The Detroit Free Pressmade an astonishing discovery last month. The city’s former crime lab had been abandoned. As the paper reported, “Thousands of rounds of live ammunition, sealed evidence kits and case files — some containing Social Security numbers of rape and assault victims” sat unattended in an old elementary school building, accessible to anyone who happened upon them.
The lab was closed in 2008 after another investigation revealed habitually sloppy analysis among the lab’s workers, and an error rate as high as 10 percent, a jaw-dropping figure considering that those analysts’ testimony can send someone to prison. The city expected the results of that investigation could have reopened thousands of cases and subject Detroit to hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
What’s going on? Most of these scandals were exposed after DNA testing cleared someone who was convicted based on testimony from crime lab analysts. DNA testing, which is actually grounded in solid science, is showing that forensic analysis isn’t as certain or as scientific as it is often claimed to be. It’s also showing us that forensics is plagued by bias, both intentional and unintentional, and that bias is caused by poorly structured incentives that often reward crime lab workers for helping win convictions, not for sound analysis. The Innocence Project estimates that bad forensic science contributed to about half of wrongful convictions that were later exposed by DNA testing.
Consider the scandal in North Carolina, uncovered last year after a state investigation and follow-up series by the Raleigh News & Observer. The initial investigation found at least 230 cases in which crime lab workers failed to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence, including three cases that resulted in the defendant’s execution.
The News & Observer follow-up found even more, often stunning, bias at the lab, including training manuals that taught workers to consider defendants and their attorneys as the enemy. Many lab workers’ performance reviews were actually written by prosecutors. In one case, two blood-spatter specialists were caught on video high-fiving one another after running through multiple experiments until they found one that supported the prosecution’s theory of a case.
It isn’t difficult to see how having experts who present themselves in court as objective, unbiased analysts report directly to prosecutors or police agencies could present some problems. But that’s exactly what’s happening. According to a 2009 report on forensic science by the National Academy of Sciences, more than half the crime labs in the U.S. report directly to a law enforcement organization. In some cases, this can lead to overt pressure from police officers and prosecutors to produce desirable results. But most of the time the bias is more subtle, and unintentional.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t cause for concern. Bias can creep into an analyst’s work in a number of ways, including in the choice of which tests to run, how to records the results of those tests, how to interprets the results, and what the analyst later remembers about the entire process when testifying at trial.
In most government crime labs, there’s no check on these problems, referred to collectively as “cognitive bias.” The state lab is often the only lab to test crime scene evidence. Even when defendants are given money to conduct their own testing, the labs they choose are often seen by jurors as “hired guns,” despite the fact that similar biases also exist in government labs.
There are other problems. Though often presented in court as “science”, many forensic disciplines don’t incorporate basic scientific principles such as peer review and double-blind testing into their analyses.
For example, giving an analyst a crime-scene fingerprint and the fingerprint of the suspect and asking if they’re “a match” can produce very different results from the more scientific method of presenting the analyst with multiple prints (some of which are relevant to the case, some of which aren’t), then asking if any two are a match.
One 2006 study by researchers at the University of Southampton in the U.K. found that the error rate of fingerprint analysts doubled when they were first given some information about the case.
In a 2007 report for the Reason Foundation, Roger Koppl, an economist at the Fairleigh Dickinson University, argued that the best way to address these problems is to begin including private crime labs in criminal investigations and prosecutions. [Disclosure: the Reason Foundation publishes Reason magazine, this reporter’s previous employer.]
The word privatization often conjures up images of no-bid contracts and crony capitalism. But the idea here isn’t to simply sign state crime labs over to private companies. For several years in just such a system in Mississippi, up until 2009, prosecutors were contracting most of the state’s autopsies out to a single private-practice medical examiner, because they knew he’d give him the results they needed to win convictions. The results were disastrous.
Instead, Koppl’s plan would use competition to remedy the incentive and cognitive bias problems that occur when analysts who are supposed to be objective work for and report to the same government agencies that then use their results to try to put defendants in prison.
Under Koppl’s plan, a city or state would create a position of “evidence handler.” The evidence handler’s job would be to distribute the testable evidence in a case to the appropriate crime lab. Under a fully privatized system, the evidence handler would distribute it to one of a rotating series of private labs. Under a partially-privatized system, there would still be a state lab, but under both systems, in every third case or so, the evidence would be sumbitted to a second or third lab for verification. The original lab would not know when it was being checked by other labs.
