremely low and that it does not appear that anyone was wrongly convicted in the cases that have been reviewed so far. And officials in at least two of the city’s district attorneys’ offices — for Brooklyn and Manhattan — said they had not found any erroneous convictions.

But Mr. Banks said the authorities needed to do more, and that their statements thus far were the equivalent of “trust us.”

“Given what’s happened,” he said, “that’s cold comfort.”

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Gadgetwise Blog: Project Basement: The Receiver

My search for a receiver is over.

As I had said in a previous installment, buying a receiver used to be easy. You got the one that sounded best in your price range, period. Now, connections are the first concern — will you have enough HDMI slots for the next few years?

That said, I couldn’t make the purchase based on connectors and specifications alone. This is, after all, audio equipment. How could I buy without hearing it?

But hearing equipment is getting to be more difficult. There are a fewer independent stereo stores. As big box stores to fight “show rooming” — customers auditioning equipment they then buy cheaper online — often don’t let you listen.

For instance, I was interested in a Sony STR-DN1030, which has excellent specs for its $500 price, including a built-in Wi-Fi, unusual for receivers in its class. H.H. gregg had the Sony and many other receivers I was interested in on display, but not a single one was plugged in. Deal breaker.

I tried a Best Buy store with a Magnolia, the higher-end home theater section. The store didn’t carry the Sony, so that model was out of the running. I was able to hear the Denon AVR2113CI, the Yamaha RX-A720BL, the Marantz NR1603, and the Pioneer Elite VSX-60.

They all met my minimum feature requirements, which meant at least five HDMI inputs, the audio surround decoders I wanted, and they had to be less than 16 inches deep to fit my shelves.

I’m glad I listened. To me the Pioneer Elite VSX-60 stood out as the obvious winner. Sound was more detailed and had more dimension than the other receivers.

But I must admit that what I did next contributed to Best Buys show-rooming problem. I went to see which of these receivers was available from my local independent electronics dealer, Soundscape, here in Baltimore. Almost all of them, although they didn’t have the Pioneer on display.

Ethically, I was a bit torn. But if my purchase is going to keep someone in business, I think Soundscape needs me more than Best Buy. The scales tipped further when Soundscape’s owner offered a discount since I’m a regular there. That settled it.

With the VSX-60 installed I am confident I made the right choice. Even though it replaces an older NAD receiver that cost twice as much, the sound is excellent and surround sound effect is far superior.

I will admit, though, it is not quite as easy to use as my prior receivers. I haven’t figured out how to turn off the scaling, which adjusts the size and clarity of a picture to suit my TV. This comes with the territory of sophisticated new features.

Next up, the Blu-ray player.

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French Soldier Killed in Somalia Commando Raid

At least one French commando was  killed during a daring raid Friday night to rescue a French intelligence operative held hostage in Somilia. The captive officer, identified as Denis Allex, was killed by his captors during the operation, the French defense minister said Saturday. A second commando remained unaccounted for.

A statement by the defense ministry said that two commandoes had been killed, but there appeared to be some confusion within the ministry about the status of the second commando.

The raid also resulted in the death of 17 Somali fighters, according to the defense ministry.

“Faced with the intransigence of the terrorists, who refused to negotiate for three and a half years and who were holding Denis Allex in inhumane conditions, an operation was planned and carried out,” the ministry said. “During the assault, violent combat took place.”

The raid came as France sent troops into the African nation of Mali to help the government beat back advances by Islamic rebels. The Somali raid to get Mr. Allex led to speculation that the French government was trying to prevent reprisals for its actions in Mali.

But the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said during a news conference on Saturday that the two operations were not connected. The Associated Press reported that an official with the Somali militant group al-Shabab confirmed that fighting began after helicopters dropped off soldiers.

“Five helicopters attacked a house in in the town. They dropped soldiers off the ground, so that they could reach their destination,” the official said.

In 2009, a French raid to free a yacht that had been captured by Somali pirates resulted in the death of a captive, Florent Lemaçon.

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Japan Approves $116 Billion for Urgent Economic Stimulus

TOKYO — The Japanese government approved emergency stimulus spending of ¥10.3 trillion Friday, part of an aggressive push by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to kick-start growth in a long-moribund economy.

