scottsdale crime lab

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that blood-alcohol tests from the Scottsdale crime lab will not be excluded as evidence in Scottsdale DUI cases.

Due to inconsistent error reports, the Court released an opinion in late April ruling that tests from the headspace gas chromatograph machine are valid to use in DUI cases.

While the machine did produce some faulty test results, results were not always inaccurate, therefore leading the justices to determine that evidence couldn’t be dismissed from all DUI cases. Instead, a judge will decide if the evidence is inherently unreliable, in which case the tests wouldn’t be considered.

However, in more difficult cases, a judge may not be able to determine whether the evidence is inherently unreliable, and it will be up to jurors to decide if the tests can be used as credible evidence.

This means that not every Scottsdale DUI case can dismiss BAC tests from the machine, but defense attorneys can present the flaws of the lab and the machine to the jury, regardless of whether their clients’ tests were erroneous.

In July 2013, the Scottsdale crime lab was the center of controversy when news broke that the equipment used to test blood alcohol levels of those arrested on suspicion of DUI was outdated and defective, resulting in mislabelled and inaccurate data for as many as 50 percent of samples.

The machine is longer in operation, and the Scottsdale DUI cases can proceed in court under this new ruling.

The Arizona Supreme Court is reviewing whether blood-alcohol test results from an erroneous machine at the Scottsdale crime lab can be used as evidence against several DUI cases from 2013.

A lower court previously found the BAC results to be permissible evidence in court, allowing the defendants’ cases to move forward. However, some of the defense attorneys involved disagreed with this ruling, arguing that their clients shouldn’t be subject to the results of compromised tests from untrustworthy equipment and lab staff.

In July 2013, the lab was criticized for using defective equipment to test the BAC of those arrested on suspicion of DUI in Scottsdale. Court documents indicated that Scottsdale police and lab technicians knew the machine was running on outdated software from 2009, resulting in mislabelled and inaccurate data for as many as 50 percent of samples.

Recently, Arizona’s highest court began oral debates to decide the fate of nearly a dozen DUI cases with attorneys Joe St. Louis and Lisa Marie Martin presenting their arguments before five state Supreme Court justices.

St. Louis argued against using the results as evidence in court, saying, “we don’t want drunk drivers to go free but we don’t want people who haven’t broken the law to be convicted.”

Martin represents the state, and defended the lower court’s previous decision to proceed with the DUI cases at hand because the machine was only intermittently producing mistakes.

Despite knowing about the faulty machine, tests continued to go through the lab for use in DUI cases. As a result, it’s possible that numerous people could have been wrongly convicted of DUIs due to the incorrect tests.

This possibility hasn’t been sitting well with many because Arizona’s DUI laws are some of the harshest in the nation, with a minimum of 24 hours in jail, license suspension and intense fines for all offenders, including first time offenders.

With 29,000 DUI arrests made in 2013 alone, the percentage of potential false convictions that could have been made over the years is cause for controversy.

No decisions have been made yet, but blood samples are no longer being processed on the Scottsdale machine due to staffing issues, and instead are sent to the state DPS lab, Scottsdale Police report.

In the criminal justice system, there is a skewed – but high – incentive for forensic scientists to get a conviction, whether it is a valid one or not. Crime and forensic labs are being paid fees per conviction, creating a higher possibility of bias.

Crime labs conduct tests such as toxicology, fingerprint analysis, DNA evidence analysis, ballistics and hair microscopy. How confident would you be if you found out the lab conducting your toxicology test got paid only if you were convicted? Throughout the country, there have been thousands of falsely convicted individuals due to forensic lab mistakes, all to the benefit of the labs.

The Houston Police Department Crime Lab has been under investigation since 2002, for countless lab errors and faulty forensic testing. An estimated 16,000 rape kits were discovered to be untested in a property room of the facility, leaving thousands of innocent people falsely convicted and sent to prison.

