Wow. Drug lab worker says she didn’t want to hurt anyone and just wanted to be seen as a good worker. For fun, let’s show what this “good worker” has done:
[ol][li]Falsely claimed, in court testimony of course, that she has a Master’s Degree from the University of Massacusetts. Not only does she not have such a degree, she has never taken any graduate courses at all with U-Mass.[/li][li]Tested 1/5 to 1/3 of a group of samples, then listed them all as positive.[/li][li]If a sample tested negative, she would taint the sample with cocaine and then list it as positive.[/li][li]She was involved with testing samples for approximately 34,000 people.[/ol][/li]
How on Earth can someone believe that providing faked drug evidence to the court won’t cause the defendant any harm?
I don’t get how adding cocaine to samples so that they test positive would make her look like a good employee. I can only conclude that she wast just doing it for a laugh.
Please note I do not in anyway condone what this woman did.
That said what exactly kinds of samples was she testing? What was being sent for analysis I mean? The reason I wonder is that if it was street drugs wrapped for sale I’ve been lead to believe that the penalty criminally for selling flour as cocaine is exactly the same as that for selling actual cocaine, so I suppose she may have thought she was just saving time.
She was not running tests at all on most of her samples, so she needed to get a few samples that were definitely positive so that she LOOKED like she was doing her job.
She has ruined people’s lives, and she’s made the whole system look crooked. The state is going to have to re-examine all of the cases where she was the one who did the tests. A lot of guilty people are going to be able to claim reasonable doubt, if she tested their evidence. And apparently she doesn’t get why people are all upset about this.
You make a good point. It seems the samples she was testing were the primary drug samples of actual drugs. Not urine samples from drug users.
In that case, it does make more sense to test a few, and than mark the rest as positive if they’re all from the same case. As you point out, fraudulently selling something as a drug that isn’t a drug is still a crime. That slippery slope isn’t nearly as steep than if she were testing urine or hair samples. Still she is totally fucked up though. I’m really curious where she got her bachelors training (if she did). it probably wouldn’t have helped… .but seriously, ethics class?
She should go to prison for a long time, but the whole system is fucked up if she could get away with this for this long. There should be redundancy so one person acting alone can’t falsify results. (Or at least not do it regularly and get away with it.) They should have two labs independently test samples, or they should have audits where they pass known samples through the system and make sure the test results on them are correct. It is grossly negligent for them not do that.
The fact that they didn’t inquire into how she managed to test 3-10 times as many samples is negligent. Her supervisors should lose their jobs.
It bothers me that everyone believes DNA evidence and so forth is airtight, when actually you’re relying in the word of the technician who does the test, and you’re relying on the cops not tampering with samples. Lying about results, slipping some drugs into a vial, or switching blood samples seems like it would be trivially easy, easier than faking almost any other type of evidence.
I’m finding myself wondering how many of those samples she tested happened to be required samples from, say police officers or firefighters, for their employment. I know that for the US Armed Forces, if your sample tests positive, you will be processed for trial and discharge. Are there any other jurisdictions with the same procedure?
It occurs to me that a number of people are culpable in this case:
[ol][li]The cretin who falsified the tests, of course.[/li][li]Her supervisors for not verifying her credentials in the first place.[/li][li]Her supervisors again for not monitoring her.[/li][li]Her supervisors yet again for simply accepting her astronomical workload completed as though that’s not a red flag.[/li][li]Her supervisors once more for not taking action when “some irregularities” were reported to them over the course of a couple of years.[/li][li]The courts for not verifying her credentials when certifying her as an expert witness.[/ol][/li]
You hope her supervisors also lose their jobs? Heck, I hope her supervisors go to jail along with her!
It is far from the only one, just recently Detroit was pitted here for having an enormous backlog of untested rape kits. Further research proved that is common around the country, they can’t even manage to get it tested once. And that is in the relatively wealthy USA, who knows the conditions elsewhere for crime labs.