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"Keystone Kops at the Crime Lab"

The title of this post is the headline from an excellent piece in Miller-McCune about problems at forensic crime labs, in which naturally the Houston crime lab figures prominently. But they also mentioned another Texas connection:In West Virginia, criminalist Fred Zain showed just how much damage a compromised police forensics laboratory can cause. In the 1970s, Zain, a gun-toting West Virginia State Police officer, was assigned to the state crime laboratory as a serologist. He entered the job with minimal training, a corner-cutting attitude and a pro-prosecution bias. If the evidence appeared weak against a defendant whom Zain considered a sleazeball, the criminalist made the evidence look stronger by exaggerating or falsifying test results...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).