Every once and a while, I get an email or a report that claims that the sender has never seen an incorrect analytical chemistry result come out of an accredited crime laboratory. I’m going to start publishing them when I get them. So, attorneys please send them in to us. Here is a fairly recent one.

From: Diepraam, Warren
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 1:25 PM
To: District Attorney Employees
Cc: Brian Burns
Subject: Lab Issue Brady Notice

Here is a “Brady” notice that can be sent to defense lawyers on your cases.  I recommend you copy and paste the notice.  I am cc’ing Brian Burns on this email and have asked him to forward to all defense lawyers and associations in this area.  The Brady notice should be sent out on all drugged driving cases for the relevant time periods rather than just on the affected cases.  It also contains the time period and the type of tests covered.  Please review the information and handle your cases accordingly.  Remember that these cases can’t be made on quantitative analysis because we do not have per se limits in Texas.  You should analyze any drugged driving case based on the person’s measurable loss of physical and mental faculties. 

DPS Austin has detected an issue with a calibrator solution that was used in their lab’s LCMS/GCMS testing on cases sent from Montgomery County for a limited time period.  The calibrator issue involved 3 drugs (lorazepam, hydrocodone, and clonazepam) in Benzodiazepine batches from August 1, 2013 to October 1, 2013. The affected calibrator was within tolerance on calibration curves, but was consistently an outlier causing this issue to be analyzed further.  The amended reports will be changing the quantitative results for these drugs to qualitative results. Hydrocodone quantitative results are also achieved through another method, and if the result on the original report was from the other method, the hydrocodone quantitation will not need to be corrected.  The Houston lab is unaffected by this issue.

Please see below for the list of Montgomery County cases that will require amended reports. DPS is working on the amended reports and hopes to have them released by the end of the week. Just so you are aware, there may have been other Montgomery County cases run in the above batches that will not require an amended report because the original report was released with only a qualitative result for the above drugs or the report only had other drugs that were not affected by the calibrator issue.  If you have any questions, please see me or Jim.