Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Bulletin: Deborah Madden: "Retrial begins for woman at center of San Francisco Police Department crime lab scandal." Bay City News.


STORY: "Retrial begins for woman at center of San Francisco Police Department crime lab scandal," by reporter Julia Cheever, published  by the Bay City News on January 22,  2013.

GIST: " A retrial began in federal court today in the case of Deborah Madden, a former San Francisco police crime laboratory technician accused of taking small amounts of cocaine from the facility. Madden's first trial in the court of U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco ended in a mistrial in October when jurors could not agree on a verdict on the federal charge of obtaining a controlled drug by means of fraud, deception or subterfuge. Madden, a 29-year civilian employee of the laboratory, admitted in a police interview in 2010 that she took trace amounts of cocaine, but said she took only what was spilled during weighing. In the federal case, her defense lawyers contend there is no proof of the deception needed for conviction under the U.S. law. The law is sometimes used to prosecute doctors or pharmacists who fraudulently obtain prescription drugs not needed by their patients. Madden's actions contributed to the Police Department's closure of the lab's narcotics analysis unit in 2010 and the San Francisco district attorney's dismissal of hundreds of criminal cases that depended on evidence from the lab.........U.S. prosecutors stepped into the laboratory case and obtained a grand jury indictment under the federal law in 2011 after the California attorney general's office announced it would not file state charges because of insufficient evidence."

The entire story can be found at:

http://sfappeal.com/news/2013/01/retrial-begins-for-woman-at-center-of-sfpd-crime-lab-scandal.php

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:

http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html

Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.