Speaker 1: You're sitting in the passenger seat of your car, staring
Speaker 1: out the window. Your boyfriend is driving, and you look
Speaker 1: over at him. You can tell that he's getting tired.
Speaker 1: It's been a long day. You left Louisiana five hours
Speaker 1: ago and he's been driving the entire time. You're going
Speaker 1: to Houston, where he has an interview for a job
Speaker 1: on an oil rig. You find the monotony of the
Speaker 1: drive to be somewhat calming. It's a big difference from
Speaker 1: your usual day to day of running around doing your
Speaker 1: job and taking care of your teenage son who has
Speaker 1: special needs. Of course, you love your kids and your
Speaker 1: job is great, but for the first time in a while,
Speaker 1: you feel yourself really relaxing, and you're happy to have
Speaker 1: nothing to do or worry about for the next couple
Speaker 1: of days. When you finally get to the motel in Houston,
Speaker 1: you're both exhausted. You dump your suit cases at the
Speaker 1: foot of the bed, and you're tempted to skip dinner
Speaker 1: and just stay in for the rest of the night,
Speaker 1: but you don't want your boyfriend to go to bed
Speaker 1: on an empty stomach, so you both get back in
Speaker 1: the car, grab some hamburgers from a fast food drive
Speaker 1: through and then start heading straight back to the motel.
Speaker 1: Your boyfriend rubs his eyes when he changes lanes, and
Speaker 1: out of nowhere you see blue and red lights flashing
Speaker 1: behind your car and a siren blaring. You look up
Speaker 1: and watching the rear view mirror as a police officer
Speaker 1: slowly walks up to the driver's side window, license and registration.
Speaker 1: You rummage in the glove compartment for the registration. Well,
Speaker 1: what's the problem, officer, your boyfriend asked, no signal, will
Speaker 1: changing lanes. You hand the registration to your boyfriend, who
Speaker 1: in turn hands it to the officer. License. The officer
Speaker 1: says again. Your boyfriend holds tight onto the steering wheel.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have a license, sir. Please step
Speaker 1: out of the vehicle. Your boyfriend gets out, closing the
Speaker 1: door behind him. The officer sticks his head into the
Speaker 1: car window and looks around. He never makes eye contact
Speaker 1: with you. Then the officer steps away from your car
Speaker 1: and calls out to his partner, who's sitting in the
Speaker 1: police car. There's a needle in here, the officer says,
Speaker 1: excuse me, what are you talking about? You have no
Speaker 1: idea what the officer thinks. He saw, but you certainly
Speaker 1: did not have any kind of needle in your car.
Speaker 1: The cop ignores your question and walks over to the
Speaker 1: passenger window. Ma'am, I'm gonna need your consent to sir
Speaker 1: to the car, and I'll tell you right now you
Speaker 1: don't consent, we're going to be sitting here a long
Speaker 1: time until we can get a canine out here to
Speaker 1: sweep the car. You don't have anything to hide, so
Speaker 1: you say, yeah, okay, go ahead. You stand on the
Speaker 1: side of the road with your boyfriend in the thick
Speaker 1: Texas heat while both officers search the car. A few
Speaker 1: minutes later, the first officer stands up straight. It looks
Speaker 1: like he's pinching something between his index finger and his thumb,
Speaker 1: and he's holding it up to the moonlight. You can't
Speaker 1: see what it is, but you see that. The officer
Speaker 1: says something to his partner, who then comes over to you. Man,
Speaker 1: we have reason to believe that there's crack cocaine in
Speaker 1: your car, the officer says. He tells you both to
Speaker 1: put your hands behind your back. He starts cuffing your boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and your adrenaline starts pumping. You're sweating now, and you
Speaker 1: can't tell if it's the ninety degree heat or if
Speaker 1: it's pure nerves and anxiety. As the officer tightens the
Speaker 1: cuffs painfully around your wrist, you have the wrong idea here.
Speaker 1: I don't have drugs in my car. I don't do drugs.
