Scandals in Chem Labs

[L.J.Steele]

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/ ... ce-labs-us

Discussion of the failures at multiple drug labs and need for reform.

[Tazman]

This article details four criminalists caught in unethical behavior in the past couple of years. Of course, I don't think anybody would deny that there were many more who were not caught.

But, Ms Steele, can you tell us, during the same time period, how many attorneys were disbarred?

[L.J.Steele]

I don't think there's any attorney, no matter how inept, that caused as many cases to be reversed as Dookhan.

There have been a number of articles recently talking about prosecutorial misconduct and how infrequently prosecutors are disciplined in any way even when a Court finds they have acted improperly.

I think the most frequent case for attorney disbarment is financial fraud -- taking money from one's trust accounts -- usually as part of an underlying drug or gambling problem. It is a serious problem, but a different issue from fiddling with evidence.

[Tazman]

My sincere thanks, Ms Steele, for your reply.

The fact that I was trying to demonstrate is that criminalists seem to be expected to demonstrate 100% ethics and honesty in a less than perfect world. By any standard of numbers or percentages of practitioners, I believe criminalists are one of the most ethical groups of people in any profession. But if one criminalist goes rogue, a million perfectly honest criminalists get smeared with the same black brush.

Doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, fruit pickers, or any vocation you can imagine is subject to dishonest performance. Suggesting to the honest practitioners that they share the blame for the dishonest, or that the honest ones should stop the dishonest ones they don't even know about, seems unrealistic. Not that that is what you were trying to do. "Just saying . . . . . "

[L.J.Steele]

I wasn't trying to make accusations, just point out a story that I might have implications for your work, or how you get cross-examined in court. In the wake of the scandals, I expect there will be a bigger focus on QA procedures as part of discovery requests and cross-examination.

There is a need for good administrative oversight and quality-control checks in many fields. And that I do support.

There are bad lawyers out there -- that's why there's series of rules about how I maintain my trust account, what records I need to keep, and rules that require my bank to report suspicious transactions to the attorney licensing board. Similarly, the public defender's office requires me to keep various records and randomly audits to make sure that I'm really doing the work I'm billing for. It is a pain in the neck, but it is a necessary part of keeping cients safe. Similarly, I know that my work on an appeal is going to be reviewed by habeas counsel and if I miss something or screw it up, odds are I'm going to have to explain things under oath to a habeas judge. It doesn't usually change what I do, but it does affect the quality of records I keep about why I do things.

[Shane Turnidge]

Taz, I think criticism is just part of our daily work environment. Even the verification process within ACE-V is, and should be critical.
FWIW There's no shortage of people lining up to criticize and poke fun at lawyers.

When people criticize the work we do as LPE's we can choose to take offense or we can choose to listen and try to understand the criticism to see if there is any merit to their perspective.
Honest and well intended criticism helps our business and us as individuals evolve incrementally. Look at where we are today versus 20 years ago. Every landmark case and event has helped us evolve our system into something of value to our society and to ourselves.

Well intended criticism is valuable and necessary. I appreciate both Ms. Steele's and your participation in this forum. It makes us better as a community.

Shane Turnidge