NEWS: Texas Crime Labs Still Fucking Up

POLITICS: Texas Crime Labs Still Fucking Up

Earlier this summer, an independent investigator issued a scathing report describing the horrible conditions and outright sloppiness of a Houston crime lab that was so poorly run that it could put thousands of case decisions in jeopardy. Partially as a result of that embarrassing (and frankly shocking) lab's performance, the state of Texas passed a law in 2003 requiring that all crime labs achieve accreditation. The deadline was set at September, 1, 2005 - and mere days away, only about one-third of unaccredited labs are expected to meet that deadline.

Accreditation is not expected to solve all problems plaguing the labs, but it does provide minimum standards and guidelines so that labs that have, say, water-logged cardboard boxes leaking blood and being eaten by rats can't go ahead and introduce evidence in any trials that will actually affect someone's life.

The cost of accreditation can be enormous - approximately $50,000, leading some private labs to simply shut their doors rather than spend the money. This does mean that backlogs will probably increase at capable labs, but at least those labs will be (presumably) more reliable in the analyses that they do handle.

Oh well. We all know that in Texas the only justice that exists comes from a gun.

Considering the amount of people Texas has put to death this is just a little scary

The name of this thread should have been, "Jesus, are we that fucking surprised?"

What? They only gave them as little as a year and a half to comply?

How positively unreasonable.

/sarcasm

I remember thinking those exact words when the whole thing about the downtown lab broke out. I'm also not surprised about the slowness of various state agencies to comply. Knowing how weak the Ledge is lately, they'll fucking extend the deadline. We couldn't even do "No Child Left Behind" right, and this is from the President's home state!

But you know, we must remember the President that we have. We shouldn't expect too much from him, right?

lol, us texans are really big on death penality thats for damn straight.

A'VAST YE MATEY!