• 19
  • May
    2010

Over 200 DUI/DWAI blood-alcohol tests performed by the Colorado Springs Metro Crime Lab in 2007 and 2009 have been shown to have been inflated, and the Colorado Springs PD still doesn't know why or how.

On April 19, police spokesman Sergeant Steve Noblitt and DA Dan May gave a press conference praising the Metro Crime Lab's quality assurance program and implying that no real harm had been done.

May stated that only nine defendants had been wrongfully convicted of DUI or DWAI because of inaccurate blood-alcohol test results, and most of those defendants had their charges dismissed and court costs refunded.

Noblitt reassured the public that all of the blood-alcohol testing errors were tied to a single chemist who was fired in March, and May commended the lab for noticing the problem: "We have every confidence in the Metro Crime Lab."

Root Cause of DUI/DWAI Blood-Alcohol Testing Errors Still Unknown

According to a recent Colorado Springs Independent report, however, the Metro Crime Lab simply can't explain how the errors were made. Additional quality control measures have been put in place in an attempt to catch any further inaccuracies, but analysts are stumped as to how exactly the mistakes happened.

Metro Crime Lab senior chemist Bobby Striebel told the Independent frankly that he has no explanation for how an experienced chemist could have miscalculated the alcohol content in some samples by more than 40 percent. "The error was very difficult to identify," he said.

The mistakes followed no obvious pattern, with errors cropping up in one day's work while the tests were apparently performed correctly on others. The equipment appears to have been working correctly. Striebel has been unable to find any way to reproduce the erroneous results.

Jardell is appealing her firing and has hired an attorney. Her employee records dating back to 2002 show no sign of any problems, and supervisors consistently gave her "effective" or "excellent" performance ratings.

Significant Percentage of 2009 Blood-Alcohol Tests Were Tainted

The Metro Crime Lab performed approximately 2,000 DUI/DWAI tests each year from 2006 to 2009, according to the Independent. That puts the 2009 error rate at about 8 percent. "[Jardell] analyzed roughly half of all the blood in our lab for the last seven years," Striebel told the Independent.

In Colorado, drivers pulled over for drunk driving can choose to have a blood test or a Breathalyzer test performed, or they can refuse to be tested and receive an automatic one-year driver license suspension. According to a local defense attorney interviewed by the Independent, about 60 percent choose the blood test.

For defendants choosing the blood test, two vials of blood are drawn so that defense lawyers can have their own tests performed, although only those with attorneys tend to do so.

In two cases cited by the Independent, however, blood sent by defense attorneys for retesting paid off big. When their lawyers sent their samples for retesting through a private lab, their results came in approximately 30 percent lower than those from the Metro Crime Lab, resulting in major reductions in their charges.

A local DUI defense attorney interviewed by the Independent summed up the issue: "If they never really identified the problem, how do they fix it?"

Related Resource:

"Unsolved mysteries in the CSPD's crime lab" (Colorado Springs Independent, May 6, 2010)