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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26 2016, @03:41PM
My understanding of bail bond is that you would get the money back from the government. But most people need to go through bail bondsman (i.e. basically take a loan). The fee for the bail bondsman is usually some percentage of the bond (10%?). What the GP was saying is you wouldn't get that back. For example plead guilty, get probation and a 8k fine; or go to court, but have to pay a 100k (~10k to a bondsman) bond to stay out of jail until the trial, and then maybe not win the trial.
If you have enough money for a bond, then it's not as big of a deal to go to trial. But the vast majority of people (probably >90%) are not going to have that kind of money. The plea bargaining system is not only inherently unfair, and even farther from justice than actual trials are, but it also heavily favors the wealthy. And by being heavily stacked against the poor, it will also punish minorities disproportionately.
I haven't looked at the stats, but my guess would be that people who have the money for a cash bond payment and good lawyers, are much less likely to get charged, period. The DA's really do not want to go to trial and if they have less leverage are more likely to let it go.