WLS-TV discovered that the University of Illinois Chicago Analytical Forensic Testing Laboratory may have provided bad test results used to convict people of driving-under the influence of marijuana.
The defense attorney challenging the conviction of his client says that thousands of cases may be affected by tainted analysis.
In a follow-up story, former McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally is a major source.
Kenneally surmised that attorneys throughout the metropolitan area would be going through files to see if their clients were involved with such tests.
The story reads,
“The first call that I would be making after seeing your report, and a good report it is, I would call over to the lab itself, and I would say, ‘What the heck is going on?'” Kenneally said.
“I think the state’s attorneys aren’t just now getting knowledge about as quickly as the defense attorneys. And as far as I know, they’re turning it over now,” defense attorney Don Ramsell said. “So the fault really lies with the lab. And, you know, they’ve been keeping these things secret. They cover up their own mistakes.”
Kenneally says it would be an enormous problem if the tests which supported the conviction have been compromised.
“If somebody is in prison because we put them in jail for driving under the influence of cannabis, which caused, let’s say, somebody’s death, which is the type of charge that would send them to prison, we would have to inform them, as well as their defense counsel, of the fact that, hey, after speaking with the scientists at the lab, it appears as though some of these tests had been compromised, and we would have to do that across the board, with respect to every single one of these charges that we filed,” Kenneally said. “And that gets very complicated, and it creates a lot of opportunities for collateral attacks on convictions after sometimes the sentences have already been served.”
