Andrew's Victory

So here's what's going on with the Lisa Andrews story I mentioned in the last letter:

The Harris County probation department has been very bad. Judges demand that parolees submit to frequent urinalysis. Apparently, there was a backlog, resulting in some three month old samples being sent in, which I assume means that they would have been extremely deteriorated. In other instances, a tech entered one wrong digit in identification numbers, resulting in negative tests being reported as positive.

Apparently the numbers were eventually corrected, but no attempt was made to contact the court to make sure the parolees had not been sent back to prison or otherwise penalized for the 'violation'.
Lisa Andrews, whom I assume is the same Lisa Andrews of the Coy case, exposed all this, and went to great lengths to do it. Pat Lykos banned the D.A.'s from using any samples from the probation department as proof in court, because there are obviously huge problems with them.

Many lovely articles were written about how clever everybody is to have caught this.

However, the fucked-up state of the Harris County justice system aside, it is too easy, too tempting, to view the people involved in this case as one-dimensional heroes or villains. My opinion of Lisa Andrews was formed from a few quotes in articles, and seeing that she was willing to fight for justice in this situation surprised me, but it also gives me hope.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/D-A-issues-moratorium-on-using-probation-drug-tests/-/1735978/16399556/-/10f921l/-/index.html

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=8789948

http://www.chron.com/news/falkenberg/article/How-one-woman-brought-an-agency-to-its-knees-3829402.php

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Probation-agency-s-drug-test-error-ruined-his-3814133.php

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/DA-s-office-stops-using-county-department-s-drug-3821767.php

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/08/30/4217951/probation-head-in-houston-leaves.html