The St. Paul Police Department crime lab recently came under intense scrutiny after two public defenders, Lauri Traub and Christine Funk, uncovered major problems with the lab’s work.
Traub and Funk, unsatisfied with one-page reports they were getting for their cases, visited the lab and what they found was shocking. Traub asked one criminologist about the minimum standards used in the lab and the lab worker responded, “I guess I don’t know what the minimum standards are.” The lab workers even admitted that they have little training in testing possible narcotics.
Spurred by these revelations, the St. Paul crime lab has suspended all drug testing pending an investigation by the court. Another consequence is that Washington County prosecutors are offering about 100 defendants in drug cases plea deals that will involve little jail time and an emphasis on drug treatment. Washington County attorney Pete Orput told Minnesota Public Radio, “We’re willing to negotiate any jail down significantly less than we had been previous to this incident,” referring to the crime lab problems. “I don’t want to deluge that state crime lab unless I need to,” he went on to say, “That’s why I’m trying to resolve a good deal of these cases, so we don’t backlog the whole system.”
Read more about the plea deals here and more about the crime lab here and here.