One of the the problems I face when dealing with state crime labs is that the average judge or juror sees them as being actually infallible and wholly scientific. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that these crime labs are about as scientific as a tenth grade chemistry lab. The “scientists” may be wearing lab coats, but in terms of validated and legitimate science they are really just winging it and hoping to come up with a good result.
His experiments are probably more scientific than what is going on in government crime labs.
Simply put: following scientific standards is not their priority.
Here is a prime example of this. The government crime lab in Indianapolis was so reckless that one out of three of its positive cocaine test results were not conducted in accordance with acceptable scientific standards:
Drug test error rate raises worry about wrongful convictions
INDIANAPOLIS — An audit of Indiana’s embattled state drug-testing lab has found that nearly a third of its positive cocaine test results were not conducted in accordance with acceptable scientific standards, adding to concerns about possible wrongful convictions.
The independent audit of positive cocaine test results issued by the Indiana Department of Toxicology found that 32 percent — nearly 1 in 3 — failed to meet acceptable scientific criteria
Most of the reported cases were, in fact DUI cases, where the blood test evidence is the prime evidence in the case. Many times, blood testing evidence is seen as “an automatic conviction” so having a false positive will most likely land an innocent person in jail. This is happening everyday in crime labs across the country we just don’t know about it. This Indianapolis incident is not an isolated incident. It is an isolated discovery of a non-isolated incident.
This is why it is absolutely imperative that you have a qualified DUI defense attorney who is an expert in DUI blood testing examine your case. The attorneys at The McShane Firm have discovered many instances where blood testing was done improperly and used that information to win cases for their clients.
For a free consultation, please call 1-866-MCSHANE.
More Reports of Criminal Behavior Call into Question the Integrity of Pennsylvania DUI Crime Labs
Call a Qualified PA DUI Attorney to review the forensic evidence in your case.
A forensics technician and phlebotomist in a Pennsylvania DUI crime lab has admitted to stealing from DUI suspects:
Lab Tech Accused Of Stealing Money From Suspects, Detective
State Police: Woman Admitted To Taking More Than $800
BERKS COUNTY, Pa. — A lab technician at the Berks County DUI center is accused of taking cash from two DUI suspects and a county detective. Kimberly Kay Bennethum-Heffner, 31, of Newmanstown, admitted to taking $840 from the three men, state police said. The thefts happened in July and August. She was a phlebotomist at the center.
These lab technicians are entrusted to perform a very important task. Dishonesty like this calls into question the integrity of their work and the evidence produced. The problems with crime labs have been well documented on this blog and are widespread through out the nation’s crime labs:
- Unqualified staff with no scientific background
- Lack of criminal background checks
- Overworked staff
- Lack of supervision and oversight
This is why the National Academy of Sciences called for an overhaul of the entire system calling it “badly fragmented”.
If you are facing a Pennsylvania DUI charge with faulty forensic evidence please call The McShane Firm at 1-866-MCSHANE
In the wake of the Troy Davis execution, there has been increased scrutiny of the death penalty in America. Even death penalty supporters have been forced to stop and think after the execution of an innocent man.
Forensics labs are using unreliable and unscientific practices that endanger all of us
The sad fact is that our justice system is broken and the forensic system is even more fractured. The logic goes like this: the heavier the penalties, the more scrutiny that case faces. A death penalty cases has an extensive judicial process- and we still manage to get it wrong and sentence innocent people to death.
So if we can’t get death penalty cases right, then what about cases lower down the pecking order? One look at The Innocence Project site and you will see that hundreds of people have been exonerated based on DNA evidence. If you calculate the time these exonerees served, it amounts to thousands of years spent behind bars for crimes they did not commit. This is a tragedy of epic proportions- and unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg because as we speak- many more people are being robbed of their lives by a broken judicial system and are rotting away in jail cells across America.
One of the main causes of false convictions is unreliable or improper forensic science and this is a huge problem especially in DUI and drug cases where the evidence is normally a forensics report and the opinion of a police officer. But there is no call for forensic reform and no action being taken by our politicians in this regard. Instead they are blindly increasing the penalties on DUI without thinking about the thousands of people who are falsely accused of DUI every year.