Speaker 1: I've never done drugs. One officer walks over to you
Speaker 1: and then takes you to the police car. The other
Speaker 1: one opens up the trunk. He takes out something that
Speaker 1: looks like a ziplock baggy, then walks back over to you.
Speaker 1: He opens the bag and pulls out a test tube.
Speaker 1: Then he takes what he's been pinching between his fingers
Speaker 1: and drops it into the tube. He shakes it around,
Speaker 1: looks at it. Then he looks at you, and a
Speaker 1: wide grin creeps across his face. He waves the tube
Speaker 1: right in front of your nose. A liquid that seems
Speaker 1: to change from red to blue and the flashing lights
Speaker 1: is dangled in front of you. You're busted, ma'am, the
Speaker 1: cops says. The take you to jail. Your boyfriend is
Speaker 1: charged with driving without a license and is released soon after.
Speaker 1: But you don't know that yet because you're placed in
Speaker 1: a tiny holding cell with one other woman who tells
Speaker 1: you that she murdered someone. You're feeling sick, and you
Speaker 1: still haven't eaten all day. You're terrified, but you're not
Speaker 1: just worried about yourself. You're really worried about your son.
Speaker 1: Someone calls your name from a thick plastic window that
Speaker 1: separates you from the people working at the jail. You
Speaker 1: walk up to the window and see a tired looking
Speaker 1: man on the other side. He introduces himself as the
Speaker 1: court appointed defense attorney. He tells you you're being charged
Speaker 1: for possession of crack cocaine. Look, this is a felony,
Speaker 1: he says, and you're facing two years in state prison.
Speaker 1: You're in disbelief. Jesus, how is this possible. The attorney
Speaker 1: looks down at his papers and says, look, you have
Speaker 1: a choice. It's not much of a choice, but you
Speaker 1: do have a choice. The prosecutor is offering you a
Speaker 1: plea deal. If you plead guilty, you'll get a forty
Speaker 1: five days sentence in jail, and you'll probably only have
Speaker 1: to serve half of that. You say, I'm innocent. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to plead guilty to something I didn't do.
Speaker 1: The defense attorney kind of leans in a little bit
Speaker 1: and looks at you through his wire rim glasses and says, ma'am.
Speaker 1: They tested the substance they found on the floor of
Speaker 1: your car and it came up positive for crack cocaine.
Speaker 1: So according to this test, there was crack in your car.
Speaker 1: Now you can wait until the forensics lab runs another
Speaker 1: test on it, but there's a huge backlog. You could
Speaker 1: wait months for that test to come back. You begin
Speaker 1: to physically shake. You're on the verge of bursting out
Speaker 1: in tears right there in the middle of the jail.
Speaker 1: You think about your options. Months in jail, waiting for
Speaker 1: the evidence that will prove your innocent, two years in
Speaker 1: prison if it doesn't, And can you even trust the
Speaker 1: test if the one that they did on the side
Speaker 1: of the road was clearly wrong. I mean there was
Speaker 1: no crack in your car. You think about your youngest
Speaker 1: son and you're terrified of what's going to happen if
Speaker 1: you can't get out of your fast. He really needs you.
Speaker 1: You work managing an apartment complex. Part of your compensation
Speaker 1: is that you get to live in an apartment in
Speaker 1: the building that you manage. It at least allows you
Speaker 1: to stay close to your son at all times. Right
Speaker 1: now he is with his dad. But if you're stuck
Speaker 1: here for months or god forbid, years, you'll lose your job,
Speaker 1: your home, the safety net for you and your kid.
