...And speaking of crime labs...

 
Hat tip to Grits for Breakfast:

 

 

 

 From January of this year:

 

…Salvador was sacked last year after another employee discovered he'd issued a "fraudulent" report that "misrepresented" what tests he'd performed on a batch of Alprazolam pills. Though he'd worked for the agency since 2005, performing tests in 4,944 criminal cases, Salvador's work suffered from consistently poor documentation, technique, and decision making, said Kerrigan. He struggled with his caseload and at times appeared not to fully understand the science behind the work he was assigned…

 

 

 

Ouch; hundreds of convictions in 36 different counties are being called into question. This was a tech at the DPS lab in Houston, and I  highly recommend reading the whole article for a look at why stuff like this has happened, and probably will continue to happen long after this is all over. No matter how incompetent or dishonest you are, it seems there will always be someone willing to cover for you. Despite having his work reviewed and found to be inaccurate, Jonathon Salvador was kept on at the DPS Lab.

 

 

A quote from the original story states that the lab manager was ‘compassionate to a fault’, which I find painfully ironic. No one gave a shit for the people whose liberty was at risk; all their compassion was being wasted on a guy who apparently lied about the tests he performed and failed to clean his instruments between tests. Poor guy, he tries sooo hard.

 

 

 

Jesus. The misplaced empathy of the criminal justice system.