Just increasing penalties is not the solution- there needs to be changes to protect the innocent.
Once of the main causes of false convictions is unreliable or faulty forensic science. Unfortunately, many times the so-called experts who testify on behalf of the prosecution are viewed as real scientists by judges and jurors who themselves often have no formal education in the hard sciences. Thus they are unable to detect the pseudo-science being spewed in the courtroom and end up believing the fairy-tales of the prosecution.
Take a look at the following video and you will see the dangers of bad forensics:
(Video credit to The Innocence Project)
Forensic science reform is an issue that effects us all because the next victim of a false conviction can be anyone, including you or I.
We are gambling with peoples lives and undermining Justice with faulty forensics.
DUI testing scandals are nothing new nor are they even rare. From Central Pennsylvania to San Fransisco to Indiana to the Nation’s Capital, DUI testing scandals have effected tens of thousands of cases across the country. Lack of oversight, mishandling, cover-ups and under-qualified/over-worked technicians have become the norm rather than the exception. This time another DUI testing scandal hits Houston.
As I have argued before, there are two major problems created by the cloud of unreliability hanging over these tests: Innocent people are being falsely convicted and guilty people are not being brought to justice because the evidence is faulty. We are basically playing Forensic Russian Roulette with peoples lives and careers at stake.
We are gambling with peoples lives and undermining Justice with faulty forensics. The next victim could be you or someone you love.
We all live under the hanging sword of a false DUI conviction. You can protect yourself by contacting PA DUI Attorney Justin McShane.
My personal aim is to be the very best DUI attorney in Pennsylvania and in the United States. A big part of that is keeping myself on the cutting edge of legal and scientific knowledge to best defend the interests of my clients. As part of my extensive research and learning, I serve as an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) which is an organization of scientists, not lawyers.
I am pleased to announce that I will be lecturing before the ACS for the third time on August 30, 2011 at the National Meeting in Denver. My paper is entitled: State of forensic science in America today. Is it scientific at all? Is there a path forward?
The current state of the nation’s crime labs is really pitiful. There is no oversight. The labs are not following scientific standards. The technicians are often biased in favor of the police for whom they work. Forensic labs scandals are all to frequent. The current state of affairs is horrid, error-prone, unreliable and unscientific. The real tragedy lies in the number of people falsely convicted by this broken system.
Forensic reform is an issue we should be talking about be worried about because we all live under the hanging sword of a false conviction.
Recently, a woman in Canada was freed from prison after serving 13 years after being wrongfully convicted of killing her two year old son. From the Innocence Blog:
PA DUI Attorney Discusses Wrongful Convictions
Canadian Woman Finally Cleared After 13 Years in Prison
Posted: June 7, 2011 5:49 pm
Tammy Marquardt walked out of an Ontario courtroom fully free for the first time since 1995. Before she was cleared, however, a Superior Court judge offered her an apology.
“I appreciate that my words today may seem inadequate,” Justice Michael Brown told Marquardt after the Crown withdrew the murder charge that had accused her of killing her two-year-old son.
“But I offer to you, Ms. Marquardt, my deepest expression of regret for all you gave endured as a result of the miscarriage of justice in this case. Nothing I can say to you today will repair the damage that has been caused to you.”
Marquardt, 38, told reporters outside the courtroom that her “nightmare is finally over.” She served 13 years in prison before being released on parole two years ago. She was cleared with the help of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted, a Toronto based organization and a member of the Innocence Network.
AIDWYC has represented several people who were wrongfully convicted based on false testimony from a former medical examiner, Charles Smith, whose work has been discredited in recent years. Smith testified that Marquardt’s son had been strangled or suffocated when evidence instead showed that he died of an epileptic seizure.
It is always a bittersweet moment when I hear about stories like these. While I am happy that this ordeal is over for Ms. Marquardt, I can’t help but feel angry thinking about her losing 13 years of her life because someone who was supposed to help uphold justice lied. She has lost 13 years from her family and friends, 13 years from her career, 13 years of technological and social advancements. No amount of money can possibly compensate her pain and suffering.