This system, which Koppl calls “rivalrous redundancy,” flips the incentive problem upside down. For the individual crime lab worker, the incentive is no longer to please prosecutors or police, but to do the most thorough, sound, objective analysis possible. For the private labs, the incentive is to catch the state labs — or another private lab — making a mistake. When there’s conflict over test results, a third or fourth lab could come into the mix.
Private labs also have an incentive to protect themselves from liability. It’s nearly impossible to sue the government. Individual crime lab workers employed by state or local governments are protected by qualified immunity, making it difficult to sue them as well. Private labs don’t have such protections, so they’re more likely not only to be careful, but to preserve evidence in the case of litigation.
Dallas County, Texas, for example, began sending crime scene evidence to a private lab in the early 1980s. It’s one of the few cities in the country to do so. When Craig Watkins was elected as the county’s district attorney in 2006, he began to actively seek out cases in which an innocent person may have been sent to prison.
State crime labs often destroy biological evidence after a defendant has exhausted his appeals. It isn’t difficult to understand why: Preserving the evidence is expensive, and really only serves the purpose of possibly revealing mistakes somewhere down the line. But the private lab in Dallas had different incentives, which is why it preserved the biological evidence in cases going back 25 years.
In a 2008 interview, Watkins said that preservation was key to helping him discover a number of wrongly convicted people.
“I don’t think there was anything unique about the way Dallas was prosecuting crimes,” Watkins said. “It’s unfortunate that other places didn’t preserve evidence, too. We’re just in a unique position where I can look at a case, test DNA evidence from that period, and say without a doubt that a person is innocent. They can’t do that in other places.”
The system Koppl proposes would likely be more expensive than the system most cities and states use now, though if they eliminated the state lab altogether, it’s possible the difference would be small. But Koppl estimates that his reforms could be implemented and maintained for years for the cost of a few wrongful convictions — which this system would go a long way toward preventing.
2015 was a pretty amazing year for progress in the legalization of marijuana.
Four states and the District of Columbia legalized recreational marijuana, many states decriminalized it and several more states approved medical marijuana. But for all the advances made in 2015, the year was just a run up to 2016, when the presidential election is expected to be accompanied by a ramp up in legalization.
In Congress, there are expectations for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the CARERS Act (S. 683 or H.R. 1538). This bill, sponsored by Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Dean Heller and presidential candidate Rand Paul, is a comprehensive piece of legislation on medical marijuana. It would allow states to legalize medical marijuana without federal interference and reschedule marijuana to a schedule II drug. It would eliminate barriers to research and allow banks to work with marijuana companies. Chuck Grassley is the head of the committee and until he schedules a hearing, it is dead in the water. Many hope this year he will buckle under pressure and set up a hearing.
The Respect State Marijuana Laws or HR 140 is also on the hoped for hearings list. Mason Tvert, Director of Communications for the Marijuana Policy Project said, “We expect support will continue to grow for both of those bills as well as for legislation regarding veterans’ access to medical marijuana and banking for medical marijuana businesses.”
Alan Amsterdam, second from L, and Cesar Maxit, third from L, volunteers with the DC Cannabis Campaign, talk to a voter about the ballot initiative to legalize marijuana in front of a polling location in the Adams Morgan neighborhood on November 4, 2014 in Washington D.C. (Photo by Allison Shelley/Getty Images).
Other pieces of marijuana legislation include Bernie Sanders’ bills, S. 2237, the “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015,” and S. 2237, the “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2015;” H.R. 667, the Veterans Equal Access Act; H.R. 262 the States Medical Marijuana Act Property Right Protection; H.R. 1013 & 1014 the Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol Act and Marijuana Tax Revenue Act of 2015; H.R. 1855 and S. 987, the Small Business Tax Equity Act; and H.R. 2076 and S. 1726, the Marijuana Business Access to Banking Act. There’s also H.R. 3124, Clean Slate for Marijuana Offenses Act of 2015; and H.R. 3518, the Stop Civil Asset Forfeiture Funding for Marijuana Suppression Act.
Many states have initiatives for November that focus on legalizing or regulating marijuana for adult use. These include Nevada, Massachusetts, Arizona, Maine and California. States trying to pull together legislation for the November ballots include Florida, Arkansas and Missouri.
Vermont’s state attorney general thinks that legalization of recreational marijuana could pass in 2016 and the house speaker is supportive. Rhode Island is also a possibility for recreational legalization next year.
