PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The Quattrone Center surveyed police departments across the U.S. and learned that more than 750,000 field drug tests are conducted by police in the U.S. each year. They return false positives in many cases, likely contributing to more than 30,000 wrongful arrests and convictions each year. That makes these error-prone $2 test kits the single largest cause of wrongful convictions that anyone has measured to date. The racial implications cannot be ignored: On a per capita basis, Black Americans experience these erroneous drug arrests at a rate 3x higher than White Americans. Prosecutors in this national survey described using field tests as leverage in plea negotiations, which creates a concern that people may be coerced into pleading guilty before a confirmatory test is done to prove their innocence."
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POST: "This year, 773,000 people across the country will be arrested based on field drug tests with known accuracy problems," by Policy Analyst Lindsay Bass-Patel, published by Forensic Resources, on January 11, 2024.
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GIST: "The Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at University of Pennsylvania has conducted a national survey regarding presumptive field drug tests and their role in wrongful convictions across the United States.
Many people suspected that the field tests used by law enforcement had problems, but until now no one knew how often, how many false positives resulted, or how many wrongful arrests and convictions they create. The numbers are much larger than anyone had expected.
The Quattrone Center surveyed police departments across the U.S. and learned that more than 750,000 field drug tests are conducted by police in the U.S. each year. They return false positives in many cases, likely contributing to more than 30,000 wrongful arrests and convictions each year.
That makes these error-prone $2 test kits the single largest cause of wrongful convictions that anyone has measured to date.
The racial implications cannot be ignored: On a per capita basis, Black Americans experience these erroneous drug arrests at a rate 3x higher than White Americans.
Prosecutors in this national survey described using field tests as leverage in plea negotiations, which creates a concern that people may be coerced into pleading guilty before a confirmatory test is done to prove their innocence.
Defense attorneys can use this report to understand the limitations of these tests and educate the court about their lack of reliability at all phases of representation, including to argue for pre-trial release where clients are held in custody awaiting a confirmatory test.
- The full report is here for download: https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/quattronecenter/reports/field-drug-test-study/
- NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt covered the report and the impact of its findings
| PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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; |
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