Mr. Abe also reiterated his desire for the Japanese central bank to make a firmer commitment to stopping deflation by pumping more money into the economy, which the prime minister has said is crucial to getting businesses to invest and consumers to spend.

“We will put an end to this shrinking and aim to build a stronger economy where earnings and incomes can grow,” Mr. Abe said. “For that, the government must first take the initiative to create demand and boost the entire economy.”

Under the plan, the Japanese government will spend $116 billion on public works and disaster mitigation projects, subsidies for companies that invest in new technology and financial aid to small businesses.

Through these measures, the government will seek to raise real economic growth 2 percentage points and add 600,000 jobs to the economy, Mr. Abe said. The package announced Friday amounts to one of the largest spending plans in Japanese history, he said.

By simply talking about stimulus measures, Mr. Abe, who took office late last month, has already driven down the value of the yen, much to the relief of Japanese exporters, whose competitiveness benefits from a weaker currency. In response, Tokyo stocks have rallied.

But the government’s promises to spend its way out of economic stagnation also raise concerns about public debt, which has already mushroomed to twice the size of the Japanese economy and is the largest in the industrialized world.

At the root of Japan’s debt problems was a similar attempt in the 1990s by Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party to stimulate economic growth through government spending on extensive public works projects across the country. The effort did little to bring growth to the wider economy.

On Friday, Mr. Abe said that the spending this time around would be better focused to bring about growth through investment in innovation. He said the government would also invest in measures that would help mitigate the decline in the Japanese population by encouraging families to have more children.

“To grow in a sustainable way, we must help create a virtuous cycle where companies actively borrow and invest, and in so doing raise employment and incomes,” Mr. Abe said.

“For that, it is extremely important that we adopt a growth strategy that gives everyone solid hope that the future of the Japanese economy lies in growth.”

Mr. Abe has assembled two panels of chief executives and academics, including Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of a major e-commerce company and a harsh critic of the old guard of economic policy makers, and Heizo Takenaka, a former economy minister and outspoken academic known for his disdain of pork-barrel spending.

Meanwhile, a more aggressive monetary policy designed to beat deflation could fall into place when the Bank of Japan’s board meets Jan. 20-21 for its monthly review.

Mr. Abe has leaned on Japan’s central bankers — whom he has criticized as too cautious — to commit to an inflation rate of at least 2 percent, which would help convince businesses that Japan would not arbitrarily reverse course on its easy money policy. For more than a decade, the rate of inflation has been flat or negative, reflecting languishing personal incomes and corporate profits.

Some at the central bank, still wary of the tremendous asset bubble that loose monetary policy set off in the late 1980s, have warned of the dangers of stoking inflation. The Bank of Japan’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, has also bristled at the idea of bankrolling public spending by buying more government bonds.

With its benchmark interest rate already near zero, the bank has few options left, other than to buy up government bonds and other financial assets if it is to inject money into the economy.

In an interview with the Nikkei business daily published Friday, Mr. Abe said he would seek in writing an agreement from the bank to pursue a target of 2 percent inflation, though he said the agreement would not set a deadline. He also said the bank should consider policies that would increase employment as much as possible.

Mr. Abe said that he hoped to pick as Mr. Shirakawa’s successor someone who shared the government’s position on inflation and employment, according to the interview. The central bank governor’s term runs out in April.

Hajime Takada, chief economist at the Mizuho Research Institute, said in a note to clients Friday that there were still too many unknowns to assess the effectiveness of Mr. Abe’s economic push.

But by setting a clearly pro-business policy agenda, Mr. Abe has started to change the mind-set of investors and corporations who had all but given up on growth — and for that, the new prime minister scores high, Mr. Takada said.

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Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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Parental Consent Rule May Proceed for a Circumcision Ritual, a Judge Says

New York City health officials may proceed temporarily with a plan to require parental consent before an infant may undergo a particular Jewish circumcision ritual, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

City officials say 12 cases of herpes simplex virus have likely resulted from the procedure, known as metzitzah b’peh, since 2000, including one Brooklyn case reported this week. Two infants died, and two suffered permanent brain damage. Most Jews no longer practice metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser uses his mouth to suck blood from the wound, but it remains common among some ultra-Orthodox communities.

Citing the risk of infection, health officials in September introduced a regulation that would require parents to provide written consent stating that they were aware of the health risks.

