Blood testing

November 28, 2013

Forensic chemist gets 3-5 years in prison for falsifying test results

Annie Dookhan, a former forensic chemist at a state forensic laboratory in Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to 27 counts of falsifying test results, misleading investigators, and tampering with evidence. She was sentenced this week to 3-5 years in prison. followed by 2 years of probation. In the course of her career she filed reports in approximately 40,000 criminal cases, which are now under review.

This is an extreme case, but it highlights the need for defense lawyers to carefully scrutinize state police laboratory results and methods to uncover mistakes resulting from incompetence, negligence, and fraud in criminal cases. Newpaper stories are replete with cases of laboratory mistakes that have resulted in erroneous convictions.

The amicus brief filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National College for DUI defense in Bullcoming v. New Mexico, co-written by Leonard R. Stamm said:

“Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation.” Melendez-Diaz, 129 S. Ct. at 2536. The recent report by the National Research Council of the National Academies, Strengthening Forensic Sciences in the United States: a Path Forward (2009) (NAS Report), confirmed what defense lawyers have long known: because forensic analysis is a product of human discretion, it is vulnerable to incompetence, error and sometimes even fraud. See also Solomon Moore, Science Found Wanting in Nation’s Crime Labs, N.Y. Times, Feb. 5, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/05forensics.html (last visited Dec. 1, 2010). As the NAS Report revealed, forensic analyses “are often handled by poorly trained technicians who then exaggerate the accuracy of their methods in court.” Id. The NAS Report verifies that forensic science is anything but infallible, and is instead fraught by very human errors leading to problems such as sample contamination and inaccurate reports. Id.

October 15, 2013

U.S. District Court in Maryland Grants McNeely Suppression Motion

by Goldstein & Stamm, P.A.

The United States District Court for the Southern Division of Maryland in Greenbelt issued its first ruling Friday granting a defense motion to suppress a warrantless blood test as a result of the Supreme Court decision in Missouri v. McNeely. Magistrate Judge Thomas M. DiGirolamo issued a 19 page written opinion holding that McNeely applied to cases pending at the time of its issuance, that the Government did not demostrate sufficient exigent circumstances to justify dispensing with a warrant, and that the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule did apply in the case of United States v. Brown, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147352 (D. Md. October 11, 2013).

The opinion stated:

The government asserts that this case falls within the exigent circumstances exception. Specifically, it points to the 30 minute delay in the taking of the defendant’s blood due to the defendant’s failure to cooperate with the breath test at the station. The Court does not find that said delay combined with the natural dissipation of blood-alcohol brings this case within the exigent circumstances exception. This is simply not a case where the exigencies of the situation were so compelling to excuse the need for a warrant. Officer Weisbaum described this incident as a “routine” DWI stop. While this alone does not mean a warrant is required, it is a “special fact” to be considered. See McNeely, 133 S.Ct. at 1568. Additionally, unlike Schmerber, time did not have to be taken to investigate an accident or attend to the suspect’s personal injuries. There was nothing about the defendant’s physical or mental condition, or behavior, which required the expenditure of time in addition to what would normally be expended in a routine DWI stop. Officer Weisbaum testified that it is common for defendants to at first agree to cooperate with the breath test and then not blow sufficiently, resulting in a failed test. The Court does not find that the totality of the circumstances present in this case constitute such an emergency to excuse the officer from obtaining a warrant prior to the taking of the defendant’s blood. Given that the defendant did not consent to the blood test, the Court finds the taking of his blood was in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

There remain pending in Greenbelt a number of unresolved motions to suppress due to the policy of the U.S. Park Police to obtain blood samples in DUI cases without first seeking a warrant prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Missouri v. McNeely, on April 17, 2013. The U.S. Park Police was one of a very small number of jurisdictions in the United States that followed the practice of getting blood samples from DUI suspects without first getting a warrant. The vast majority of states that obtained blood samples were already seeking and getting judicially issued warrants before drawing blood in DUI cases.
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April 17, 2013

Supreme Court rules search warrant presumptively required before obtaining non-consensual blood draw – Missouri v. McNeely win!

by Goldstein & Stamm, P.A.

