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Saturday, February 04, 2012

Ind. Gov't. - "State won't release toxicology lab results: Only prosecutors told what retesting of samples revealed"

Buried deep inside this morning's Indianapolis Star, on Super Bowl weekend, is this story by Tim Evans, who has covered the toxicology lab issues since 2010 (see list of ILB entries).

Warnings of problems with the state toxicology lab go back to 2009, when Tom Moor of the South Bend Tribune wrote about a serious backlog in getting results. A year later the Star wrote that the results were "slow and sloppy." Later that year began an investigative series in the Star about the accuracy of results. The Star has complied an archive of its 2011 state toxicology stories.

Some quotes from today's long story:

State toxicology officials know. Prosecutors know. But, apparently, the public may never be told the depths of drug testing problems at the troubled State Department of Toxicology.

The Indianapolis Star previously obtained from the Indiana University School of Medicine three separate reports from an independent lab that suggested sloppy work and unacceptable levels of testing errors at the state lab, which police and prosecutors use to evaluate evidence for criminal cases.

But the state, which took over the lab from IU last summer, informed The Star on Friday that it is refusing to disclose the results of a most recent retesting of positive blood samples. Those samples -- about 500 -- were taken for marijuana and cocaine cases from 2007 to 2009.

These specific results -- because they were retests of actual samples -- are viewed by forensic scientists and legal experts as particularly important. The results would be the most conclusive indicator yet of not only how bad the problems at the lab might be, but also whether people have been convicted of crimes based on evidence that is flawed. * * *

Fran Watson, a professor at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, said there is a compelling need for the public to know the results. It goes, she said, to the heart of the integrity of our legal system.

"The more open they can be at this point, the more they are open about how this happened, who it happened to and why it will never happen again," she said, "the more faith people will have in the system."

The denial also appears to fly in the face of a recommendation that the state's new three-member toxicology advisory panel -- a group appointed by Gov. Mitch Daniels -- made to the governor in July.

"The results of the retesting . . . should be conveyed to the prosecutors, defense and public in understandable language," the panel wrote in its report to the governor. "In other words, the explanations made should explain the significance of the findings and what they mean in lay language."

Indianapolis defense attorney John Tompkins said he has a pretty good idea what the secrecy means -- in lay language.

"If the results were good," he said, "they would be telling us."

Tompkins said that after the much-publicized troubles with the lab -- which led to the state taking it over -- he can't imagine the state wouldn't immediately tout anything positive.

"This looks to me like a delay tactic to buy time," Tompkins said, "in the hope that people will just forget about it."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 4, 2012 09:02 AM
Posted to Indiana Government