The latest high profile case of malpractice at a forensics crime laboratory is making waves in the US. Kamalkant Shah, a lab technician who worked at a New Jersey State Police drug testing unit from 2005 to 2015, was recently observed writing alleged test results for drug evidence he never actually tested. The discovery of this so-called ‘dry-labbing’ has thrown into doubt almost 8000 criminal cases in the state.
Shah’s questionable behaviour was discovered in December last year when he was seen spending insufficient time analysing a suspected cannabis sample and recording results without conducting a thorough analysis. Shah was removed from lab work and suspended without pay in January
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Sadly this is all to common:
Hard questions after litany of forensic failures at US labs
At least five high profile cases of serious malpractice at US forensic crime labs have come to light in the last two years, most resulting in the arrest of chemists working there. These scandals have called into question key evidence used in criminal cases, and have resulted in hundreds convictions being overturned. And this malpractice had led critics to ask a bigger question. Is something rotten at the heart of US forensic science?
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Fallout from rogue US drug lab chemist could lead to thousands of retrials
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“During Dookhan's decade at the Hinton lab, it had been run by the Massachusetts Department of Health's Office of Human Services. However, in a cost-cutting move, the Massachusetts General Court transferred control of the lab to the Massachusetts State Policeforensics unit in 2011. The state police mounted a more exhaustive probe into the Dookhan case. The probe revealed that Dookhan's superiors had ignored several red flags surrounding her before 2011. For instance, she reportedly tested over 500 samples per month—five times the normal average—even though her supervisors and colleagues claimed to have never seen her in front of a microscope. She also had a bad habit of misidentifying samples. Additionally, Dookhan's productivity remained steady after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts that chemists who perform drug tests in criminal cases can be subpoenaed to testify in person. According to an independent data analysis by NPR member WBUR in Boston, Dookhan's turnaround time for tests actually dropped from 2009 to 2011. The problem was severe enough that Governor Deval Patrick ordered the lab shut down.
In August, police interviewed Dookhan at her home in Franklin, where she admitted to altering and faking test results in order to cover up her frequent "dry labbing," or visually identifying samples without actually testing them. She even went as far as to add cocaine to samples in which no cocaine was present. She said she had been dry-labbing for as long as three years. At one point, she broke down, saying, "I messed up, I messed up bad. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."”
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And of course there’s no evidence that these labs were only ever used in State, not Federal, cases…. and there’s PLENTY of examples of the Federal government just lying to get convictions… making me wonder how anyone could be for the death penalty even on a national level. I know someone wrongly convicted, and treated harshly for being black in the south… he spent decades on death row, unjustly.
We all know just how corrupt and unfair and broken our system is… can we really support giving our government the right to execute ANYONE? I can’t.