Speaker 1: The decision is basically made for you. You can't sit
Speaker 1: in prison for months. You have to get out and
Speaker 1: get out as quickly as you can. The next thing
Speaker 1: you know, you're standing in front of a judge. You
Speaker 1: can't stop trembling, You're weeping uncontrollably, you can barely breathe. Somehow,
Speaker 1: When the judge asked you, how do you plead, you
Speaker 1: force out the words I plead guilty. They take you
Speaker 1: back to a cell where you'll serve twenty one days
Speaker 1: of the forty five days sentence you were given. The
Speaker 1: prosecutor files a motion for the evidence in your case
Speaker 1: to be destroyed. After twenty one days, you're let out
Speaker 1: of jail. Your worst fears have been realized. You've been fired,
Speaker 1: you've been kicked out of your apartment. You don't know
Speaker 1: where most of your belongings are, and you don't know
Speaker 1: where to turn. The story you just heard is based
Speaker 1: on the true events of Amy All Britain's wrongful conviction
Speaker 1: that resulted from a roadside drug test. Somehow, the prosecutor's
Speaker 1: order to destroy the evidence never got signed off on,
Speaker 1: and that substance they found in her car that they
Speaker 1: claim tested positive for crack cocaine, it turned out to
Speaker 1: be a food crumb. Based on the junk science of
Speaker 1: roadside drug testing, the steady life that Amy built for
Speaker 1: herself and her family was completely turned upside down. And
Speaker 1: Amy isn't the only one. I'm Josh Duben, civil rights
Speaker 1: and criminal defense attorney, an innocent ambassador to the Innocence
Speaker 1: Project in New York. Today, on Wrongful Conviction junk Science,
Speaker 1: we explore roadside drug testing. Turns out these faulty tests,
Speaker 1: which caused police departments two dollars a piece or less,
Speaker 1: are widely used across the United States. They caused countless
Speaker 1: people to plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit. These
Speaker 1: tests continue to be used despite scientific evidence that proves
Speaker 1: just how ineffective. They are. In three during the height
Speaker 1: of the War on drugs in the United States, a
Speaker 1: chemist by the name of L. J. Scott, Jr. Was
Speaker 1: tasked with creating a test that could confirm the presence
Speaker 1: of cocaine. Now Scott was already aware of one chemical
Speaker 1: that was being used to test for cocaine, but the
Speaker 1: problem was it was highly unreliable. This faulty test was
Speaker 1: made up of a pink liquid, a chemical called cobalt thiocyanate,
Speaker 1: and cocaine was added to this pink liquid, it turned blue,
Speaker 1: and so the thinking went, whenever the pink liquid turns blue,
Speaker 1: we could know if there's cocaine present. But the problem
Speaker 1: was that it wasn't only cocaine, but plenty of other
Speaker 1: substances that could also turn this pink chemical blue. So
Speaker 1: Scott set out to work on creating a more accurate test.
Speaker 1: He experimented with other chemicals, and finally he came up
Speaker 1: with a three step test. Here's how it worked. A
Speaker 1: small sealable bag contained three vials of chemicals. First, the
Speaker 1: substance suspected to be cocaine was added to the first
Speaker 1: vial that contained the same pink chemical as the original test,
Speaker 1: cobalt thio cyanate. If that term blue, it meant the
Speaker 1: substance might be cocaine. Then the vial was placed into
Speaker 1: the small bag with the other two vials. The first
Speaker 1: vial was broken open so the liquid contents would leave
Speaker 1: the vial and sit at the bottom of the transparent back.
Speaker 1: Then the second vial would be broken open. This vial
Speaker 1: contained a second chemical, hydrochloric acid, that was supposed to
Speaker 1: mix with the first chemical and turn the substance pink again.
Speaker 1: Then the third vial would be broken. This final vial
Speaker 1: was filled with chloroform. If the liquid mixture at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the bag split into two layers so that
Speaker 1: a pink liquid floated to the top and blue sank
Speaker 1: to the bottom, Scott said this confirmed that the substance
Speaker 1: being tested was indeed cocaine. After working on the test
Speaker 1: for nine months, Scott was so sure of it that
Speaker 1: he declared the method proposed here in is almost impossible
Speaker 1: to misinterpret. It is highly sensitive and specific. Officers started
Speaker 1: carrying these portable roadside drug tests on them while they
Speaker 1: patrolled neighborhoods and pulled people over for traffic violations. They
Speaker 1: started using the tests on people suspected of possessing drugs,
Speaker 1: and the arrest started flooding in. But this test turned
Speaker 1: out to be not quite as foolproof as Scott thought.
