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from the I'm-positive-there-are-false-positives dept.
Pro Publica and The New York Times Magazine have each written about field drug testing by U.S. law enforcement agencies. The tests are undertaken with disposable kits containing chemicals. A sample is brought into contact with the chemicals and there may be a colour change, which is assessed by the officer. The essay tells the story of people against whom criminal charges regarding illegal drugs were filed, with the results of these field testing kits as the primary evidence in the prosecutions.
According to the essay, the use of the kits has various pitfalls which can lead to false positive results. For one thing, analytes which are legal to possess can produce the same colour change as illegal substances. For another, poor lighting which may be encountered in the field can distort the officer's perception of colours. Confirmation bias can occur. Also, officers may receive inadequate (or--the submitter supposes--incorrect) training in the interpretation of the colours. A former Houston police chief offered the opinion that
Officers shouldn't collect and test their own evidence, period. I don't care whether that's cocaine, blood, hair.
The essay mentions gas chromatography–mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), an instrumental method which is typically undertaken in a laboratory, as providing more reliable results. The submitter notes that portable GC-MS equipment does exist (1, 2).
Nationwide, 62 percent of forensics labs do not conduct further testing in cases in which a field drug test was used and the defendant made a guilty plea. However, the Houston crime laboratory has been doing such testing. They have found that false positives are commonplace. The district attorney's office for Harris County, Texas, which handles cases from Houston, has been informed about those test results and is undertaking "efforts to overturn wrongful convictions." In three years, about as many such convictions have been overturned in Harris County as in the rest of the United States.
Referenced stories:
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:25PM
You get your bail back (which goes back to the bail bondsman), but the bondsman charges a fee and you don't get the fee back. The fee is pretty high, because sometimes people skip bail, and then the bail bondsman is the one who is out the money. Bail bondsmen are up there with payday loans in terms of the fee racket they have, but I'm not putting this on them, they provide a needed service at market rates. (The problem is with the system that creates the need for that service).
If you have enough money to post bond in cash... well, the police will seize it from you, so none of that. If you are rich, of course, you can have your attorney have your bank wire the money, and be out the same day, but rich people don't get arrested for trumped-up drug possession charges anyway.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:54AM
Bail bonds are just another scam conducted on the underprivileged in the USA.
As stated above, the bond may cost a fee of some 10% of the bail amount, but if you go missing, the bond company may only have to actually pay 5%. Yes, even if you skip bail the bond company makes a profit.