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In The News

2014-06-16 | Rape kit testing bill facing opposition from law enforcement organization
The California State Sheriff's Association is coming out strongly against the rape kit bill. Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson is the group's president, and he says, "The problematic part of this piece of legislation is really the unfunded mandate and the over-burdensome regulation that it brings. Really this is about local control. It's about the sheriffs having the discretion in determining which forensic cases we refer to the Department of Justice."

2014-06-11 | Four Reasons You Should Not Dry Evidence in a Fume Hood
When drying evidence in a fume hood, it is often very difficult to maintain chain of custody, prevent cross contamination, and properly decontaminate the work area of biohazards. If you are currently drying evidence in a fume hood, it might be time to consider obtaining an Evidence Drying Cabinet instead.

2014-05-31 | Backlogs plague Valley police crime labs
Fingerprint identification is only one brick in the wall of evidence that police attempt to build, and it is more contested than forensic evidence such as DNA, Chandler police Sgt. Joe Favazzo said. But often the same person commits multiple low-level burglaries, so getting that fingerprint information into the system can lead to multiple cases being solved, he said.

2014-05-30 | Backlogs plague Valley police crime labs
Then it can take two years to get a new hire up to speed. "You really can't get a degree in latent-print analysis that prepares you to walk into the lab and do work," Figarelli said. "We make them minimally productive, but it does take a full year and a half to two years to turn them loose on their own" at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said about new hires.

2014-05-30 | Jury awards $175,000 to fired St. Louis police chemist in whistleblower case
A jury decided Wednesday to award $175,000 to a former St. Louis police chemist who claimed she was fired from her 25-year job because she blew the whistle on drug testing errors in the crime lab. The verdict was announced after about five hours of deliberations in a trial that ran longer than a week in St. Louis Circuit Court. The plaintiff, Margart Owens, told a reporter she held no animosity toward the department, but felt it was important to clear her name and prevent future errors. “I’m a scientist,” she said. “If the reports are in error, they should be corrected, because people’s lives are affected by it.”

2014-05-28 | "Open to Dispute": CODIS STR Loci as Private Medical Information
Ever since “DNA fingerprinting” burst onto the forensic scene in the mid-1980s, government authorities and scientists have assured us that the DNA variations used to create identifying profiles for offender databases are pure junk—they do not encode proteins, they have no known associations with diseases or behavioral traits, and they contain no information beyond an arbitrary identifier. Not everyone finds these statements reassuring—or even true. For nearly 25 years, advocacy groups and legal scholars have been predicting that the day when the DNA features used in forensic identification will reveal predispositions to diseases or behavioral traits is just around the corner. Indeed, some commentators have claimed that biomedical science turned that corner years ago. Proclamations that the CODIS STR profiles can be used to infer propensities to diseases from asthma to schizophrenia appear in judicial opinions.

2014-05-27 | Methods for Destroying Drug Evidence Vary
Other jurisdictions have more choices: State police in the Detroit area use a metal forging plant's high-temperature furnace, but smaller posts use burn barrels. Indiana State Police have similar options. Pennsylvania State Police handle drug destruction internally, such as with a small incinerator. New York State Police use an outside contractor they won't disclose.

2014-05-21 | Former St. Louis police chemist alleges she was fired for reporting drug testing errors
Her wrongful-termination suit claims that twice in 2008, a fellow chemist did not follow proper testing procedures and failed to detect benzylpiperazine in pills that came into the lab. Benzylpiperazine, also known as BZP, is a powerful stimulant used in the drug Ecstasy. Owens’ attorneys say that when she learned of the errors and raised her concerns with supervisors, the issue was shoved under the rug, even though later testing confirmed she was right.

2014-05-20 | Shoddy examinations leave families in pain
Across North Carolina, medical examiners fail to follow crucial investigative steps, raising questions about the accuracy of thousands of death rulings. The living face the consequences. Widows can be cheated out of insurance money. Families may never learn why their loved ones died. Killers can go free.

2014-05-13 | St. Paul police crime lab to seek accreditation
The St. Paul police crime lab plans to seek accreditation through a national board that evaluates forensic testing, a move that would help demonstrate the department has turned around its embattled crime lab. The city's police department shut down the lab in 2012, after public defenders' inquiries disclosed flawed drug-testing practices at the unaccredited St. Paul police crime lab. The city then spent nearly $1 million and a year of work to address the problems, including a review of thousands of criminal cases.