Cops probing use of forensics lab for personal divorce case
July 5, 2007 3:06 PM   Subscribe

One can see the utility of the home semen detection kit mentioned on Metafilter earlier; after all, using the one at work can get you into trouble. (The allegedly cheating husband was once a Canadian Football League All-Star and scored a Grey Cup touchdown. This earned him a $50,000 salary.) Ms. Chamberlain-Gordon claims she did the test with chemicals that would have been thrown away anyway; her previous claim to fame was testifying about blood spatter in the Ricky Holland murder case.
posted by commander_cool (29 comments total)
 
Wow, that hits close to home. I studied chemistry with a moonlighting director of that forensics laboratory a number of years ago.
posted by litfit at 3:27 PM on July 5, 2007


I don't see what the problem is with using lab equipment after work for your own projects. People are too damn paranoid these days.

(Although obviously at a crime lab things need to be pretty closely monitored and regulated)
posted by delmoi at 4:20 PM on July 5, 2007


It borrows provenance where unwarranted, is the major worry I see. Like writing personal letters on company stationary. It also makes a mess of the work environment. It's also stealing. Also, it's illegal to conduct a private investigation without a license in Michigan, and this drags the crime lab into that mess.
posted by litfit at 4:23 PM on July 5, 2007


The home semen detection kit wouldn't have conclusively proved anything in this case, it was another female's DNA on his underwear. Semen alone is kind of worthless.
posted by signalnine at 4:46 PM on July 5, 2007


Yeah, what's the point of a semen detecting kit? Jesus, you'd probably have to struggle to find clothes without semen on it around here!

Er... never mind.
posted by Justinian at 5:20 PM on July 5, 2007 [1 favorite]


I don't see what the problem is with using lab equipment after work for your own projects.

I think the acceptable use of lab facilities is pretty different between academic labs, and everywhere else. And besides, the underlying rule always is, if you use the lab for non-work reasons, be discreet.
posted by rxrfrx at 5:24 PM on July 5, 2007


There's also plenty of reason to be paranoid about something like a crime lab... a few mistakes and you could have dozens of cases thrown out.

For academics or even some corporations, private use is usually not a huge deal, but when you're talking about something like law enforcement, the integrity of the system is so important that I can see why any use whatsoever would have to be fully authorized and documented.

(I mean, I use computing resources at my employer for all sorts of things, but it's not considered a problem as long as we don't take away from more important uses or try to profit personally from it).
posted by wildcrdj at 6:12 PM on July 5, 2007


OK, so it was probably against the rules, but it looks like it probably didn't cost them anything and this is just more about the cheating husband throwing sticks and stones.
posted by caddis at 6:31 PM on July 5, 2007


Semen alone is kind of worthless.

Hey, they coulda been somebody!
posted by jonmc at 6:36 PM on July 5, 2007 [1 favorite]


OK, so it was probably against the rules, but it looks like it probably didn't cost them anything and this is just more about the cheating husband throwing sticks and stones.

If I were her boss and could get it past the union, I'd put her on paid suspension pending the outcome of the divorce proceedings. But I'm not her boss. This is just a really, really big screw-up and I wouldn't really want her working for me either as her employer, or as a member of the public who she's employed to protect.
posted by litfit at 6:50 PM on July 5, 2007


I already have a home semen detection kit.

It's called "my tongue."
posted by flarbuse at 7:01 PM on July 5, 2007 [1 favorite]


He told me that that was why he took it up the bunghole, Flarbuse, then ate tainted meat. He really thought that would work.
posted by Methylviolet at 7:15 PM on July 5, 2007


If I were her boss and could get it past the union, I'd put her on paid suspension pending the outcome of the divorce proceedings. ... This is just a really, really big screw-up and I wouldn't really want her working for me either as her employer, or as a member of the public who she's employed to protect.

Explain please.
posted by caddis at 7:30 PM on July 5, 2007


This woman functions as a forensic scientist in a state-funded crime lab that is responsible for producing and protecting evidence used in criminal investigations. Any breach of ethics, especially one showing judgment this poor, jeopardizes the actual and perceived objectivity the Michigan State Police crime laboratory and undermines justice. Is that clear enough?
posted by litfit at 7:37 PM on July 5, 2007


From the comments in the second link: My wife watches Crossing Jordan regularly, and if there's two things I've learned from that show, forensic investigators get better equipment than the military and get to to pursue their own interests whenever they want and with whatever resources are available without being fired.

That's pretty darn funny given the realities most police labs face. Oh, the looks on students' faces when they discover that the lab doesn't look at all like the ones on CSI....

The only odd about this is that Chamberlain-Gordon thought she could get away with doing a side project without telling her boss. Any competent lab doing legal work will monitor instrument logs for routine quality assurance. She should have just called it method development or a tech demo project or something.

