PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "I have become increasingly concerned
about the prevalence of false tests in recent years - especially in
light of revelations from the FBI and Motherisk scandals. Revelations
of alleged false positives in drug tests in American prisons raise
serious questions about the reliability of the testing equipment used - and how many
other inmates have been adversely affected,
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
-----------------------------------------------------
STORY: "After False Drug Test, He Was in Solitary Confinement for 120 Days," by reporter Jan Ransom, published by The New York Times, on November 20, 2019.
SUB-HEADING: "Hundreds
of New York State prisoners were locked in cells, denied release or
removed from programs when tests erroneously showed they had used
narcotics, according to a lawsuit."
PHOTO CAPTION: "While
incarcerated, a urine test falsely showed that Michael Kearney had used
a painkiller. He was then held in prison beyond his release date."
GIST:
(This is section of the entire article which appears below - and is well worth the read. HL): "Michael
Kearney could not understand how he had tested positive for drugs. He
stared in disbelief at the corrections officers in an upstate New York
prison where he was serving time. Though he had once been addicted to
crack cocaine, he had been clean for two years. Yet
the corrections officers had arrived with handcuffs, saying a urine
test showed that Mr. Kearney had used a prescription painkiller. Prison
officials gave him 120 days in solitary confinement just a week before
he was supposed to be released. It took officials seven months to
realize the test results were wrong, he said. “I think about it every
day,” Mr. Kearney, 50, said in a phone interview this week. “Where I
could have been.” Mr.
Kearney is one of hundreds of New York State prisoners who say they
were punished after tests falsely determined they had used drugs,
according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Continue reading the main story Many
of the inmates spent months in solitary confinement or locked in cells.
Others were denied release on parole, removed from programs, or held
beyond their scheduled release dates after testing positive for
narcotics, according to the complaint filed in Federal District Court in
Brooklyn. The plaintiffs, who
include former and current inmates, claim that the manufacturer of the
drug-testing equipment used in the prisons — Microgenics Corporation and
its parent company, Thermo Fisher Scientific — failed to ensure that
its devices produced accurate results. State prison officials and the state inspector general are investigating the matter. The
state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has begun
reviewing tests taken this year that came back positive for the opioids
Suboxone and buprenorphine, according to the lawsuit. Thomas
Mailey, a spokesman for the department, said the prisons had stopped
using the Microgenics equipment after learning that results were
inaccurate."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/nyregion/prison-inmate-drug-testing-lawsuit.html
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/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;
Nadezda
Steele-Warrick said she was stunned in April when a sergeant and 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/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;
an
officer arrested her in her private cell at the Albion Correctional
Facility, about 45 minutes west of Rochester. It was her day off from
teaching classes in the gym. She had been in bed reading “Small Great
Things” by Jodi Picoult.
At
first, she said, she thought the corrections officers were playing a
bad joke. But they were not. When they accused her of using drugs, she
told them she had never taken illicit drugs before.
Ms.
Steele-Warrick, 36, had been a model prisoner since her conviction in
2015 on an assault charge, and prison officials had let her spend the
weekend with her husband and 7-year-old son in April under a family
reunification program. But she had to take drug tests before and after
the visit. One of the tests came back positive.
Her
husband testified on her behalf at a disciplinary hearing that he had
not seen her use drugs during his visit with her. But she was sentenced
to confinement in general population for 11 days. She was only allowed
to leave her cell for 10 minutes each to day to shower.
“All
I was doing was crying,” she said. “The turmoil I went through and the
mental anguish — I wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone again.”
Four
months after Ms. Steele-Warrick was released from prison in May, the
result of the hearing was overturned. The drug test was faulty, the
lawsuit said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/nyregion/prison-inmate-drug-testing-lawsuit.html
Nadezda
Steele-Warrick said she was stunned in April when a sergeant and an
officer arrested her in her private cell at the Albion Correctional
Facility, about 45 minutes west of Rochester. It was her day off from
teaching classes in the gym. She had been in bed reading “Small Great
Things” by Jodi Picoult.
At
first, she said, she thought the corrections officers were playing a
bad joke. But they were not. When they accused her of using drugs, she
told them she had never taken illicit drugs before.
Ms.
Steele-Warrick, 36, had been a model prisoner since her conviction in
2015 on an assault charge, and prison officials had let her spend the
weekend with her husband and 7-year-old son in April under a family
reunification program. But she had to take drug tests before and after
the visit. One of the tests came back positive.
Her
husband testified on her behalf at a disciplinary hearing that he had
not seen her use drugs during his visit with her. But she was sentenced
to confinement in general population for 11 days. She was only allowed
to leave her cell for 10 minutes each to day to shower.
“All
I was doing was crying,” she said. “The turmoil I went through and the
mental anguish — I wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone again.”
Four
months after Ms. Steele-Warrick was released from prison in May, the
result of the hearing was overturned. The drug test was faulty, the
lawsuit said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/nyregion/prison-inmate-drug-testing-lawsuit.html
GIST: Michael
Kearney could not understand how he had tested positive for drugs. He
stared in disbelief at the corrections officers in an upstate New York
prison where he was serving time. Though he had once been addicted to
crack cocaine, he had been clean for two years.
