Considering that there was nearly a half pound of the substance in his vehicle, the police thought that they had conducted the bust of the century. They even put out a press release with LeBeau's mugshot to brag about the bust, after two faulty field tests determined that the substance was crystal meth. While LeBeau spent 3 days in jail, the kitty litter was sent to a forensics lab for further testing, and it was ultimately discovered that the substance was not meth.
"They thought they had the biggest bust in Harris County. This was the bust of the year for them," LeBeau said.
"I was wrongly accused. I'm going to do everything in my power to clear my name," he added.
Attorney George Reul pointed out that the department's entire field testing system may be compromised.
Video Link:
"Ultimately it might be bad testing equipment that they need to re-evaluate," attorney George Reul said.
Cases like this are nothing new, in fact, we report on them on a regular basis.
According to the national litigation and public policy organization, the Innocence Project, at any given time there are an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 innocent people currently locked in cages in U.S. prisons.
Couple this staggering number with the number of people locked up for non-violent drug possession and the United States looks more like the Gulag of the 1930's than the Land of the Free.
But how can so many innocent people be locked up, how does the state present evidence, that it doesn't have, to get a conviction? Well, the folks at the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the U.S., Marijuana Policy Project, made a short video that explains just how easy it is for police to turn an entirely innocent person into a criminal.
During the short video below, the researchers demonstrate how easy it is for police to generate a false positive during a field test for drugs.
The group tests over the counter Tylenol PM in a police test kit for cocaine — the test kit says the Tylenol is cocaine.
The group also tests the most popular chocolate in the world, Hershey's chocolate, for marijuana, it also tests positive.
Perhaps the most disturbing test was when the group put absolutely nothing into the field test kit, and they received a positive result.
The implications associated with wrongfully accusing and then claiming to have evidence of an individual in possession of an illegal substance are formidable — to say the least. Most people are simply unaware of the fact that police test kits are a crapshoot.
According to Forensic Resources:
In spite of these recommendations and multiple examples of innocent people being incarcerated for their error, police departments across the country continue to employ the use of these "totally useless" kits.The director of a lab recognized by the International Association of Chiefs of Police for forensic science excellence has called field drug testing kits "totally useless" due to the possibility of false positives. In laboratory experiments, at least two brands of field testing kits have been shown to produce false positives in tests of Mucinex, chocolate, aspirin, chocolate, and oregano.
Here's a Google [Link] for the search terms, "AIDS Testing false positive'.
Some of the hits are worth a read, particularly in view of the fact that thousands of MDs and researchers think that AIDS, so called, is one on the great pieces of 20th century BS.