When it comes to medical marijuana, Pennsylvania is likely. The Senate passed a law, but the House is slow to come around, even though the governor supports it. Nebraska and Utah could potentially pass medical marijuana laws in 2016.
Illinois and New Hampshire are likely to pass decriminalization of possession laws in the new year.
Dec 28, 2015
Debra Borchardt , Contributor (Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own).
Legalization of marijuana is expected to be a big issue during the 2016 elections. Many states will have ballot items regarding the legalization of marijuana and for some voters, it’s the only issue they care about. Some candidates are very clear as to their position, while others are hard to pin down and deliver confusing and conflicting messages.
Many of the candidates don’t post their positions on the issue on their political website, so their stance is determined from their quotes. Here then is a primer for the leading 2016 presidential candidates and their position on the legalization of marijuana.
Donald Trump
Position: Cloudy
In 1990, Donald Trump argued that in order to win the War On Drugs, you had to take away the profits from the drug czars. He favored legalizing drugs and using the tax revenue to fund drug education programs. Fast forward to 2015 at the Conservative Political Action Conference where Trump reversed course and said he was against the legalization of marijuana. “I think it’s bad and I feel strongly about that,” he said. “They’ve got a lot of problems going on right now in Colorado, some big problems.” However, Trump contradicts himself when asked about states’ rights and marijuana laws. Trump said, “If they vote for it, they vote for it.”
Ben Carson
Position: For Medical, Against Recreational
Ben Carson is a pediatric neurosurgeon that recognizes medical marijuana as being useful in some cases. However, the good doctor then steers clear of the facts and continues to call marijuana a gateway drug, even though prescription pain killers are the number one gateway to hard drugs. He is firmly against recreational marijuana.
Carly Fiorina
Position: Against Legalization, Favors States Rights
Fiorina lost her step-daughter to drug addiction, which is just terrible and so her stance is deeply personal. She is against the legalization of marijuana, but supports a state’s decision to choose on its own. Fiorina told reporters after her speech at the Western Conservative Summit, “I would also very quickly add that I think the legalization of marijuana is a very bad idea. I think it’s misleading to young people in particular when we tell them smoking pot is like drinking a beer. It is not.” She has also said when she was battling breast cancer her doctor advised her against using cannabis so it’s safe to assume that she’s against medical marijuana.
Jeb Bush
Position: Against
There was a fierce battle over legalizing medical marijuana in Florida and it was mostly funded by the big Republican donor Shel Adelson. Jeb Bush (who admitted he smoked pot in college) sided with the opponents of the initiative. He issued a statement that suggested legalization could harm the state’s reputation as a family friendly place. “Florida leaders and citizens have worked for years to make the Sunshine State a world-class location to start or run a business, a family-friendly destination for tourism and a desirable place to raise a family or retire,” Bush said. “Allowing large-scale, marijuana operations to take root across Florida, under the guise of using it for medicinal purposes, runs counter to all of these efforts,” he added. “I strongly urge Floridians to vote against Amendment 2 this November,” he said.
Position: Against
Marco Rubio has said he would enforce federal law when it came to marijuana. However, he says he is in favor of allowing states to make their own decisions regarding marijuana. Mr. Rubio has also said before that his own family was hurt by the drug business when his brother-in-law was arrested and sent to prison. In a Huffington Post article he said there is “no responsible way to recreationally use” marijuana and that he thinks legalization would be “bad for the country.” While he has occasionally made comments favoring states rights, he has made more against legalization.
Chris Christie
Position: Against
Chris Christie made his position on marijuana clear during the last presidential debate as he connected it to his pro-life stance. He went on to call marijuana a gateway drug, which most studies have proven not to be the case. He also insisted that New Jersey has an emphasis on rehabilitation, not incarceration. Christie also said he supported medical marijuana laws in New Jersey, but it is known for being one of the strictest and most difficult programs in the country. Christie was forced to implement the law, which was signed on his predecessor’s last day in office. Plus, he can’t support medical marijuana and then turn around and state that he’d enforce the federal laws against marijuana which would essentially make medical marijuana criminal.
Rand Paul
Position: For Legalization.
Presidential candidate Rand Paul’s position on marijuana is well known and for many that is enough of a reason to vote for him. Mr. Paul is a libertarian and believes strongly in states’ rights. He has never wavered from the position that the war on drugs was a war that put mostly minorities in jail and prison. Paul has said, “I think to put somebody in jail for 10 years for possession of marijuana or sale of marijuana is ridiculous.”