But the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada, Agudath Israel of America, and the International Bris Association sued in October to stop the rule from taking effect, calling it an infringement of their constitutional rights. They also denied the procedure posed a risk and asked a federal court to put the rule on hold while the litigation proceeded.

In denying the request for a preliminary injunction, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald of the United States District Court for the Southern District wrote that the risks were clear.

“In light of the quality of the evidence presented in support of the regulation, we conclude that a continued injunction against enforcement of the regulation would not serve the public interest,” she wrote.

City lawyers said they were gratified by the ruling, but Andrew Moesel, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the groups would appeal. “We continue to believe that this case is a wrongful and unnecessary intrusion into the rights of freedom of religion and speech,” he said.

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Visit by Google Chairman May Benefit North Korea

BEIJING — As a work of propaganda, the images that North Korea circulated this week showing Google’s executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, touring a high-tech incubation center are hard to beat.

Adrian Bradshaw/European Pressphoto Agency

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, at left wearing a tie, and former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke to reporters in Beijing on Thursday after returning from North Korea.

With former Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico at his side, Mr. Schmidt, who is fond of describing the Internet as the enemy of despots, toured what was presented as the hub of the computer industry in one of the world’s most pitiless police states. Both men gazed attentively as a select group of North Koreans showed their ability to surf the Web.

It is unclear what the famously hermetic North Koreans hoped to accomplish by allowing the visit. But the photos of the billionaire entrepreneur taking the time to visit the nation’s computer labs were bound to be useful to a new national leader whom analysts say needs to show his people that their impoverished nation is moving forward.

It will matter little, those experts say, that the visitors were bundled against the cold, indoors — a sign of the country’s extreme privation — or that the vast majority of North Koreans have no access to computers, much less the Web beyond their country’s tightly controlled borders.

The men’s quixotic four-day trip ended Thursday much the way it began, with some analysts calling the visit hopelessly naïve and others describing it as valuable back-channel diplomacy at a time when Washington and Pyongyang are not on speaking terms (again).

“I’m still spinning my wheels to figure out a plausible motivation for why they went,” said Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea specialist at the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson insist they accomplished some good — showing the world has not forgotten the plight of an American detained in the North, and at least trying to nudge the tightly sealed nation a bit closer to the fold of globally connected nations.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their  physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters after arriving at Beijing International Airport. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

The unofficial visit, however, raised hackles in Washington, and provided rich fodder for commentators and comedians. Even before the Americans left Pyongyang, someone created an account on Tumblr, the popular social blogging site, called “Eric Schmidt looking at things,” that parodied sites (themselves parodies) featuring the country’s leaders earnestly inspecting livestock, soldiers or leather insoles. (Mr. Schmidt is shown looking intently at computer screens, “the back of a North Korean Student,” and Mr. Richardson.)

Others were less kind. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, took to Twitter to call the self-appointed delegation “useful idiots,” and John R. Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador, said the delegation was unwittingly feeding the North Korean propaganda mill as it sought to burnish the credentials of Kim Jung-un, the nation’s leader, who is in his 20s.

“Pyongyang uses gullible Americans for its own purposes,” Mr. Bolton wrote in The New York Daily News.

The State Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful,” given efforts by the United States to rally international support for tougher sanctions following North Korea’s recent launching of a rocket that intelligence experts say could help in the development of missiles that could one day reach the United States.

As if on cue, the North Korean news media hailed the visit by “the Google team” — which included Jared Cohen, who leads Google’s think tank — highlighting their visit to the mausoleum where Mr. Kim’s grandfather and father lie in state. There, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Schmidt “expressed admiration and paid respect to Comrade Kim Il-sung and Comrade Kim Jong-il,” the North’s main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said.

Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea, Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco, and Edward Wong from Beijing.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 11, 2013

An earlier version of this article paraphrased incorrectly State Department comments about the visit to North Korea by Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Richardson. The Department said it did not think the timing of the visit was “particularly helpful.” It did not call the visit “not particularly helpful.”

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China Said to Crack Down on Censorship Protests

People across China have been detained or questioned in recent days by security officers for publicly supporting the journalists at the Southern Weekend newspaper who have been protesting strict censorship, according to a human rights group and online posts discussing the plights of some detainees.

