A recent investigation led by a former Justice Department official reported that analysts at the Houston Crime Lab fabricated findings in at least four drug cases, including one in which a scientist failed to conduct testing before issuing conclusions to support police suspicions — an illegal practice known as “drylabbing.” The report contains some of the most serious allegations made yet against the Houston Crime Lab and is the first to criticize the lab’s largest division, controlled substances, which tests substances suspected of being drugs and performs about 75% of the Houston Police Department’s forensics work. This is the fifth area of crime lab disciplines where errors have been exposed — including DNA, toxicology, ballistics and the blood-typing science of serology.
The investigation into the lab is being headed by Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department official. He found that the “drylabbing” reports were issued by two analysts between 1998 and 2000. One of the analysts, who has since resigned, once fabricated conclusions that sent an innocent man to prison for four years for rape. In a later instance of misconduct, he used results from a colleague’s testing in his own case file. The second analyst, who still works at the lab, identified tablets as a controlled substance without performing tests and later falsified data to support incorrect conclusions. In each of the four cases, the analysts’ supervisors caught the misrepresentations before the evidence was introduced in court, but the two employees responsible for the “drylabbing” results were punished with no more than a four-day suspension.
“ ‘Drylabbing’ is the most egregious form of scientific misconduct that can occur in a forensic laboratory.… At least one of the supervisors believed strongly that both analysts should have been terminated immediately once the frauds were identified,” said Bromwich in his report.
This new report also highlights problems that led to an investigation of the Houston Crime Lab’s DNA division, which was closed in December 2002 due to shoddy employee practices and other problems that contributed to testing inaccuracies. Bromwich and his team of investigators are expected to complete the first stage of their investigation of the Lab by the end of June. (Houston Chronicle, June 1, 2005). See Innocence. More people have been executed from Harris County (Houston) than from any other county in the country.
