Police Roadside Drug Tests can give false results.

For quite a number of these people, what occurs next can be a nightmare, with broken families, lost jobs, and years in prison. Even the defendants that finally get acquitted will have by then sunk tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Here’s where it gets heart-breaking: According to a recent investigation, a lot of these arrests by police roadside drug tests never should have occurred.

The investigation discovered that police roadside drug tests, which authorities may use to determine unknown materials discovered in the vehicles of the defendants, typically generate false positives. To put it differently, that fleck of washing detergent in the back seat of your vehicle might erroneously be flagged as crack cocaine.

The investigation also dug up false positive charges from authorities all over the country:
In Las Vegas, a sampling of cocaine field tests that ran between 2010 and 2013 was re-examined by authorities, and discovered that 33% of their total were false positives. Information in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement laboratory system reveals that 21% of signs that authorities had recorded as crystal meth wasn’t crystal meth, and half of the false positives weren’t any type of substance that is prohibited in any way. In a different example, 300 people convicted and detained in Houston were reviewed. Of their total, 74% didn’t have any drugs at the time of their arrests.

The evaluation kits, which cost about $2 each, are usually made up of a plastic bag containing vials that have reactive substances into which the sample is set. Although their use is supposed to be straightforward, it can be easy to get it wrong. A number of the compounds the evaluations used as an example, react with drugs that are prohibited but can additionally produce positives for the acne medicine Methadone, and also for lots of common household cleansers. Other evaluation kits require multiple steps that policemen occasionally perform in the wrong sequence.  Even in the event that the evaluations are performed accurately, problems can be raised in the deciphering of the outcomes.

When Did These Roadside Drug Tests  Become A Viable Form Of Evidence?

These industry assessments were launched in the early 1970s, but by 1978 the Justice Department had established that they should perhaps not be employed for evidential functions. Nevertheless they still often are, and the implications of a false result can follow defendants their entire lives.

Of the 300 individuals erroneously convicted in Houston, over half pleaded guilty at their very first court hearing. For a lot of them, their plea was a result of the urging of their lawyers who centered their guidance, at least in part on the basis of the false results. 75 percent of them continue to live with convictions on their records, some so long as 1-3 years. That may mean trouble finding a home or a job, the lack of voting rights, as well as other limitations.

Have you recently received a roadside drug charge and were wrongfully arrested?  Give the lawyers at the Butler Law Firm a call for a free consultation at (713) 236-8744