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Illinois crime labs under fire for shoddy DUI testing procedures and more

Posted by Steven H. Fagan | Sep 24, 2015 | 0 Comments

The lead line of the news story about Illinois DUI lab testing woes is "Some drunk drivers could go free because of law and disorder at Illinois State Police crime labs." The reality is much worse. Some innocent drivers could be wrongly accused and convicted as well. As British jurist Sir William Blackstone famously intoned "Rather 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer." ISP crime labs have a duty to maintain the highest standards possible to ensure the integrity of our justice system. Instead, they rely on semantic word games to justify sloppy work, the introduction of bias and outright error such as mislabeled or switched samples. The last means that even if accurate, results could possibly be reported for a defendant that are not from their blood, possibly leading to conviction where the accused to go free. Click the link below to watch the video and read the story. 

http://abc7chicago.com/news/forensic-failures-at-state-crime-labs-may-jeopardize-cases/998927/

About the Author

Steven H. Fagan

Steve Fagan earned his law degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law, is a member of the NCDD, NACDL, ISBA, IACDL and a founding member of the DUIDLA. He is published and has taught CLE for lawyers on subjects such as sex offenses, DUI and criminal defense, and focuses on Criminal and DUI trial defense.

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