One Taiwanese actress who works on the mainland, Yi Neng Jing, said on her microblog Friday that security officers had asked her to “have tea,” a euphemism for undergoing some form of interrogation. Ms. Yi had supported Southern Weekend with microblog posts.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders said about two dozen people have been detained by security officers since Jan. 8; many were detained outside the Guangzhou headquarters of the parent company of Southern Weekend.

Police officers largely tolerated protests at the headquarters for three days, then began cracking down. On Friday, there was no sign of protesters outside the main gates.

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Consumers Win Some Mortgage Safety in New Rules

WASHINGTON — Banks and other lenders will be prohibited from making home loans that offer deceptive teaser rates or require no documentation from borrowers, and will be required to take more steps to ensure that borrowers can repay, under new consumer protections to be announced on Thursday.

The rules, being laid out by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and taking effect next January, will also set some limits on interest-only packages or negative-amortization loans, where the balance due grows over time. Banks can make such loans, but the new rules would not protect them from potential borrower lawsuits if they do so.

And mortgage originators will in most cases be restricted from charging excessive upfront points and fees, from making loans with balloon payments and from making loans that load a borrower with total debt exceeding 43 percent of income.

With the sweeping rules, financial regulators are trying to substantially overhaul the market for home mortgages by creating a legal distinction between “qualified” loans that follow the new rules and are immune from legal action, and “unqualified” mortgages that continue practices that regulators have frowned on. The new rules are also aimed at getting banks to lend again, something they have been slow to do since the financial crisis and since the Dodd-Frank Act required new limits on bank activities.

Gone, the regulators hope, will be the unbridled frenzy that encouraged lenders to ignore whether borrowers could repay as long as the lenders could sell the mortgages to third parties, usually investment firms that sliced them up and resold them as part of complex financial derivatives.

By following the new rules, banks will be given a “safe harbor,” which ensures that they cannot be successfully sued for reckless or abusive lending practices, federal officials said Wednesday. Lenders must document a borrower’s ability to repay a loan; one way of doing that is to follow several guidelines issued Thursday that make a loan a “qualified” mortgage.

“When consumers sit down at the closing table, they shouldn’t be set up to fail with mortgages they can’t afford,” said Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer bureau. “Our ability-to-repay rule protects borrowers from the kinds of risky lending practices that resulted in so many families losing their homes.”

Mortgage bankers generally applauded the new regulations, saying that they clear up uncertainty that has hung over the home lending business since the financial crisis. In fact, most of the types of loans now being restricted, which were rampant during the inflation of the housing bubble, have been relatively rare in the last couple of years because many banks have tightened lending since the financial crisis.

“These rules offer protection for consumers and a clear, safe environment for banks to do business,” David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said in an interview. “Now everybody knows if you stay inside these lines, you are safe.”

He added that he believed the consumer bureau “did a great job listening to stakeholders” in shaping the rule.

The new rules will not necessarily lead to an immediate expansion of credit, Mr. Stevens said, because nearly all mortgage loans being made currently are being sold to government-sponsored enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their underwriting standards are not affected by the new rules.

In certain circumstances, the new lending rules can be bypassed for up to seven years, regulators said. New loans can be considered to be a “qualified loan” even if the borrower has a debt-to-income ratio of more than 43 percent as long as the loan is eligible for purchase or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, for example, or by one of several executive branch agencies, like the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The consumer bureau said that the exception was created “in light of the fragile state of the mortgage market as a result of the recent mortgage crisis.” Without the exception, the bureau said, “creditors might be reluctant to make loans that are not qualified mortgages, even if they are responsibly underwritten.”

Similarly, the new rules allow balloon payments in mortgages that are originated by and retained in the portfolio of small lenders that operate primarily in rural or underserved areas.

The legal protections offered to lenders by the qualified mortgage rule are not absolute. Lenders do not receive complete immunity from lawsuits in all circumstances. Some higher-priced loans, given to consumers with weak credit, can be challenged if the borrower can prove that he did not have sufficient income to pay the mortgage and other living expenses. And the rules do not affect the rights of consumers to challenge a lender for violating other federal consumer protection laws.

“We believe this rule does exactly what it is supposed to do,” Mr. Cordray said in a statement prepared for delivery Thursday morning in Baltimore, where the rules are being announced. “It protects consumers and helps strengthen the housing market by rooting out reckless and unsustainable lending, while enabling safer lending,” he said.

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