What is worse is that she is not the only one. She is just one of the latest of a long list of people who were wrongly convicted. The sheer fact that she received such a long sentencing in the first place, as odd as it sounds, was likely her saving grace. You see the Innocence Project and other like organizations will not consider the case of someone who has received a relatively short sentence such as that of a typical DUI offender. However, the problem is that there are a lot more folks who are accused of a DUI or similar crime everyday in the United States than any other crime. What do you think the chances are of wrongful convictions there? Quite high, I would suggest. So as we sit and ponder this latest victory of the Innocence Project, let’s also pause to think about those who are in fact innocent but because of the length of their sentence or the fact that “it’s only a misdemeanor” will not get attention.
How Can These Wrongful Convictions be Avoided?
First, we need to look at the cause of this conviction. In this particular case medical examiner named Charles Smith (who was featured over on our sister blog “The Truth About Forensic Science” testified that Marquardt’s son had been strangled or suffocated when evidence instead showed that he died of an epileptic seizure. As I have pointed out in the past there are numerous problems with forensics labs including bad practices and lying. Mishandled evidence, incorrect procedures and inaccurate testimony are common problems in criminal cases whether they be homicide cases or DUI. In DUI cases, the problem is more rampant because in most cases the main piece of evidence is the toxicology report. You can protect yourself by choosing a lawyer who is an expert in forensic science and can challenge junk science in court.
This is why it is so important for you to choose the right lawyer to fight your case. If you are facing a DUI in Pennsylvania, you can rest assured that the PA DUI Attorneys of The McShane Firm will challenge the scientific evidence in your case and protect your rights.
Overworked, under-trained staff with no meaningful oversight is a recipe for disaster in any organization, especially one as technical as a state forensics lab. The problem here is errors can lead to innocent people being convicted of DUI and drug offenses. They will face license suspensions and jail time just to say the least of what will happen. All of this happens because of someone’s carelessness or incompetence or downright intentional misconduct. Take for example the state forensics lab in Indiana where error after error went unchecked for over 7 years and when supervisors were informed no action was taken:
Sloppy forensics leads to false positives in many DUI cases
Testing errors at the state’s toxicology lab go back at least seven years — much further than previously reported — according to internal emails obtained by The Indianapolis Star.
The emails also call into question whether IU’s medical school provided adequate oversight of the lab that tests blood and urine samples for criminal cases.
The roughly 2,000 emails are correspondence to and from Peter Method, the acting director of the state Department of Toxicology from 2003 to 2008.
They portray a dysfunctional lab beset by inadequate staffing and funding that produced an environment ripe for errors.
The emails also suggest benign neglect on the part of the Indiana University School of Medicine, which did not authorize an audit of test results until 2008, at least four years after the first testing errors were reported in the emails.
In perhaps the most telling indictment of the lab, its supervisor in November 2006 emailed the following to Method — and copied Method’s supervisor, Michael Vasko, chair of the medical school’s Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology:
“I never had this (happen), error after error. . . . I guess if this is acceptable to you and the department, then I don’t have to worry. If an error occurs again in the future I won’t bother you anymore.”
Not only are the errors themselves horrid, the lack of corrective action is even more alarming. It’s as if the people in charge didn’t care that innocent people’s lives were being ruined by these false positives. False positives can be especially dangerous in DUI cases which rely heavily on laboratory test results.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, similar problems have been reported with DUI testing in PA. The problem is systematic and a government funded study has even called for the nation’s crime labs to be overhauled, a call that has fallen on deaf ears. As it stands there is a lot of junk science out there and people are being convicted on the basis of false reports everyday. This is why you need a DUI attorney who has the knowledge and expertise to challenge the government scientists and take them to task on their faulty procedures. You need an attorney who is a recognized lawyer-scientist. You need The McShane Firm.
If you ask the average person, there seems to be two schools of thought on the problems in our justice system:
1. They are letting criminal go free.
2. They are punishing innocent people.
Clearly there is a huge divide between these two camps. For example if you asked them both about Pennsylvania DUI Laws, the first camp would likely push for harsher penalties while the second would support lowering penalties to lessen the harm done to those falsely convicted.
However, there is one issue that has the ability to unite both camps and that is the issue of forensics reform.
The Current Crime Lab Crisis
Eric Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He currently is co-chair of U.S. President Barrack Obama’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.
