Another lab screwing up drug tests in Indiana

[zzzz]

It appears that another lab has been manipulating drug tests and not following procedures and state law. An audit found errors in 200 of the 2000 Marijuana cases audited, 10% of the cases. How many people where unjustly persecuted over the years?

Aspects of state law have been ignored -- and then used by defense attorneys in court. State law, for example, requires the Department of Toxicology to inspect state, city and hospital labs whose results might be used in criminal cases. It also says the department must test the competence of people conducting those tests. Newman said that has "never been done since 1957, that I know of."A former toxicology lab manager "didn't really speak English," Newman said.
Lab results were reported to law enforcement based only on a preliminary screen, not the more rigorous confirmatory tests.
No "blind samples" were used, a common practice where a known sample is submitted to the lab as if it were part of a criminal case. Such procedure is common for assessing a lab's performance.

Errors found in Indiana state lab toxicology tests | The Indianapolis Star | indystar.com

So just because you are innocent does not mean you are safe from conviction because of faulty testing. What ever happened to the idea of a reasonable doubt? A jury or judge will almost always go with a scientific result as being the absolute truth, yet it appears that labs across the country have manipulated evidence for convictions. This is just Indiana but Texas had a case just last year.