PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The early conclusion reached by DPS that Romero did not intentionally falsify the results brings into question how the investigation is being conducted, Mayr said. “I am greatly concerned about the fact that they’re still trying to determine what Ana Romero did, but are already concluding that what she did was not intentional,” Mayr said. “We absolutely believe she intentionally faked those results.” Mayr and the other attorneys are requesting that an independent investigation be conducted on Romero's actions and how DPS officials handled the situation. He also pointed out that Romero had been caught in 2013 allegedly falsifying drug weights. According to Romero’s employment records obtained by the El Paso Times, she committed errors by “copying and pasting” results on drug weight tests."
STORY: "Investigation: DPS analyst falsified El Paso DWI blood tests but not intentionally," by reporter Aaron Martinez, published by The El Paso Times.
SUB-HEADING: "A group of attorneys found possible errors in the results of a DPS
Toxicology Lab worker and are questioning the authenticity of results.
The lab technician in question worked in the lab for about eight years.
GIST: An
El Paso forensic analyst reported false data on several blood alcohol
tests, but a Texas Department of Public Safety investigation did not
show it was intentional. Texas DPS
Crime Lab Deputy Assistant Director Brady Mills presented the agency’s
initial findings at a July 20 Texas Forensic Science Commission
quarterly meeting. The
investigation was launched after prominent Texas defense lawyers filed a
complaint with the commission that a former forensic analyst, Ana Lilia
Romero, was “dry labbing” blood alcohol samples, which resulted in
false blood alcohol test results in at least 22 criminal cases in 2013
and 2014. “This incident is believed to be isolated
to this batch" of cases, Mills said during the meeting. “There is no
other evidence to suggest this was intentional.” Criminal
defense attorneys Brent Mayr, Thomas J. Carter IV, Richard Esper and
forensic toxicologist Amanda Culbertson filed the complaint in April
claiming misconduct within the Texas Department of Public Safety’s El
Paso region crime lab. The complaint alleges that
Romero did not conduct blood alcohol analysis on at least 22 cases and
instead copied and pasted results without testing the sample. It also
alleges that DPS crime lab supervisors failed to notice the
false results.
Romero, who is no longer with the
department, did not respond to requests for comment through social
media, and a phone number listed for her was no longer working. Mills
acknowledged in the meeting that the investigation has found several
anomalies with the results of blood testing done by Romero. One
of the main issues that led to the false results was that the
instruments used to test the blood samples malfunctioned or were not
working properly. The instruments run on gas, but during the testing it
ran out, Mills said. Due to the malfunction, retesting was ordered for those samples.
The samples then came back with the same data from the previous tests, the lawyers argued.
Mills
said that there are records that show Romero reran the tests, but said
only hard copies of the analyses were found for four cases. He
added that Romero during the retesting combined data from the February
2014 samples, which involved the malfunctioning instrument, with
controlled samples used in March 2014 to reach the results. Mills
did confirm one of the allegations made by the defense lawyers by
admitting that DPS technical supervising reviewers failed to spot the
incorrect results in 2014. The results in question
were sent in 2014 to a technical reviewer in Midland, who is also no
longer with the department, Mills said. Mills said
the reviewer saw that the alcohol concentration was lower on the new
results from the first results, which would be normal. The
reason the results weren’t found to be false at that time was due to
the reviewer not noticing that the samples had the same area counts,
which would indicate the results were not accurate. “The
cases were administratively reviewed on 3/21/2014,” Mills said. “The
identical area counts were not noted when the review was done. .. If
they would have seen the area counts were exactly the same — which I
think we all could agree is probably not possible — we should have
identified that back in 2014, but that was not done.” Defense lawyers claim that Romero did not retest the samples and just copied and pasted the same results. Mills
said in the meeting that the department’s investigation has shown that
Romero did rerun the test, but a problem occurred when she recorded the
results. The investigation is still looking into what exactly happened to cause the false data being reported, Mills said. He
added that the department reviewed 29 unrelated blood alcohol tests
conducted by Romero and found none of the results to be falsified. Mills said that they don’t believe Romero intentionally falsified the results, but the investigation is ongoing. The
early conclusion reached by DPS that Romero did not intentionally
falsify the results brings into question how the investigation is being
conducted, Mayr said. “I am greatly concerned about
the fact that they’re still trying to determine what Ana Romero did,
but are already concluding that what she did was not intentional,” Mayr
said. “We absolutely believe she intentionally faked those results.” Mayr
and the other attorneys are requesting that an independent
investigation be conducted on Romero's actions and how DPS officials
handled the situation. He also pointed out that Romero had been caught in 2013 allegedly falsifying drug weights. According
to Romero’s employment records obtained by the El Paso Times, she
committed errors by “copying and pasting” results on drug weight tests. Mills
said that while the department found the results of misreported drug
weights, they were not connected to the blood alcohol tests. Since the blood alcohol samples aren’t weighed, DPS officials did not check Romero’s work on any blood alcohol samples. Mills
said that the falsified samples should not be retested now since they
are four years old and it is unknown what condition the samples have
been kept in over the years. The results in the testing by Romero are now considered invalid, Mills said. Mayr
said that while he is happy DPS officials have invalidated the sample,
the bigger issue is that the falsified results went unnoticed for years. “I
am pleased to know that DPS is admitting that those tests were invalid
and that they have chosen to not support those findings,” Mayr said.
“However, I am still greatly concerned about the fact that, as DPS
acknowledged, their reviewers failed to catch this in 2014. They failed
to acknowledge they did not catch this up until earlier this year when
we brought it to their attention.” With
the false samples being ruled invalid, Mayr said, the convictions of at
least 22 driving while intoxicated cases could now be thrown out. “That
is up to the DA’s office to decide what to do with those cases,” Mayr
said. “I believe the appropriate thing to do is to throw out those
convictions, but that is up to the DA’s office." Mills
said that officials with the district attorney's office have already
been notified that the results have been ruled invalid. “We
have communicated with the DA that it is responsible for those cases
that we can’t support those original reports and it is not fruitful to
go ahead and retest those blood tubes at this time,” Mills said. El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza said he is waiting for a decision by the commission. “The
work of the Forensic Commission is important,” Esparza said in a
statement. “I am confident the commission will completely review the
incident and I am in total support (of) the process.” Esparza
told the El Paso Times in April that blood alcohol samples are not the
only things used to convict suspected drunk drivers. The
other items used to convict a person in a drunk driving case include
traffic infraction or collision leading up to the person’s detention,
their speech, odor, and their admissions of drinking, Esparza said. Mills
said no policies were in place in 2014 to account for instrument
malfunctions. But since then, he said, policies have been established
and he asked the commission for recommendations on other procedures to
use. Some of the changes include using more
efficient instruments and "continuous improvements" to evaluating blood
alcohol testing methods, Mills said during the meeting. The lack of policies in 2014 is not an excuse for the falsified results, Mayr said. “The
reason they had asked that the initial February test be thrown out was
because the gas ran out and they did not have a policy to address that,”
Mayr said. “But you don’t need a policy in effect to know whether it is
good or bad science. That is bad when your instrument runs out of
critical gas it needs to properly test it. They did the right thing when
they didn’t use the February test, but what Ana Romero decided to do
was fake the results of the March test, which created a much greater
problem.” The commission did not make a ruling on
the complaint filed at the July 20 meeting. Mayr said a decision could
be made when the commission meets again in October."
The entire story can be read at the following link:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/
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