Yet
the corrections officers had arrived with handcuffs, saying a urine
test showed that Mr. Kearney had used a prescription painkiller. Prison
officials gave him 120 days in solitary confinement just a week before
he was supposed to be released. It took officials seven months to
realize the test results were wrong, he said. “I think about it every
day,” Mr. Kearney, 50, said in a phone interview this week. “Where I
could have been.” Mr.
Kearney is one of hundreds of New York State prisoners who say they
were punished after tests falsely determined they had used drugs,
according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed on Wednesday.
Continue reading the main story Many
of the inmates spent months in solitary confinement or locked in cells.
Others were denied release on parole, removed from programs, or held
beyond their scheduled release dates after testing positive for
narcotics, according to the complaint filed in Federal District Court in
Brooklyn. The plaintiffs, who
include former and current inmates, claim that the manufacturer of the
drug-testing equipment used in the prisons — Microgenics Corporation and
its parent company, Thermo Fisher Scientific — failed to ensure that
its devices produced accurate results.
State prison officials and the state inspector general are investigating the matter.
The
state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has begun
reviewing tests taken this year that came back positive for the opioids
Suboxone and buprenorphine, according to the lawsuit.
Thomas
Mailey, a spokesman for the department, said the prisons had stopped
using the Microgenics equipment after learning that results were
inaccurate. They “immediately reversed any actions taken as a result of
these tests, and restored privileges to any potentially affected
inmates,” he said, adding that prison officials were preparing a lawsuit
against the manufacturer.
Prisoner advocates said the prison system had reversed some guilty findings,
reinstated educational and recreational programming for inmates who had
been removed from it, and released some people who were being held
longer because of faulty tests. Mr. Mailey declined to say how many
findings were reversed, when the state stopped using the equipment, or
how officials learned the tests were faulty.
Continue reading the main stThe
Inspector General’s Office began investigating Microgenics’s
drug-testing system two months ago, a spokesman, Lee Park, said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the company that built and marketed the devices should be held accountable.
“If
you’re producing these machines and selling this product, you know
about the serious consequences that flow from a mistake on your part,”
said Matthew D. Brinckerhoff, a lawyer with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff
& Abady who is representing the plaintiffs. “You have an obligation
to ensure they don’t happen.”
Microgenics did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The
prison system has been using the Microgenics devices since 2018, when
the state entered into a five-year, $1.6 million contract with the
company to supply 52 prisons with its Indiko Plus “urinalysis
analyzers,” according to the lawsuit and public records. In brochures,
Microgenics says its products “provide true operational reliability.”
Inmates
began to complain almost immediately. Prisoners’ Legal Services of New
York, a nonprofit that assists prisoners, received letters from 158
inmates with the same grievance: They had tested positive for drugs when
they had not used any, and received harsh punishments. Many of the
letters came from people with no disciplinary history.
Under state law, prisoners
who are caught taking prohibited drugs can be sentenced to extra time,
can be placed in isolation and can face other punishments after a
hearing.
One inmate said she was
handcuffed while visiting with her family and sentenced to 60 days in
solitary confinement after a positive drug test, the lawsuit said.
“It’s
a civil rights issue. It’s a justice issue,” said Karen Murtagh,
executive director of the Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, which
is also representing the plaintiffs. Even though the corrections
department is “doing what it can to make people whole, it is not
completely undoing or remediating the harm caused by putting someone in
solitary confinement for weeks or months.”
Mr. Kearney, who had been convicted on a burglary charge, had violated his parole
and was sent back to prison in 2016 because he missed a curfew and took
drugs. But he maintains he did not use drugs while incarcerated.
But after the test suggested that Mr. Kearney had used an opioid, he was held in prison beyond his release date of March 6.
At his disciplinary hearing, prison officials dismissed his claims of
innocence. He said he explained to them that he would have never used
drugs knowing he was set to be released in a week. He also pointed out
he had taken at least four other random tests in prison with negative
findings.
He was not freed until
October, a month after prison officials learned that the results were
inaccurate, he said. Mr. Kearney had served about a third of his 120
days of extra time in solitary confinement, he said.
“If
you’re going to arrest somebody and put them in the box and treat them
like a locked-up dog, get the right results,” Mr. Kearney said, adding
that he had lost a construction job that he had waiting for him in
March.
Nadezda
Steele-Warrick said she was stunned in April when a sergeant and an
officer arrested her in her private cell at the Albion Correctional
Facility, about 45 minutes west of Rochester. It was her day off from
teaching classes in the gym. She had been in bed reading “Small Great
Things” by Jodi Picoult.
At
first, she said, she thought the corrections officers were playing a
bad joke. But they were not. When they accused her of using drugs, she
told them she had never taken illicit drugs before.
Ms.
Steele-Warrick, 36, had been a model prisoner since her conviction in
2015 on an assault charge, and prison officials had let her spend the
weekend with her husband and 7-year-old son in April under a family
reunification program. But she had to take drug tests before and after
the visit. One of the tests came back positive.
Her
husband testified on her behalf at a disciplinary hearing that he had
not seen her use drugs during his visit with her. But she was sentenced
to confinement in general population for 11 days. She was only allowed
to leave her cell for 10 minutes each to day to shower.
“All
I was doing was crying,” she said. “The turmoil I went through and the
mental anguish — I wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone again.”
Four
months after Ms. Steele-Warrick was released from prison in May, the
result of the hearing was overturned. The drug test was faulty, the
lawsuit said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/nyregion/prison-inmate-drug-testing-lawsuit.html
