"A local attorney
has filed a tort claim notice with the state that he intends to file a
lawsuit on behalf of a dozen clients whose cases were handled by the
state police lab where a technician was found to be not properly
analyzing drug samples. The notice, filed by George T.
Daggett on Friday afternoon, names former forensic scientist Kamal Shah,
the state Office of the Attorney General, the New Jersey State Police,
the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police Col. Rick Fuentes and
the New Jersey State Police Office of Forensic Sciences North
Region-Drug Unit. "Nobody is messing with
my clients," Daggett said. "My clients are good people. They certainly
weren't treated in a manner that I would expect from the state of New
Jersey." The 12 clients were only identified using their initials in the tort claim notice. The
notice reads: "Kamal Shah deliberately misrepresented drug testing
results. The other defendants either allowed Shah to misrepresent drug
testing results or were negligent in supervising him since his criminal
acts were accomplished over a long period of time. The veracity of the
entire Little Falls laboratory procedure as to quality control is called
into question." In a Feb. 22 letter to
every county prosecutor in the state, Eli Honig, the director of the
Division of Criminal Justice for the New Jersey Office of the Attorney
General, said that Shah "failed to appropriately conduct laboratory
analyses of evidence in a drug case." Honig
additionally said, "He was removed from case work analysis in December
2015. Mr. Shah was observed in one case spending insufficient time
analyzing a substance to determine if it was marijuana and recording an
anticipated result without properly conducting the analysis." In
a memo to the state's Office of the Public Defender, Judy Fallon, the
deputy public defender for Passaic County, said Shah was "found to have
‘dry labbed' suspected CDS specimens." "Basically he was observed writing ‘test results' for suspected marijuana that was never tested," Fallon said in the memo. Sussex
County First Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Mueller previously said that
his office identified "more than 260 cases that were potentially
impacted" by Shah dating back to 2005. "Where
is the oversight?" Daggett said. "It's not only about what Shah did,
but what everyone did in Little Falls. Who was checking on Shah? Was
that person checking on other people? The whole operation is in
jeopardy.".........The
Attorney General's Office previously said Shah's conduct was discovered
on Dec. 12, 2015, and he was suspended without pay on Jan. 12. Shah
then retired in February. His salary at the time of retirement was $101,039 per year.
Shah worked on 7,827 cases in his 10-year-stint in the North Regional Lab."