Speaker 1: A study by toxicologists found that the three vile tests
Speaker 1: would also show positive results for substances other than cocaine.
Speaker 1: Light a cane, for example, a common numbing agent found
Speaker 1: in many first aid kits used to soothe cuts and burns,
Speaker 1: also tested positive. Nevertheless, Scott started his own company that
Speaker 1: sold drug test kits to law enforcement. This company still
Speaker 1: exists today, and interestingly enough, he stopped selling the kits
Speaker 1: with the three vile process. Instead, he went back to
Speaker 1: the one step process, the tests with just the pink
Speaker 1: liquid that was already known to be faulty, and to
Speaker 1: test positive for so many other substances. He did this
Speaker 1: so that he could sell them for less money, and
Speaker 1: they were a hit, and he expanded beyond cocaine tests.
Speaker 1: His company also sells tests for opiates, m D, m A, marijuana, LSD,
Speaker 1: bath salts, and meth amphetamine. His website boast that the
Speaker 1: tests coming easy to use, cheap packaging that prevents officers
Speaker 1: from cutting their fingers while breaking the vials. When interviewed
Speaker 1: by reporters from Pro Publica, Scott said that he had
Speaker 1: no idea that these tests alone could send people to prison,
Speaker 1: but indeed they were countless innocent people, including Amy All Britton,
Speaker 1: ended up convicted based on cheap, highly flawed roadside tests
Speaker 1: just like these. Now, the problem with the drug hit
Speaker 1: is that these things are incredibly unreliable, and so they
Speaker 1: come up positive for things like chocolate, like cleaning supplies
Speaker 1: like aspirin, like sugar, weight, gain powder, candle wax, drywall,
Speaker 1: so sand. They all come back and test positive from narcotics.
Speaker 1: Because these things are very unreliable and they're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be used specifically for actually getting a conviction, but
Speaker 1: many people plea in the system never get to a trial,
Speaker 1: and these are used as the only evidence to actually
Speaker 1: obtain a conviction. That's what happened in Amy's case. On
Speaker 1: our show today, we're talking to Greg Glaud. Greg is
Speaker 1: a policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity now Americans for
Speaker 1: Prosperities of grassroots organization that educates citizens about policy issues
Speaker 1: at the local, state, and national level. And one of
Speaker 1: the issues that Greg works on is criminal justice reform.
Speaker 1: So I want to go into detail about these drug
Speaker 1: tests in kids, walk us through some of the issues
Speaker 1: associated with these tests. It sounds like they're quite a
Speaker 1: few of them. Oh yeah, I mean, so, there are
Speaker 1: a variety of issues that go along with drug test kits.
Speaker 1: And there's so many areas in that chain of sequence
Speaker 1: from you know, finding the substance to actually testing it
Speaker 1: that can go wrong. And so first and foremost is
Speaker 1: actually training. And so it seems very easy. You drop
Speaker 1: something in a vial and you test it and see
Speaker 1: if it turns a different color, and if it does,
Speaker 1: then it's supposed to be drugs. But it's not that simple, um,
Speaker 1: And so officers have to be trained accordingly on how
Speaker 1: these work. And the problem is a lot of different
Speaker 1: substances actually change the color. And so the way that
Speaker 1: the thought process is supposed to go about this is
Speaker 1: if it's not a drug, the substance shouldn't change in there. However,
Speaker 1: a lot of substances actually make that color go different,
Speaker 1: and so you have these situations where officers aren't properly
Speaker 1: trained on how to use them, they break the different
Speaker 1: vials in the wrong way. It could be cold outside,
Speaker 1: the temperature changes different things, um, the chemicals might expired
Speaker 1: within them. There's a lot of different ways that this
Speaker 1: can go wrong. But even if you do everything correctly,
Speaker 1: everything right, the officer has been properly trained and he's
Speaker 1: one of the best you know at actually utilizing this.
