Texas Crime Lab Caught Falsifying Drug Tests

Last year there was a crime lab specialist in Massachusetts who admitted to tampering with tens of thousands of drug tests, creating false positives and putting countless human beings in cages.

Now a similar situation has been exposed in Texas, and this time thousands of cases can be overturned because of another drug lab specialist falsifying reports.

If this finding becomes official it could save a large number of nonviolent offenders from more than 10,000 years in prison.

A local law blog reported that:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals yesterday approved nine new habeas corpus petitions from defendants convicted of drug crimes after a Department of Public Safety crime lab worker in Houston was found last year to have falsified test results. That brings the total number of defendants with overturned convictions so far to 11, with many more to come. Those 11 people had been sentenced collectively to 90 years, including one 32-year sentence.

Though there may yet be more instances discovered where ex-lab employee Jonathon Salvador allegedly fabricated results, the habeas petitions granted so far have been in cases where the drug evidence had been destroyed post-conviction and so retesting is impossible. The general counsel at the Texas Forensic Science Commission has estimated evidence has been destroyed in 25-50% of the nearly 5,000 cases from 36 different counties that Mr. Salvador worked on during his time at DPS.

source @ http://intellihub.com/2013/03/19/texas-crime-lab-caught-falsifying-drug-tests/