In 2002, Lazaro Sotolusson, a prisoner at Las Vegas Detention Center was prosecuted for his cell mates’ crimes–sexual assault of two juveniles at gunpoint– when it was discovered that the DNA samples of the two were switched a year before.

Mistakes like these are, unfortunately, very common. Few crime lab workers and lab examiners are scientists, and many labs are affiliated with, or run by police departments– which put the desire for closed cases and secured convictions above all else.

In addition to the perverse incentive of getting paid, sadly, lab examiners have less of a reason to spend time on preventing someone’s conviction. Crime labs get paid to provide evidence of conviction, giving more reason for incompetent labs or faulty machines to be left unfixed, to corrupt prospective tests. Crime labs may also falsify, alter, neglect or simply lie about evidence and test results to get the conviction that will go straight into their pocketbook.

Many states have this flawed justice system incentive in place. In Carolina, you can be fined up to $600 just for lab processing fees upon conviction. Would you want to pay that if you were wrongfully found guilty?

No one wants to end up with a false conviction. To prevent any forensic malpractice, whether illicit or not, it is best to seek legal council from trustworthy and knowledgeable lawyers who know you and your case, and are dedicated to seeking the truth. From DUI’s, to photo radar cases, or felony charges, you need someone who can get you the fairest outcome possible and challenge any injustices that could come your way.

In Arizona, a DUI conviction is not something taken lightly when deciding punishment. If convicted of a DUI, penalties could include a minimum jail time of 24 hours, a license suspension and numerous fines.

According to the Arizona Government of Highway Safety, in 2012 there was a total of 30,433 DUI arrests. However, recent evidence shows a portion of these could be mistakenly penalized due to faulty technology. Scottsdale’s police lab is currently under fire for alleged defective equipment used to determine the blood alcohol content level of those charged with DUIs in Scottsdale.

Court documents indicate Scottsdale police have known about potential problems with the blood-testing equipment over the past few years. The police lab switched its software in 2009, however, lab technicians continued to use old software in a new blood-testing machine. These are reportedly incompatible and has potentially caused as many as 50 percent of processed blood samples to read inaccurately.

The software glitch was first recognized when lab employees noticed labeled vials with wrong names or numbers, machine failure during tests and showed repetitive blood alcohol tests of 40 people at a time which, according to Scottsdale Attorney Craig Rosenstein, “statistically is not going to happen.”

The Email Trail

Although Sgt. Mark Clark released a statement saying the Scottsdale police lab has “met or exceed[ed] the rigorous standards set by [the] American Society of Crime Lab Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board,” multiple emails between Scottsdale lab employees and their supervisors acknowledged that there was clearly a problem with a machine in the lab.

One email mentioned how the machine failed a test but was logged as having passed. Regardless of the complication, results from tests that were run on that machine were published. Another email indicated that some employees thought the machine should be taken out of service completely.

The emails also exposed at least one concerned lab employee reporting problems with a blood-testing machine to the manufacturer, who wanted to correct the “malfunctioning equipment.”

Another employee who worked directly with the equipment wrote to managers that a machine had failed its weekly autotune check but despite the failure, an entry was made in the log stating that it had “passed the check and casework was done using the instrument.”

The Aftermath

Getting charged with a DUI can have many drastic effects on someone’s life such as loss of employment and long term effects like finding a new job.

“Because this problem is just hitting the surface there is no way of knowing how many people have been affected,” said Christopher P. Corso of Corso Law Group. “We’re talking about potentially hundreds of DUI cases. It’s yet another example of why you should hire an experienced Arizona DUI lawyer to represent you in such cases.

What You Can Do

Hiring an experienced DUI attorney is always the best way to protect you and your family. A DUI conviction will remain on your record permanently and will be used as a prior offense for the next ten years. One criminal defense team in Scottsdale has worked with over 15,000 DUI cases.

Corso Law Group will give you the benefit of their expertise when fighting for your case. Having an Arizona DUI attorney with experience means your case will be handled by DUI lawyers who know how the system works and how to best defend you against an Arizona DUI or drunk driving charge.