Speaker 1: He was a former chemist. Let's just say the most
Speaker 1: you know, crazy scenario where he knew exactly how to
Speaker 1: do this. There are so many different non controlled substances
Speaker 1: that actually test positive for drugs and change that substance
Speaker 1: that look like narcotics that it makes it impossible to
Speaker 1: really verify if this is a drug or not. And
Speaker 1: let's be honest, most of these officers are not scientists
Speaker 1: or chemists. And there are many other problems, including that
Speaker 1: these tests just aren't that easy to read. One color
Speaker 1: can easily be interpreted as another. So what are some
Speaker 1: examples of this? For example, one test, it says that
Speaker 1: LSD should turn all of black, but sugar turns dark brown. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're on the side of the road pulling someone
Speaker 1: over at night, there's lights flashing, things are going on,
Speaker 1: it's noisy, it's hot, you're in you're in South Texas.
Speaker 1: You're shaking this thing around and you're looking at it
Speaker 1: and you're saying, is that dark brown or is that
Speaker 1: all of black? I mean, it's it's a pretty ridiculous question.
Speaker 1: But this can mean the difference between someone being arrested
Speaker 1: or being let go uh free because of this slight
Speaker 1: color change. And then another test, another very popular test.
Speaker 1: Cocaine is supposed to be a deep orange yellow, while
Speaker 1: salt is a strong orange. If you can explain to
Speaker 1: me what a strong orange is compared to a deep
Speaker 1: orange yellow, um, please let me know. So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of someone like Amy, who we talked about at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode and whose story was actually published
Speaker 1: in an article by pro Publica. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're interested, you can find this article and others
Speaker 1: about these roadside drug tests in our show notes. But
Speaker 1: someone like Amy is taken to jail based on this
Speaker 1: flawed roadside test, and she's told by her court appointed
Speaker 1: defense attorney that there's another test that can verify the results.
Speaker 1: Of course, that test is going to take quite some time,
Speaker 1: but she's told that nonetheless, So tell us about that
Speaker 1: second test, the lab test. Is it actually reliable and
Speaker 1: and if it is reliable, why aren't they using it
Speaker 1: to verify the results right away instead of having, you know,
Speaker 1: people like Amy be presented with this very precarious um
Speaker 1: circumstance in which they're made to wait around for a
Speaker 1: while with all these drug test kits, you know. And
Speaker 1: it says it right on the box that they should
Speaker 1: be verified by a forensics lab. And so most jurisdictions
Speaker 1: either have a state lab and then also for larger
Speaker 1: cities they'll have their own labs. So essentially what they
Speaker 1: do is take the substance, heat it up a lot,
Speaker 1: break it down to its elements, and then you can
Speaker 1: tell from that with you know, pretty much a undresent
Speaker 1: certainty that what it is is either narcotics or not. However,
Speaker 1: most of the time it's not getting to that point.
Speaker 1: A lot of places, um you know in Texas Department
Speaker 1: Public and Safety there just doesn't have the time and
Speaker 1: bandwidth to actually verify a lot of these these cases.
Speaker 1: Some jurisdiction, now Houston, after this story kind of broke,
Speaker 1: is now not allowing for plea deals to be accepted
Speaker 1: without that verification. But a lot of jurisdictions, particuting small jurisdictions,
Speaker 1: we have these major backlogs. People are playing within a
Speaker 1: couple of days, and then these things aren't being verified.
Speaker 1: Back every case can't get tested. With the amount and
Speaker 1: volume that we have, there's one point six million or
Speaker 1: rest for drug offenses each and every year, and if
Speaker 1: you try to verify and test all these substances, you
Speaker 1: never get through it. And so those are the problems.
Speaker 1: So the actual test, the actual science um that should
Speaker 1: be used here is not being utilized because the criminal
Speaker 1: process stops within a couple of days for most of
Speaker 1: these individuals, and then the police happens. So let's pause
Speaker 1: there for a second. Tell us about the police. Why
Speaker 1: does so many innocent people end up pleading guilty once
Speaker 1: they're charge based on these faulty roadside drug tests. So
Speaker 1: a plea deal is a negotiation, and so what it
Speaker 1: is is, hey, I can give you ten years on this,
Speaker 1: or you can take to today instead of going to trial.
