An NJ Advance Media report showed that a New Jersey State Police lab technician, Kamalkant Shah, has been accused of faking drug test results in a marijuana case. Almost 7,827 cases, in which he was chosen to provide the test results, are now under question.
The memo from Deputy Public Defender Judy Fallon to Public Defender Joseph Krakow proved that Shah was seen making fake test reports and was providing false results for tests of suspected marijuana.
He was found using the method of “Dry Labbing” in which samples are identified just by viewing them and not by testing them chemically. Under the law, the tests are needed to be identified chemically in cases where drugs are involved.
He was working in collaboration with the crime lab that is in Little Falls since 2005. On 10th of December 2015, he was “removed from the lab,” told Fallon and has not yet been charged with any crime. It was written in Fallon’s memo, “Obviously all of his ‘results’ have been called into question”.
According to NJ.com, “It’s unclear what impact the disclosure will have on thousands of drug convictions, but several attorneys who deal with criminal matters said Wednesday that it wouldn’t likely affect the large number of defendants who pleaded guilty to drug possession”.
Since the past few years, crime lab scandals are increasing all over the country and the residents are questioning how individuals can be charged based on fake testing data and reports.
A crime lab scandal made the headline a few years ago, which questioned the country’s reliance on crime-lab based convictions. Annie Dookhan was the lab technician in that case who was charged in the year 2013 for “deliberately manipulating drug tests at the lab, compromising at least 34,000 cases”.
News Source: www.Extract.SunTimes.com