Mike Huckabee
Position: Against
Mike Huckabee does not agree with legalizing medical marijuana and consequently does not approve of legalizing recreational marijuana. Huckabee thinks patients that want to use medical marijuana should use standard medications. He doesn’t believe that there is any medicinal benefit from marijuana. He has said if people vote to change laws, then he would abide by those laws, but he is clearly not in favor.
Ted Cruz
Position: Favors States Rights
Ted Cruz co-sponsored The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2015 to give judges more flexibility in sentencing, so he believes some people are unfairly incarcerated. He has now “evolved” his position on cannabis and supports states rights to choose whether to legalize or not. At the conservative conference earlier this year, he said he would not crack down on legal marijuana if he were president.
Lindsey Graham
Position: Cloudy
Graham’s position on marijuana is a little cloudy. He voted against veterans having access to medical marijuana and voted in favor of border patrols to battle drugs. However, he has also said he isn’t against legalizing medical marijuana, but then he voted against medical marijuana in Washington D.C. He has said if medical marijuana would help a patient, he wouldn’t be against it. So, his statements tend to be contradictory and hard to follow.
Bobby Jindal
Position: Against Legalization
Jindal has said, “I’m not for the legalization. The full legalization of marijuana has been done in Colorado. But certainly, I think that it makes sense. We could use our resources more effectively. We passed some pretty good laws last year. There’s more work that we can do there. I do think when it comes to medical marijuana, I’ve said that I’m open if it’s tightly regulated, for legitimate medical purposes. We don’t need to be locking up people who aren’t the dealers, who aren’t committing other crimes.” So, he’s not in favor, which makes conservatives happy, but he’ll stand aside for medical marijuana advocates.
John Kasich
Position: Cloudy
Kasich is firmly against legalizing medical marijuana, but he is in favor of states’ rights. On the one hand, Kasich seems like the most moderate of the Republicans when it comes to marijuana. He also believes in rehabilitation of drug offenders as opposed to prison sentences. He also supports legalized marijuana businesses to be able to have regular banking and file tax returns. Yet, he clearly is also against legalizing medical marijuana. If he were voted in as president, it’s hard to tell which direction he would go in.
Rick Santorum
Position: Against
Santorum smoked pot in college, but knew it was wrong, he says we all make mistakes. He said, “For example, I smoked pot when I was in college. Does that mean that I can’t talk about drug use? Does that mean that I can’t talk about how that’s a bad thing? Of course not. You learn from those experiences.” Lately he has said that federal laws should be enforced and that Colorado was violating federal law.
George Pataki
Position: Cloudy
George Pataki is a big supporter of the 10th amendment and feels it is a state’s right to choose. He thinks federal law should be changed in order to support those states. However, he opposed the efforts in the state of New York to legalize medical marijuana and said “I am not in favor of legalized marijuana.” So, which is it? He seems to favor legalization if a state votes it in, but then again he is against it. He has admitted to smoking pot and inhaling.
Jim Gilmore
Position: Against
Gilmore is decidedly against legalization. He strongly favors stricter drug laws and has said that illicit drugs are not an acceptable part of our society. He believes in more federal funding for all aspects of the War on Drugs. At least, Gilmore leaves no doubt about his position on marijuana.
Bernie Sanders
Position: For Legalization
Sanders co-sponsored the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act. The act reclassifies marijuana as a schedule 2 drug from schedule 1. The act approves of marijuana with a doctor’s prescription or recommendation. He also believes that industrial hemp should not be considered as marijuana. Sanders also co-sponsored the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. There is no doubt where Bernie stands.
Hillary Clinton
Position: Favors Medical Marijuana
Hillary Clinton, whose husband former President Bill Clinton famously said he smoked marijuana but didn’t inhale, is in favor of medical marijuana in extreme cases. She says she wants to “wait and see” how states are doing with recreational before taking a position as to whether states have the right to decide about recreational use. That’s a pretty safe way of not taking a real position.
Southfield — Three defense attorneys are asking the federal government to investigate the Michigan State Police crime laboratories, alleging misconduct in their testing for pending drug cases.
Southfield defense attorneys Neil Rockind and Michael Komorn, along with Michael Nichols of East Lansing, want the National Institute of Justice and the institute’s Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences to look into their claims that the State Police lab has — on advice of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan — compromised results in marijuana cases.
