Pubdate: Sun, 11 Sep 2005
Source: Record, The (Stockton, CA)
Copyright: 2005 The Record
Contact:  http://www.recordnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/428
Author: Scott Smith

LAB MIX-UP ALARMS ATTORNEYS

The director of the state crime laboratory in Ripon is investigating how 
one of his staffers mistook diet supplement for methamphetamine in capsules 
taken from a man arrested in Lodi earlier this year.

A contrite John Yoshida, director of the California Department of Justice's 
laboratory, said he's struggling to understand the gaffe so the mistake 
isn't repeated. The lab has no record of erring like this before, he said.

"We are looking at every possibility under the sun," to figure out how the 
mistake occurred, Yoshida said. "Regrettably, it did happen."

Defense attorneys in San Joaquin County said the shoddy analysis raises 
doubt about the lab's credibility. The lab analyzes DNA, fingerprints and 
firearms that form the bedrock evidence used to put away scores of criminals.

For Lodi resident Ryan Tetz, the lab's work could have brought him up to 
four years in state prison that he didn't deserve, said his attorney 
Kristine Eagle. She hopes other attorneys will be skeptical of the lab's 
results.

"I think they have something to prove here," Eagle said. "I think they have 
a problem."

A California Highway Patrol officer arrested Tetz, 24, on April 23 in Lodi 
after the officer said Tetz was driving erratically. Tetz was first charged 
with misdemeanor drunken driving and two felony cocaine counts in 
connection with four plastic baggies of a white powdery substance.

A San Joaquin County deputy district attorney added two felony charges when 
the Ripon lab returned its results, saying another 54 white capsules Tetz 
had were filled with methamphetamine.

Questioning the meth results, Eagle sent the capsules to an independent lab 
in Sacramento for further analysis. The capsules didn't contain 
methamphetamine but probably a health supplement, the independent lab 
found. She didn't ask for retests of the alleged bags of cocaine.

Tetz, who entered pleas of not guilty on all counts, returns to court Sept. 
19. Deputy District Attorney Patrick O'Hern said he will review the case. 
The methamphetamine charges will be dropped if the final tests came back 
negative, he said.

Eagle said her concerns run deep.

"How many samples are not retested and are in error?" Eagle said. "Unless 
we test every sample, we're not really going to know."

Tetz's pills were analyzed in a Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, an 
instrument considered the "gold standard" in drug testing, said Edwin 
Smith, a criminalist for the independent Drug Detection Laboratories in 
Sacramento. Smith did the analysis for Eagle's client.

The mistake likely happened because the instrument wasn't cleaned well 
before Tetz's pills were tested, or airborne methamphetamine contaminated 
his test sample or the wrong sample got tested, Smith speculated.

"It's very embarrassing for the laboratory," he said.

Yoshida said he had an analyst work for two weeks investigating the meth 
mix-up. No conclusions have been made about how the error occurred, Yoshida 
said.

The state's $12 million crime lab that opened in Ripon in 2002 does crime 
analysis for about 80 law enforcement agencies in five Central Valley 
counties. The lab each year analyzes some 21,000 samples of drugs, Yoshida 
said.

San Joaquin County's lead public defender Jim Larsen called the mistake 
worrisome. The instrument used to test drugs has earned a reputation for 
reliability independent of the analyst operating it, so attorneys don't 
usually ask for back-up testing, he said.

"That's what's particularly alarming about this situation," Larsen said.

Jim Stam, a San Diego crime analyst and president of the California 
Association of Criminalists, said mistaken analysis is very rare. More 
often, small traces of a drug are likely to lead an analyst to find the 
test inconclusive, in favor of the person facing charges, he said.

"We're taught to be conservative because somebody's life is on the line," 
Stam said.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman