San Francisco Evidence Theft, and Police Cover-up

Apparently a drug ana­lyst in San Francisco was skim­ming some drugs off the top of her cases…

…25 drug cases dis­missed at the Hall of Justice because of ques­tions sur­round­ing the police crime lab and a for­mer tech­ni­cian there who is sus­pected of steal­ing and using drug evidence.

On Tuesday, police said they were shut­ting down the lab imme­di­ately and had ordered an audit of the operation.

…deputy pub­lic defender Peter Fitzpatrick, said the drug evi­dence … had been tested by for­mer crim­i­nal­ist Deborah Madden, 60, who author­i­ties say stole and used pow­dered cocaine she was sup­posed to be testing.

Madden abruptly retired Dec. 8 after 29 years on the job and has been in treat­ment recently for drug and alco­hol use, offi­cials said. She left the crime lab shortly after an audit dis­cov­ered that drug evi­dence was miss­ing, offi­cials said.

As if the pur­ported steal­ing and con­sump­tion of drug evi­dence wasn’t bad enough…

She has not been charged in San Francisco, but she does face weapons counts in San Mateo County as a result of a police search of her San Mateo home ear­lier this month that allegedly turned up a gun.

Madden was not sup­posed to pos­sess a weapon because of a 2008 mis­de­meanor con­vic­tion for domes­tic vio­lence, author­i­ties said.

Defense lawyers pointed out that San Francisco pros­e­cu­tors didn’t reveal Madden’s domes­tic vio­lence con­vic­tion to them as they pre­pared their cases, an appar­ent vio­la­tion of rules gov­ern­ing what should be dis­closed to defen­dants’ attorneys.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi said his office specif­i­cally asked in July whether Madden had any rel­e­vant con­vic­tions and that there had been “no evi­dence forthcoming.”

Adachi demanded that an out­side inves­ti­ga­tion of the crime lab be launched. The police-requested audit isn’t good enough, he said, because the Police Department is pick­ing the auditor.

“We were com­pletely blind­sided by this,” Adachi said. “Obviously, it’s very sad that this hap­pened. But what’s even sad­der is that hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of peo­ple might have been con­victed based on evi­dence that was tam­pered with.”

Defendants found guilty more than a cou­ple of years ago can­not chal­lenge their con­vic­tions, Adachi said, because drug evi­dence used in cases before 2008 has been destroyed.

One of Adachi’s deputy pub­lic defend­ers, Elizabeth Hilton, was in court Wednesday when four defen­dants’ cases were dropped, includ­ing Christian Borda, a client of hers, and Moises Tejeda, accused of pos­sess­ing mar­i­juana for sale. The pros­e­cu­tor, Seth Steward, told the judge the charges were dropped in the “inter­est of jus­tice … given the events that occurred yes­ter­day regard­ing the crime lab.”

Hilton said pros­e­cu­tors should have dis­closed what they knew about Madden as soon as they knew it.

“The whole holding-back thing is ridicu­lous — this is about jus­tice,” she said. “You can’t tell me nobody in the D.A.‘s office knew about this before today.”

Whether or not the prosecutor’s knew about the crim­i­nal con­vic­tion, some­one in the police depart­ment should have known.

How can an agency have a con­victed crim­i­nal work in the crime lab?

Read the rest of the arti­cle at SFGate.