According to Rockind, defense attorneys have obtained emails sent between lab officials and the association that allegedly show the labs were influenced by PAAM in its reporting of the testing of suspected marijuana in criminal cases and the origin of THC, the active component that produces the “high” obtained by the user.
“This involves how test results can show whether substances are synthetic, such as in designer drugs or from plant material,” Rockind said. “If synthetic, it can result in felony offenses punishable by up to seven years in prison rather than the more common misdemeanor offense or a crime in which medical marijuana card holders can advance a medical defense.”
State Police and the prosecutors association deny the attorneys’ allegations.
MSP crime labs received more than $236,000 this year in federal funding through the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grant Program. The grants are monitored by two federal agencies, Rockind said.
According to Rockind’s complaint, dated Tuesday, the emails reveal a “co-dependence between the Crime Lab and the prosecuting attorneys association that is the antithesis of an independent, objective and science focused forensic crime laboratory.”
“The problem is the interference by the prosecuting attorneys association with the reporting of scientific results,” Rockind wrote the agencies. “It reflects a culture that the Crime Lab and its analysts are not scientists reporting forensic analyses dispassionately in court through testimony. Instead, it reflects a systematic top-down management of the reporting by (PAAM) through the MSP laboratory supervisors.”
Rockind also wrote that the MSP crime labs have violated guidelines of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board, which has accredited the lab.
Accredited labs nationally follow guidelines that include being impartial and objective, approaching all testing with an open mind and without bias, the complaint states.
Quoting the accrediting agency’s guidelines, Rockind wrote, labs must “conduct complete and unbiased examinations. Conclusions are based on the evidence and referenced material relevant to the evidence, not extraneous information, political pressure, or other outside influences.”
“The involvement and participation of the prosecuting attorney in the operation and conduct of the Crime Lab violates these guidelines,” Rockind wrote.
Rockind said he has not filed a lawsuit in the matter but only seeks to have supervisory officials review the situation, identify problems, if any, and determine corrective action.
Gerry LaPorte, a director of the two federal agencies both based in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Shanon Banner, a spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police, said, “The allegations of this group of defense attorneys are without merit.”
Banner said in 2013, the State Police Forensic Science Division changed its policy regarding how marijuana and THC are reported “in an effort to standardize reporting practices among our laboratories and to ensure laboratory reports only include findings that can be proved scientifically.”
Banner said that with an increase of synthetic drugs being sent to labs, “it became necessary to ensure reporting standards were in place across all labs.”
Lab workers were involved in discussions and proposed changes, she said, which included using the phrase “origin unknown” for samples where the source of the THC could not be scientifically proven to originate from plant-based material.
“It does not mean the sample is synthetic THC,” Banner stressed. “It only means the lab did not determine the origin, and the source of the THC should not be assumed from the lab results.”
“The allegation that politics or influence from any outside entity played a role in this policy change is wholly untrue,” Banner said. “Further, the MSP rejects the allegation that an internal policy change to ensure standardization regarding how test results are reported rises to the level of negligence or misconduct.”
PAAM president Mike Wendling issued a response Wednesday that said, in part, “defense attorneys have alleged that the PAAM directed the Michigan State Police Forensic Science Division to change their reporting procedures relating to THC in an effort to increase potential charges. These allegations are false.”
Wendling said the allegations are based on two emails in which Ken Stecker, a staff attorney, opined that “THC is a Schedule I drug, regardless of where it comes from.
“At no time, in either email, did Mr. Stecker direct MSP Forensic Science personnel on how to conduct tests or how to report their findings.
“When the MSP Forensic Science Division tests a substance that shows the presence of THC, the measurement of that THC is reported,” Wendling wrote. “If plant material is not detected to be present, they cannot determine if the THC is a synthetically created resin or created out of plant material.”
Wendling stressed that the crime labs set their own protocols for reporting scientific findings and described Stecker as a “highly regarded and highly requested statewide and national presenter on the issues of traffic safety and drug use.”
THE MICHIGAN STATE POLICE Forensic Science Division finds itself embroiled in scandal as newly released emails paint a picture of a crime lab in turmoil over how to classify marijuana. Attorneys and medical marijuana advocates accuse Michigan prosecutors of pressuring the state’s crime lab to falsely classify the origins of THC found in hash oils and marijuana edibles as “origin unknown.”
