Who Should Manage Public Forensic Science Labs?
by Moderator on Mar.07, 2010, under Topics for discussion
Many public labs are administered and managed by police departments and prosecutors’ offices. The National Academy of Sciences urges an end to this practice and that the crime labs be removed administratively from police departments and prosecutors, or at least that their management and budget be independent from the police agency. Is the current situation truly a problem, as some feel, or simply a form of “guilt by association”? Can forensic science labs be independent of and not biased even if they are under these organizations?
March 18th, 2010 on 2:21 pm
If there was ever a story that made the case for making crime labs independent from law enforcement, it is the recently revealed case of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation Laboratory. There is an article about the story in the March issue of Crime Lab Report. Another story can be found at http://www.reflector.com/state-news/apnewsbreak-group-says-sbi-reports-not-acceptable-25616
Preliminary screening tests for blood were reported if they were positive, but the negative confirmatory tests were not reported. At least one defendant was wrongly convicted, and served some serious hard time as a result. That’s bad enough news.
Even worse, the lab director STILL defends the practice, because the negative result was “available” in the analyst’s notes. ASCLD-LAB disagrees. The lab director stated, “Back in the ’90s, they complied — as I understand it and I don’t know, I haven’t gone and researched it — with the statutory requirements,” she said. ” … The language was acceptable in the scientific community, as has been explained to me.”
The director definitely belongs to a different “scientific community” than the one I belong to. Even as far back as 1990, the forensic scientists I admire thought it was just plain wrong to withhold exculpatory evidence.
If this practice was the accepted norm for blood screening tests, what other exculpatory results were withheld?
Does this person really belong at the helm of a forensic science laboratory?
The behavior of the analyst, and the even worse behavior of the lab director brings our entire profession into disrepute. Thank the Lord that the accrediting body did not endorse the charade that passes for science in North Carolina!