Flawed DUI tests in Colorado lead to 206 errors to date and 9 DUI's tossed out.

Prosecutors had to dismiss or reduce nine drunken driving charges as a result of 206 errors a former Colorado Springs Metro Crime Lab forensic chemist made on cases dating back to 2007, authorities disclosed today.

Of the nine affected cases, seven resulted in DUI charges being dismissed while two resulted in lesser penalties, said 4th Judicial District Attorney Dan May. Five of the defendants spent time in jail. Two of those cases dated from 2007 and seven from 2009.

In December, the police department disclosed that in at least 82 cases, the lab findings were reported to be at levels higher than they actually were. By January, the number of flawed cases had grown to 167. They also found an additional 39 erroneous results from 2007. In all, the lab retested 7,892 blood alcohol cases dating back to 2006.

A partial set of documents obtained through an open records request by local DUI lawyer and former prosecutor Tim Bussey indicted that mistakes with the concentration of n-Propanol, a solvent used in the testing process, might have been responsible for the errors.

Crime Lab Supervisor Ian Fitch confirmed that the errors with the solvent were the root cause of the problem.

“Every person in the county needs to be concerned about that lab,” he said. “To simply blame it on one analyst is to ignore the fact that any lab is a system of checks and balances from the lab to the certifying agency, which in this case is the department of health.”


Link: http://www.gazette.com/articles/report-97354-police-discuss.html