Prosecutors exploited the ambiguity to charge medical marijuana users for possession of synthetic THC, despite the fact that the personal use of medical marijuana has been legal in Michigan since it was approved by voters in 2008. Under Michigan law, possession of synthetic THC constitutes a felony, whereas possession of marijuana and its derivatives by someone who is not a licensed medical marijuana user is a misdemeanor.
The emails were obtained by Michael Komorn, lead lawyer for Max Lorincz, a medical marijuana patient who lost custody of his child and now faces felony charges after the lab’s misleading classification of hash oil found in his home.
“I’d never seen a lab report reporting origin unknown,” Komorn told The Intercept. “What was produced for us was the most unbelievable set of documents I’ve ever seen.”
The emails show that as Michigan forensic scientists debated how to classify oil and wax produced from marijuana plants, they were pressured by police and prosecutors to classify the products in a way that would facilitate harsher drug convictions.
“It is highly doubtful,” a forensic scientist named Scott Penabaker wrote in May 2013, “that any of these Med. Mari. products we are seeing have THC that was synthesized. This would be completely impractical.” And in February 2014, the supervisor of Lansing, Michigan’s controlled substances unit, Bradley Choate, wrote that a misleading identification of THC “could lead to the wrong charge of possession of synthetic THC and the ultimate wrongful conviction of an individual.” Lab inspector John Bowen, referring to the THC in edibles and oils, agreed: “Is it likely that someone went to the trouble to manufacture THC and two other cannabinoids, mix them up, and bake them into a pan of brownies? Of course not.”
Despite the unlikelihood that Lorincz and others were somehow cooking up synthetic THC, Andy Fias, a state police lieutenant with West Michigan’s regional drug task force, reached out to the Forensic Science Division in January 2015. “We are encountering a significant amount of THC wax and oil,” he wrote. “If we were to seized [sic] the wax/oil from a card carrying patient or caregiver and it comes back as marijuana, we will not have PC [probable cause] for the arrests.”
Fias had heard that lab analysts were classifying some oil as marijuana rather than THC. He asked: “Is there a way to get this changed? Our prosecutors are willing to argue that one speck of marijuana does not turn the larger quantity of oil/wax into marijuana.”
That aggressive — and intellectually dishonest — prosecutorial mindset explains what happened to Lorincz last year.
On September 24, 2014, Lorincz called 911 from his Spring Lake, Michigan, home when his wife experienced an emergency. “The paramedics came in to assist my wife, and while they were assisting my wife the sheriff came in from the outside,” the 35-year-old father told me. It was then that the officer discovered hash oil on the kitchen counter. “The whole thing is ridiculous,” said Lorincz, who at the time possessed a Michigan medical marijuana card. “I didn’t commit any crime.”
Authorities didn’t see it that way.
The Ottawa County Prosecuting Attorney’s office, led by Ronald Frantz, charged Lorincz with misdemeanor marijuana possession. Instead of pleading guilty, he fought the charge on the grounds that his medical marijuana card allowed him to legally possess the hash. Prosecutors responded in February by charging Lorincz with possession of synthetic THC, a felony.
Because the crime lab claimed to be unable to determine the origin of the THC in the hash oil, prosecutors were able to allege that Lorincz’s oil was not made from marijuana.
Jeff Frazier, a former ACLU attorney who is also working on Lorincz’s case, accuses the state’s prosecutors of circumventing the medical marijuana law passed in 2008 because of their intense opposition to marijuana.
“The lab is intentionally reporting nonexistent felonies,” said Frazier, “and the prosecutors are going after medical marijuana patients with these lab reports that are fraudulent.”
Activists believe that Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette may be behind the pressure on the crime lab. In 2008 Schuette led the opposition to the successful initiative. “He’s been opposed to medical marijuana since the get-go and has used his office to circumvent the law,” said Charmie Gholson, a drug policy reform advocate based in Michigan.
Gregoire Michaud, director of Michigan’s Forensic Science Division, wrote in a July 2013 email that “In my meeting with PAAM [Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan] it was decided that any questions regarding law interpretation (e.g., recent controlled substance cases) will be directed thru the applicable Technical Director who will then reach out to Mr. Ken Stecker.”
Kenneth Stecker, an official with PAAM, stridently opposes medical marijuana usage and in a 2012 speech said, “I literally every night look at websites, blogs, everything for two to three hours dealing with the medical marijuana issue.” At the time, Stecker said that he had given “over 150, 200 presentations” on the “hornet’s nest” of medical marijuana.