In 1989, Lander wrote and article for Nature entitled “DNA Fingerprinting On Trial, 339 Nature 501, 505 (1989). he explained then that,
At present, forensic science is virtually unregulated — with the paradoxical result that clinical laboratories must meet higher standards to be allowed to diagnose strep throat than forensic labs must meet to put a defendant on death row.
Since 1989, little has changed. Forensics labs remain unregulated with very little oversight. The Government mandated The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to research and discover if there are problems in forensics crime labs. The NAS called for a complete over-haul of the system calling it “badly fragmented,” and recommending that forensics labs should be independent from the criminal prosecution system. However, no action has been taken on the recommendations and a series of scandals in crime labs across the country has further undermined the system.
Unreliable forensics is allowing criminals to go free
Those in the first camp are concerned with prosecuting those who have committed crimes. Sloppy and unregulated forensic labs are an obstacle to putting criminals behind bars. Take for example The case of Kayla Gerdes. She is on trial in New York on suspicion of DUI drugs leading to fatally crashing into an elderly woman. The forensic tests were conducted at at the Nassau Police Crime Lab that was shut down following accusations of tainted evidence, questionable work practices, and 23 misconduct citations.
I am not passing judgment on Miss Gerdes because she has the right to be presumed innocent. The point here is that DUI and drug cases which rely heavily on forensic testing will be impossible to prosecute if tested at questionable crime labs like these. Even those who are truly guilty will have to be let go because the evidence is unreliable.
Unreliable forensics is punishing innocent people
On the flip side of things, sloppy and unregulated forensic labs are producing erroneous test results which leads to the conviction of innocent people. This is a real danger because innocent people like you and I can be arrested, charged and even convicted of DUI while being 100% innocent. As an experienced PA DUI Attorney I have seen the entire gambit of crime lab errors including contaminated samples, tampering, improper calculations, testing the wrong sample and errors in the equipment. This happens much more often than you think and the people working in these labs are not scientists, they are mostly under-trained and over-worked technicians with little specialized training.
What is the solution to the problem?
As an PA DUI and Criminal Defense Attorney I have seen firsthand how faulty the forensics system is. This is one of the main reason motivating to educate the public through my blog The Truth About Forensic Science because the first step is to raise awareness about these issues. After that it is up to us to demand better. We need to ask politicians about these issues and hold them accountable because this is a matter that effects the safety of our families and communities.
Every year countless lives are devastated by DUI. When most of us think about the victims of DUI, we usually think about those killed or injured in drunk driving accidents. Beyond the tragedy suffered by them lies another group of people who also deserve our compassion and attention, yet they are totally forgotten.
The Forgotten Victims of DUI
A false DUI conviction in PA can land you in jail.
There is a growing number of people who’s lives have been shattered by false DUI convictions. These are innocent people like you and I whose only crime is being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and meeting an untrained police officer or under-skilled technician. Under Pennsylvania DUI Laws, even one false conviction can potentially lead to jail time, heavy fines, and driving license suspension.
Imagine for a moment not being able to drive. For many of us it is a privilege we take for granted. Many people who have been falsely convicted of a PA DUI face the danger of losing their current jobs based on the fact that they make not be able to get to work easily or complete duties that require them to travel. Not only will a false DUI effect their current job but it will also make it harder for them to find work in the future. Anytime an employer runs a criminal background check, they will see the DUI conviction and may filter out this unfortunate victim based on the stigma attached to DUI.
The forgotten victims of DUI will also face higher car insurance, and will not be able to rent a car.
The Sources of False DUI Convictions in PA
There are many sources of error that can lead to a false DUI conviction. Many times, police officers make mistakes and sometimes corrupt police officers purposely falsify evidence. Then there is the problem of incorrectly calibrated breath machines and even when properly maintained, these breath machine are not accurate and mistake many common substances for alcohol. Even blood tests run on the most advanced equipment can become contaminated from mishandling and the results can be manipulated by lab technicians. If left unchallenged, these errors can lead to false convictions and turn an innocent person into a victim of DUI.
This is why we fight. We fight to protect you from false DUI conviction and a lifetime of shame and hardship. Don’t become another statistic. Call 1-866-MCSHANE to get the best DUI defense in PA and protect your rights.
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