Speaker 1: Let's settle this today. And so that is very attractive
Speaker 1: for a lot of people that are facing so much time,
Speaker 1: and it really does get to a point where is
Speaker 1: quite coercive. Maybe they set your bail at five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. You can't afford it. So you sit
Speaker 1: in jail and you're claiming your innocence. You're claiming your innocence.
Speaker 1: Now the prosecure delays your case again, delays your case again. Well,
Speaker 1: accept a forty five day deal, or we can go
Speaker 1: to trial and maybe you'll get two years, and you
Speaker 1: have an overworked public defender who has a huge backlog
Speaker 1: of cases on their own and can't give you the
Speaker 1: time of day because you can't afford your own attorney,
Speaker 1: And so they're telling you take the plea. You have
Speaker 1: no chance to go through this, and you're still sitting
Speaker 1: in jail, and sitting in jail and jail is not
Speaker 1: a great place, and jail it's hot or it's freezing cold,
Speaker 1: and you're with other people that are actually you know,
Speaker 1: dangerous criminals in this place, and you're going through it,
Speaker 1: and you start to think of this cost benefit analysis
Speaker 1: of do I stay in here, take this and go,
Speaker 1: or do I continue to fight this case of potentially
Speaker 1: risk you know, multiple years, are staying in here for
Speaker 1: another six to eight months. You know, the public defender
Speaker 1: is telling you the backlog at the that lab is
Speaker 1: twelve eighteen months. You know, you can't get out for
Speaker 1: quite a while. You know, these are the types of
Speaker 1: fears and risk and things people are going through in
Speaker 1: this process. And so that's why folks like Amy and
Speaker 1: thousands of others across the country have accepted plead deals
Speaker 1: even when they're actually innocent. Yeah, and what's really tragic
Speaker 1: is that once these innocent people plead guilty, whatever was
Speaker 1: used to convict them, you know, whatever was taken from
Speaker 1: their car and dropped in one of these biles that
Speaker 1: the police are saying tested positive for a certain drug
Speaker 1: um usually gets destroyed. So if they ever want to
Speaker 1: get ahold of the evidence to try to demonstrate that
Speaker 1: they actually pled guilty to something they didn't do, they
Speaker 1: can't get it. You're actually right, you know, evidence in
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases has been destroyed, and so
Speaker 1: we really don't know how many people have been wrongfully
Speaker 1: convicted because you may not be able to verify the results.
Speaker 1: I know Pro publica UH did a study and they
Speaker 1: they estimated about a hundred thousand people a year probably
Speaker 1: plead guilty based upon drug test kits alone. And so
Speaker 1: even if you have a small air rate there, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're talking about thousands of people potentially each year that
Speaker 1: actually had never done anything wrong playing guilty. And how
Speaker 1: many of those cases do you actually have the destruction
Speaker 1: of evidence? Luckily, for Amy, and it's tough to say
Speaker 1: anything is lucky about her, her case was that, you know,
Speaker 1: in Harris County, you had a forensics lab that didn't
Speaker 1: want to destroy evidence, and you also had so much
Speaker 1: volume that a motion to destroy evidence that at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the barrel for a judge of signed, So
Speaker 1: that motion was never signed in her case, and so
Speaker 1: six months later this was actually tested and it was
Speaker 1: a food crumb. So because of what was really an oversight,
Speaker 1: the evidence in her case was never destroyed. So they
Speaker 1: were able to retest the evidence and find out that
Speaker 1: She's actually innocent, and they sent the letter to Amy's
Speaker 1: house notifying her, but it took a long time to
Speaker 1: actually get that letter, so Amy went a long time
Speaker 1: not knowing that this evidence had ever been retested. Now,
Speaker 1: the problem with that, and the problem in Amy's case,
Speaker 1: is that she had moved from her original address at
Speaker 1: that time. And so for a lot of folks, I mean,
Speaker 1: this has been going on for years, they can't find everyone,
Speaker 1: and so these criminal convictions continue to linger. Some of
Speaker 1: these individuals were homeless, some of these are extreme poverty.