A December 2013 email quotes Stecker as saying, “THC is a schedule 1 drug regardless of where it comes from.” He neglected to mention that penalties for possession very much depend on where it comes from.
John Collins, a former director of the Forensic Science Division, told Fox 17 television, which first reported Lorincz’s case earlier this year, that prosecutors were playing politics with science. “In my experience, it was just a nonstop political game that really got frustrating, and it wore down the morale of our staff, and it quite honestly, it wore me down.”
“It was really a big deal for me to let people understand that our laboratories were not in the prosecution business, they’re not in the conviction business, they’re in the science business,” Collins told Fox 17. “And if we don’t position ourselves as being in the science business, then we really start to go down a path that’s going to lead us to a lot of trouble.”
The Michigan State Police provided the following statement:
The ultimate decision on what to charge an individual with rests with the prosecutor. The role of the laboratory is to determine whether marihuana or THC are present. Michigan State Police laboratory policy was changed to include the statement “origin unknown” when it is not possible to determine if THC originates from a plant (marihuana) or synthetic means. This change makes it clear that the source of the THC should not be assumed from the lab results.
Bill Schuette and Ronald Frantz did not respond to requests for comment. Kenneth Stecker declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Max Lorincz’s life remains in limbo, and his 6-year-old son is in foster care. Currently, he gets a few hours per week of visitation, but father and son have been apart for over a year now.
“It’s been the worst year of me and my wife’s life,” Lorincz said. “You’re talking about taking away an entire year of bonding with our son. It’s something we can never get back.”
This isn’t the first time conviction-hungry Michigan prosecutors have destroyed the lives of medical marijuana users.
In 2014, prosecutors charged Kent County sheriff’s sergeant Timothy Bernhardt with running a drug house because he received and distributed marijuana butter. Bernhardt was a licensed medical marijuana patient but not a licensed caregiver and thus was not permitted to distribute the drug to other users.
In a lab report from Bernhardt’s case, the crime lab classified Bernhardt’s marijuana butter as THC and investigators claimed to be unable to identify its origin. Armed with that report, prosecutors in Kent County went after Bernhardt with full force. Bernhardt eventually pleaded guilty to the drug house charge and was forced to resign after 22 years with the department, even though the butter was being used for medical purposes. He faced up to two years in prison, but a month before the sentencing hearing he killed himself.
“They killed him,” said Gholson. “They have blood on their hands.”
Just days before Bernhardt’s suicide, a Kent County prosecutor named Tim McMorrow told a state court that Michigan voters, despite their overwhelming approval of medical marijuana, do not have the final say. “The voters do not have a right to adopt anything they want,” McMorrrow said. “Something doesn’t become valid because the voters voted for it.”
Article By – Juan Thompson – Nov. 14 2015, 8:43 a.m.
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept
The Intercept is an online publication launched in February 2014 by First Look Media, the news organization created and funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.[2]
Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Jeremy Scahill are the editors. The magazine serves as a platform to report on the documents released by Edward Snowden in the short term, and to “produce fearless, adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues” in the long term
“A primary function of The Intercept is to insist upon and defend our press freedoms from those who wish to infringe them. We are determined to move forward with what we believe is essential reporting in the public interest and with a commitment to the ideal that a truly free and independent press is a vital component of any healthy democratic society. […] Our focus in this very initial stage will be overwhelmingly on the NSA story. We will use all forms of digital media for our reporting. We will publish original source documents on which our reporting is based. We will have reporters in Washington covering reactions to these revelations and the ongoing reform efforts. We will provide commentary from our journalists, including the return of Glenn Greenwald’s regular column. We will engage with our readers in the comment section. We will host outside experts to write op-eds and contribute news items.
Our longer-term mission is to provide aggressive and independent adversarial journalism across a wide range of issues, from secrecy, criminal and civil justice abuses and civil liberties violations to media conduct, societal inequality and all forms of financial and political corruption. The editorial independence of our journalists will be guaranteed, and they will be encouraged to pursue their journalistic passion, areas of interest, and unique voices.
We believe the prime value of journalism is that it imposes transparency, and thus accountability, on those who wield the greatest governmental and corporate power. Our journalists will be not only permitted, but encouraged, to pursue stories without regard to whom they might alienate.”
