Documents: Independent review of St. Paul crime lab finds big problems

By Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
February 14, 2013

Two independent consultants hired to review the St. Paul Police crime lab found major errors in almost every area of the lab's work. The reports they filed following their reviews were made public Thursday.

Report: Integrated Forensic Laboratories on controlled substance cases

Integrated Forensic Laboratories reviewed 100 controlled substance cases provided by the St. Paul Police Department crime lab in fall 2012. The review found errors "in the majority of case files examined," according to this Jan. 31, 2013 report.

Report: Schwarz Forensic Enterprises on controlled substance cases

Schwarz reviewed 73 controlled substance cases from the St. Paul Police Department crime lab in late 2012, according to this Jan. 14, 2013 report. The police department selected the cases that would be reviewed. The company found no evidence of contamination between cases, but it did find nine instances of potential contamination within a case. That means one piece of evidence in a case may have contaminated another piece of evidence in the same case.

Report: Schwarz Forensic Enterprises on fingerprint and crime scene units

Schwarz Forensic Enterprises reviewed the fingerprint and crime scene units of the St. Paul Police crime lab from Aug. 30 to Sept. 19, 2012. The review found "seriously deficient work" in 103 of the 246 fingerprint cases examined, according to company's report dated Dec. 12, 2012. It found lab workers wrongly deemed many fingerprints unusable and destroyed them.

Read reporter Madeleine Baran's news story on the crime lab reports »