Moral of the story: always give your side projects official cover. You're not making an army of monkey-brained robots to run your cappuccino machine, you're "improving lab automation".
posted by bonehead at 7:37 PM on July 5, 2007


Hunh, from the last link, it looks like it came out as part of the divorce proceedings. It would have worked if it weren't for those meddling lawyers!

What possessed her to mention it during the proceedings is a mystery even science cannot explain.
posted by bonehead at 7:43 PM on July 5, 2007


I still don't see anything really wrong here, other than technical violations of lab rules. It seems more like taking home some pads of paper for your kids. Wrong, but hardly anything I would fire someone over. I would just ask them not to do it again, but then I work in private industry where we can be rational about these things instead of government agencies where you can do 30% work for years with no real downside, but take a free lunch (sandwich) without properly reporting it etc. and your job is on the line, and we wonder why government is so inefficient.
posted by caddis at 7:51 PM on July 5, 2007


It's wrong because this sort of activity, not on the books, not covered by the quality assurance plan, is an easy way to invalidate all of the forensic tests that were done in the lab in that period. Heck, if I were a lawyer, I'd argue that all results during her entire tenure were suspect.

There's little reason to believe that, but it can be enough to introduce reasonable doubt into all the DNA evidence generated by that lab. Uncontrolled samples in the lab? Can you prove no cross-contamination? Of course not, proper documentation wasn't done for them. So if that was skipped, how about the documentation for proper cleaning? And so on.

Maintaining the chain of custody and the integrity of the lab are paramount to forensic work. Bring it into question, as this does, and all kinds of criminal cases can get thrown out.
posted by bonehead at 8:04 PM on July 5, 2007


...and this isn't just a government "waste" issue. The rules are similarly strict for pharmaceutical production, for example. Sometimes really close attention to detail is really necessary. Forensics is one of those things. Drug production is another.
posted by bonehead at 8:13 PM on July 5, 2007


this sort of activity, not on the books, not covered by the quality assurance plan, is an easy way to invalidate all of the forensic tests that were done in the lab in that period

You are insane. If I am the DA and you try this, I would humiliate you with her 60 odd prior cases. Do you really want to have me entering into evidence all the amazing things she has done in the past? But for your exploration into this territory it is probably off limits. Open the door and you get flooded. Any rational jury will understand her motivation to go off the normal course when her husband has been cheating on her, and by the way she proved that he was. This in no way calls into question her scientific integrity.
posted by caddis at 8:19 PM on July 5, 2007


I worked in a private, not government (though we did test forensic samples from law enforcement agencies), drug testing lab, and if someone had attempted an analogous stunt they'd have been out on their ass. litfit and bonehead are right, this affects the credibility of all the lab's results.
There are all sorts of rules by which these sorts of places run, and when you start doing *anything* off the books, you're calling all of the validation procedures into question.
posted by solotoro at 8:20 PM on July 5, 2007


It's not hypothetical caddis. Poor book keeping in labs has cost prosecutions in the past. I've seen it happen. Good defense lawyers can and do raise these issues at trial. Past history of the lab generally doesn't count for very much if they catch you in an error.
posted by bonehead at 8:28 PM on July 5, 2007


there was no error here
posted by caddis at 8:30 PM on July 5, 2007


The point is that lab can't prove that there wasn't an error (by maintaining control of sample custody, for example). That's enough. That's the classic way to lose a forensics case.
posted by bonehead at 8:37 PM on July 5, 2007


This is not poor book keeping. Every official sample was handled properly, at least as far as can be told. As a defense attorney you have to show that her results can not be relied upon. How are you going to do this, rationally, not just saying one time she failed to follow the rules, in a way that had no effect upon any official tests? Did she violate chain of custody on your client's sample? No.
posted by caddis at 8:38 PM on July 5, 2007


and by the way, she probably did not violate chain of custody with her husband's undergarments either.
posted by caddis at 8:40 PM on July 5, 2007


If I were her boss and could get it past the union, I'd put her on paid suspension

Paid to not go to work? I'd gladly accept. Where do I sign up?
posted by yohko at 8:12 AM on July 6, 2007


Paid to not go to work? I'd gladly accept. Where do I sign up?

Well, Michigan. Can't really fire her with such a strong union and until the outcome of the investigation into her alleged wrongdoing. Paying her not to work during the divorce might give her an unfair advantage in probate, but it'd likely speed them, and the woman already seems to know how to make the best of an unfair advantage. Hopefully, he cheated, so she keeps her advantage in the divorce settlement, but ultimately loses her job for being a cheat herself.
posted by litfit at 9:03 AM on July 6, 2007


officer the uranium rod was spent and would have ended up in Yucca mountain anyway...
posted by any major dude at 9:19 AM on July 6, 2007


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