Speaker 1: Some have moved out far away and don't understand that
Speaker 1: this is going on, and so a lot of these
Speaker 1: cases are still unresolved to this day. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened in Amy's case. I think her initial letter
Speaker 1: was sent in two thousand and fourteen. It took until
Speaker 1: you know, two reporters from New York Times to finally
Speaker 1: get in touch with her, UM and finally found her,
Speaker 1: you know, six years later after this happened, she had
Speaker 1: already had the criminal conviction on her record. UM, she
Speaker 1: had lost everything she was working at like a convenience
Speaker 1: store and then kind of working for a slum lord
Speaker 1: after that because she couldn't get a job with a
Speaker 1: felony record. And of this entire woman's life is is
Speaker 1: ruined based upon the evidence of this drug. Kid. Look,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. I have so
Speaker 1: many clients that when they get out, you know, there's
Speaker 1: always you know, a celebration, um, and oftentimes it's covered
Speaker 1: in the press. And UM, after that first, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty four forty seventy two hours, UM, you know, a
Speaker 1: different kind of nightmare begins for them. You know, trying
Speaker 1: to assimilate back into society is just you know, very
Speaker 1: very difficult. The psychological harm that has done, you know,
Speaker 1: from somebody being in a combined space and having to
Speaker 1: answer to someone, having to ask permission to do something,
Speaker 1: you know, simple things like go to the bathroom or eat.
Speaker 1: It's just it's hard to undo. And you know, this
Speaker 1: stain of a wrongful incarceration and wrongful conviction really sticks
Speaker 1: with you. You know the Internet, things don't leave there,
Speaker 1: and so you have this arrest record on that, you
Speaker 1: have these convictions on there, and those linger with you
Speaker 1: for quite a while. It costs thousands of dollars to
Speaker 1: get your case expunge, even if you're wrongfully convicted, and
Speaker 1: even if you get that off your physical record, the
Speaker 1: digital records still stays there. You have a mug shot
Speaker 1: that's out there. You have this arrest record, you have
Speaker 1: the plea. You have all these different documents and they
Speaker 1: can be scrubbed from one thing, but they can pop
Speaker 1: up on another. You'll have the same company have something
Speaker 1: called mug shots dot com and then they'll have mug
Speaker 1: shots with the z dot com and then you have
Speaker 1: to pay to get it off of there. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure if you looked up Amy all
Speaker 1: Britton and criminal history on a lot of these different sites,
Speaker 1: you probably still see that she was arrested charging convicted
Speaker 1: for drug possession. And if you're trying to get a job,
Speaker 1: you're trying to get public funding, public housing, apply to school,
Speaker 1: all these different things that's gonna pop up, and sometimes
Speaker 1: an employer or a college or something else will just
Speaker 1: brush past you because that even though you were actually
Speaker 1: exonerated of a crime. So if these tests are so problematic,
Speaker 1: why is law enforcements still using them? Why are they
Speaker 1: so so popular? Well, they're incredibly popular and and the
Speaker 1: reason that they're so popular is because they're cheap and
Speaker 1: they allow and I'm using this term loosely, for officers
Speaker 1: and procedures to gather some sort of chemical evidence early
Speaker 1: on in the trial and keep that churn of the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system going. We had one point six million
Speaker 1: arrests for drug offenses in two thousand eighteen. If everyone
Speaker 1: went to trial on those things, you you'd never get through.
Speaker 1: It would take decades to get through all the cases.