The Supreme Court today announced its opinion in Missouri v. McNeely and ruled that police in DUI investigations may not automatically avoid seeking a search warrant to obtain a blood sample where the defendant does not consent to a blood test. This is the third win as amicus curiae for the National College for DUI Defense which filed an amicus brief with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The Court said:

In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 456 (1948) (“We cannot . . . excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made [the search] imperative”).

It is interesting counting the votes again.

With respect to the proposition that there is no per se DUI exception to the warrant requirement in so far as non-consensual blood tests are concerned, the vote is 8-1 (only Thomas dissented from the holding). Since that was the only basis urged by Missouri for decision, the Missouri Supreme Court was affirmed. Missouri never appealed the question of whether the officer in this case acted reasonably.

As a result, Justice Kennedy wouldn’t touch when and whether it might be reasonable for an officer to get blood without a warrant. He is willing to wait for the next case to do so. In so far as there was a discussion about how to determine when and whether an exigency exists there were 3 votes for kind of a special totality test where if the warrant couldn’t be obtained without any delay at all, then it might not be needed (Roberts, Alito & Breyer). But Sotomayor, Kagan, Scalia and Ginsburg disagreed with this approach.
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January 9, 2013

Missouri v. McNeely argued today in the U.S. Supreme Court

by Goldstein & Stamm, P.A.

Today, the Supreme Court heard argument in the case of Missouri v. McNeely. The case involved police obtaining a blood alcohol test without a warrant. The officer, who had previously had no difficulty obtaining warrants before getting blood samples in DUI cases had mistakenly believed that Missouri law had changed. Because there was nothing unusual about the case, the Missouri Supreme Court distinguished the 1966 Supreme Court case of Schmerber v. California, where due to the delay occasioned by an accident investigation and the defendant’s trip to a hospital, and the dissipation of alcohol in the blood, the Supreme Court allowed a warrantless blood draw. In this case, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the state had failed to show the special circumstances that would have allowed police to skip getting a warrant.

The State of Missouri requested review, posing the following question:

Whether a law enforcement officer may obtain a nonconsensual and warrantless blood sample from a drunk driver under the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement based upon the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream

McNeely was represented in the Supreme Court by Steven Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU. McNeely was supported by a number of amicus briefs, including one filed by the National College for DUI Defense and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and co-authored by Leonard R. Stamm, Jeffrey Green, and Jeffrey Beelaert.
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October 1, 2012

Because sometimes chemists lie – the latest scandal from Massachusetts

by Goldstein & Stamm, P.A.

There has been quite a bit of litigation in the past few years on the subject of what witnesses must be produced by the government to prove the results obtained for scientific testing for drugs and/or alcohol. The Supreme Court has taken a case a year on this question, starting with Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 557 U.S. 305 (2009)(no chemist), Briscoe v. Virginia, 130 S. Ct. 1316, 175 L. Ed. 2d 966 (2010)(who must subpoena the witness), Bullcoming v. New Mexico, 131 S. Ct. 2705, 180 L. Ed. 2d 610 (2011)(substitute chemist), and Williams v. Illinois, 132 S. Ct. 2221 (2012)(underlying opinion in DNA match). The government usually claims that it is unnecessary to bring these chemists to court because what they are doing is very routine, in the regular course of business, that the results are not really used for their truth (huh?), and that it would be too burdensome to bring these witnesses to court. But as is reported in the following disturbing article, sometimes chemists lie, and lie a lot.

The story, which is reported in the Boston Globe on September 30, 2012, is titled “How chemist in drug lab scandal circumvented safeguards.” According to the article, state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan has been charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, for falsifying drug test results and for falsifying her academic record. Dookhan is accused of skipping necessary tests (dry-labbing) altering records, contaminating samples, and signing other chemist’s names, placing in jeopardy between 34,000 and 60,000 convictions.

This sad story simply illustrates what we all already know, witnesses are human, and sometimes humans lie. While confronting the lying witness in court may not always or even frequently uncover the lie, to allow a witness who supplies testimony that is critical for a conviction to avoid appearing in court is unfathomable and cannot be justified by simple cost benefit analyses.