Crime labs’ test results differ, says complaint

Another complaint has been filed against the Austin Police Department’s crime lab, this time by an independent lab in North Texas that claims it received different results than the Austin lab when testing the same drug evidence.

Crime lab officials in Austin said they received the complaint filed by Integrated Forensic Laboratories in Euless, between Dallas and Fort Worth, late last week.

Austin police and lab officials have begun looking at the complaint this week and are preparing a response, said Bill Gibbens, the lab’s forensic manager. Gibbens said he hopes to send a response to the Texas Forensic Science Commission by Friday.

It is the second complaint the Austin lab has faced this year. In January, a former crime lab scientist who was fired last year alleged that lab administrators do not have proper accreditation and that drug evidence was not analyzed before

reports were submitted.

Gibbens said the latest complaint deals with two separate pending criminal cases from 2010. Because they are moving through the courts, he said, he could not discuss the details.

After the Austin police lab submitted its drug evidence tests to the courts, the suspects’ attorneys asked for a second opinion from the independent lab in Euless, Gibbens said. That lab returned different test results than the Austin lab, he said.

“It’s a difference of opinion in how we report substances,” Gibbens said.

Gibbens said he’s not sure how common it is for one lab to file a complaint on another lab. “It’s the first time it’s hap- pened to us,” he said.

Lynn Robitaille, the general counsel for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, said that it was the first time she had seen one lab file a complaint on another since she started there in December 2010. The commission was created by the state Legislature in 2005.

Robitaille said the commission’s complaint screening committee heard the matter Friday. When they meet again in March, they are expected to recommend whether the commission should investigate the matter.

The first complaint filed this year came from Debra Stephens, a former crime lab scientist fired in April. She was fired for violating several lab policies and police procedures, Assistant Police Chief Sean Mannix has said.

Her complaint dealt with testing in drug-related cases, and she said in a letter to the Travis County district attorney that “results are being reported and charges are being filed without any analysis being conducted at all.” She said hundreds of cases since 2005 were “analyzed without regard to laboratory protocols.”

Gibbens said the commission has seen Stephens’ complaint and has asked the Police Department for more information. The screening committee could make a recommendation on whether an investigation should begin based on those accusations, he said.

Austin police officials have disputed Stephens’ claims. Mannix said she has made previous complaints against the lab, but investigations by their national accrediting agency and the commission found no wrongdoing.

The department’s DNA lab, which is a separate division than the one named in Stephens’ complaint, was investigated by the Department of Public Safety and the FBI after a former analyst filed a complaint. In December 2010, an FBI audit found no deficiencies in the DNA lab.

That complaint claimed, among other things, that there were errors in casework. After the allegations were publicly disclosed in July 2010, Travis County prosecutors sought an outside review of the lab. In October 2010, the DPS and the Texas Rangers cleared the lab of the allegations.