Speaker 1: And so what a FIEL drug test kit does is
Speaker 1: allows to exhibitite the criminal justice system and garner police
Speaker 1: from individuals at the earliest stage in the process. So,
Speaker 1: do you think there's anything that can prevent these roadside
Speaker 1: drug tests from resulting in innocent people getting convicted because
Speaker 1: of investigative stories like we had in Atlanta there was
Speaker 1: an incredible one down there where they found that a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five life people just in two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen alone, we're wrongfully convicted of drug possession, and the
Speaker 1: ones in Houston, and we had you know, certain cases
Speaker 1: in in Arizona and Las Vegas. These investigative reports and
Speaker 1: these types of podcasts that you guys are doing has
Speaker 1: brought more information on the inaccuracies of these and actually
Speaker 1: in Harris County they no longer allow for a plea
Speaker 1: to be entered until it has been verified by a laboratory.
Speaker 1: And so um, you are seeing changes across the country
Speaker 1: on how these are utilized, but still in many jurisdictions,
Speaker 1: particularly smaller jurisdictions, judges are taking these pleas and prosecutors
Speaker 1: are driving these police without actually verifying the results. These
Speaker 1: types of stories are extremely valuable, but the sad truth
Speaker 1: is that these kinds of changes take a lot of
Speaker 1: work and a lot of time. So in the meantime,
Speaker 1: um for the immediate future, is there anything else that
Speaker 1: can be done to stop these kinds of wrongful convictions?
Speaker 1: If you're about to accept a plea based upon this alone,
Speaker 1: do not. You do have newer technologies today that actually
Speaker 1: are able to be more readily accurate and don't produce
Speaker 1: as many false positives. But those are very expensive and
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, smaller jurisdictions can't afford those,
Speaker 1: and so that's a good thing, but that's gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, a long ways out. And so you know,
Speaker 1: these drug test kits are still very prevalence. They just
Speaker 1: should not be used in the first place. It's likely
Speaker 1: that stories like Amy's would have remained cloaked in silence
Speaker 1: had it not been for journalists from Pro Publica and
Speaker 1: The New York Times who did extensive reporting to understand
Speaker 1: the depth of the problems that are associated with roadside
Speaker 1: drug test kits. In fact, Amy likely wouldn't have learned
Speaker 1: about the retesting of the evidence in her case, which
Speaker 1: verified what she already knew that she was innocent, if
Speaker 1: these reporters hadn't tracked her down. It's because of these
Speaker 1: investigative journalists that the problems associated with drug test kits
Speaker 1: came to light, and it's in a large part due
Speaker 1: to their reporting that local municipalities across the country are
Speaker 1: being pressured to change their regulations regarding roadside drug tests.
Speaker 1: Oversight is being implemented to ensure that the work of
Speaker 1: crime labs is reliable. There's an increased scrutiny of plea
Speaker 1: deals for drug offenses where there isn't evidence to support
Speaker 1: a person's guilt. This kind of reporting is extraordinarily important
Speaker 1: for helping the Innocence Project and lawyers like me identify
Speaker 1: cases where individuals were wrongfully convicted, and to bring these
Speaker 1: cases to the public's attention. So subscribe to news out
Speaker 1: with like Pro Publica, The Martial Project, the New York Times,
Speaker 1: or wherever you see quality journalism that is focused on
Speaker 1: exposing the shortcomings of our criminal justice system. We hear
Speaker 1: this phrase fake news. Fake news. That's all fake news
Speaker 1: carelessly tossed around to the point where people are actually
Speaker 1: beginning to believe that they should be dismissive of anything
Speaker 1: written by a journalist. This is so dangerous for reasons
Speaker 1: that I think are obvious to listeners of this show.
Speaker 1: This assault on our media makes support incredible news organizations
Speaker 1: more important than ever, as it is often under the
Speaker 1: microscope of their thorough investigative reporting that we uncover and
Speaker 1: then prevent the junk science behind wrongful convictions. Next week
Speaker 1: will explore the junk science of eyewitness identification with the
Speaker 1: renowned psychologist and memory expert Elizabeth loftis Wrongful Conviction Junk
Speaker 1: Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our executive
Speaker 1: producer Jason Flom and the team as Signal Company number
Speaker 1: One execut and producer Kevin Wardas and senior producers Karen
Speaker 1: korn Aber and Brit Spangler. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: Jay Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Dot.
Speaker 1: Josh followed the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on
Speaker 1: Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction