Whether it’s happened to any other crime lab in the nation is unknown, but for the moment at least, the Nassau County, New York, crime lab is the only one placed on probation by the accrediting agency, The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, in the country. We are number 1, HEY!
You might suspect that the head of the lab, Nassau County Police lab director Det. Lt. James Granelle, would proudly announce his distinction when he learned of the honor last November. But no, according to the Wall Street Journal, which bought him a reassignment. Naturally, nobody mentioned its failures to all the defendants whose cases depended on the lab’s integrity.
Melendez-Diaz decision, requiring the prosecution to produce the lab tech as a witness per Crawford to introduce the testimonial report if the defense demands, appears to be overwhelming critical in the scheme of keeping this critical even close to honest. The decision is at huge risk of reversal, with states (not New York, mind you) whining that it’s too expensive and unwieldy to force them to produce living, breathing witnesses. As far as they are concerned, the piece of paper that says “GUILTY” is good enough to put someone in prison forever.
While cross-examining a lab tech isn’t necessarily likely to result in him breaking down on the stand, admitting that he fudged the tests and fabricated the report, it remains the only way to test the reliability and veracity of lab reports. To be confronted with a conclusory and self-serving piece of paper is worthless for the purpose of testing its reliability, and the historic argument that these reports are sacred is now shown to be nonsense. Labs can fail. Their reports can be false. Pieces of paper alone are evidentiary garbage.
Professionalizing the labs is but one of many, many changes that are desperately needed in creating and maintaining the integrity of scientific evidence in court. One change that is no longer subject to dispute is that labs must be independent. Just ask Lt. Granelle, who somehow didn’t see any problem at the Nassau County lab. But this is just a start. Other changes, like actually using testing that’s scientifically valid and verifiable, would be nice too.
It happened in Nassau County. It could happen where you practice. The point is, it happens. Never assume that its true just because the lab says so.
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One would think that it would be (relatively) easy to independently assess how well a lab is performing a particular analysis. For example, by submitting coded knowns, white powders either containing or not substance X, and after the analyses are returned, breaking the code to see how often the lab got it right.
My bet is with yours that this would be considered too expensive, unnecessary, or whatever. And how accurate the lab has to be to engender probable cause, reasonable doubt, etc is another issue altogether…
Seems related to the problem with the accuracy of dog sniffs; although with dogs there are the additional problems of the handler cueing the dog, and a reporting bias where only alerts that result in finding contraband end up in court.
You’ve totally misunderstood the problem and the point of the post.
Newsday has reported that the NCPD wants to set up a commission to find an independent civilian to run the lab. It will consist of cops and prosecutors. No mention of CDL’s.
The Nassau County Criminal Courts Bar Association seems to be the only organization concerned about this problem. Nothing has been heard from either the Nassau LAS or the NYSACDL. What else is new.
It is truly about time.My brother ended up in drug court for crimes he commitedand needed to be drug tested every week needless to say he tested positive every time he went there i know without a doubt he didnt use drugs for 4 months yet he was always tested positive he decided to go to his doctor once a week and get tested by him the reults were always negative he ended up going to jail .for the positive tests from the lab. how many other people were screwed by this lab