Add Orlando to the list of jurisdictions plagued by potential misdeeds in the crime lab. A fingerprint examiner for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, who worked more than 2,600 cases dating to 2001, has been removed from duty for reasons that aren’t totally clear. After prosecutors discovered that he was no longer working fingerprints, they also found that he’d been removed five months earlier and that the sheriff’s office hadn’t notified them.
The possible problems in Orlando join a growing number of forensic lab problems being exposed nationwide, including: faulty DNA testing at a crime lab in Austin; the dual drug lab scandals created by two miscreant analysts involving perhaps 50,000 cases at separate testing facilities in Massachusetts; allegations of slanting evidence at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation; misconduct by a drug tester at the Oregon crime lab; nearly 15,000 faked drug tests at the New Jersey crime lab; more drug theft from the police-run crime lab in San Francisco; and the FBI’s admission in 2015 that its hair examiners gave flawed testimony in 95 percent of their cases before 2000. [MORE]