Kamal Shah, a forensic scientist at the New Jersey State Police Office, was suspended for “dry labbing” a suspected marijuana sample. Shah wrote “test results” for suspected marijuana, without actually performing tests to see the results. According to Ellie Honig, director of the Division of Criminal Justice, "Mr. Shah was observed in one case spending insufficient time analyzing a substance to determine if it was marijuana and recording an anticipated result without properly conducting the analysis." Honig said. Since 2005, Shah has handled 7,827 cases, all of which may need to be reviewed, if the state office of the public defender deems this appropriate. The prosecutor's office's plan, "is to submit for retesting specimens from open cases. However, it is unclear what will actually happen to the hundreds of people Shah helped to convict.
This article is very relevant to society. Shah clearly faked results here, and it makes you wonder if he has done it before. There is a strong possibility that many individuals were wrongly convicted because of fake results. Normally, you think people working for the state are good guys, but Mr. Shah broke the law. I also wonder if there were any ulterior motives for Mr. Shah to fake results. Or if any other forensic analysts in that office knew what he did and didn’t tell anyone.
I thought this article did a great job going into depth about how big a problem this could really be. The article was very good about getting quotes from both sides of the argument: the prosecutor's and the state office. I wish the article focused in on more about what Mr. Shah did at his job and didn’t just talk about the possible outcomes. Also, it would have been nice if the author talked about some of the cases Mr. Shah worked on and what his predominant area was in the field of forensics at the state office.
Zaremba, Justin. "Lab Tech Allegedly Faked Result in Drug Case; 7,827 Criminal Cases Now in Question." NJ.com. 2 Mar. 2016. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
5 comments:
The article called “Lab Tech Allegedly Faked Result in Drug Case; 7,827 Criminal Cases Now in Question” is about Kamalkant Shah, a lab tech who worked for the State Police. He had been spotted “dry labbing” suspected marijuana, which meant he made up data. I think Ralph did a good job on explaining a summary of what happened and the main point of the article. It was easily understood and gave an overview on Shah. I also liked the way the article included quotes from several of the lab assistant who worked with Shah. One of the directors of the Division of Criminal Justice stated that Shah was spotted not taking time to thoroughly process evidence. Ralph’s critique of the article was very detailed, and he did a good job summarizing his thought about both the pros and cons of the article.
Something that the article could have worked on was incorporating quotes from Shah himself. That would make the article much more engaging and it would be interesting to see his side of what happened. Even if Shah didn’t want to comment, the article should include that to let the readers know. Another thing the article could have done, as Ralph mentioned, was focus on the thoughts of Shah’s partners at the time. Questions that come to mind are “who else knew what Shah was doing?”, “why did he do it?”, “Was he bribed in any way?”, “What were some of the reasons he decided to do this?”, and “will the investigators really go through all 7,827 pieces of evidence from each case Shah has worked at?”. Although this article gives great detail, it also leaves readers with many unanswered questions.
Something I learned from reading this article was about how perhaps 7,827 people are actually innocent, but put in jail all because of a lab tech who faked results. This almost shows how much power investigators have. They basically decide the fate of a suspect at a crime scene and should treat their jobs with responsibility, rather than dry labbing the evidence. It also shows how important evidence is in a criminal case and how when it is used incorrectly, it could affect a suspect for life.
Ralph did a great job writing an amazing review while also choosing an article that was very interesting . One aspect of the review that I liked was how Ralph put a lot of detail into explaining why the article was so relevant to our current studies. Another aspect of the review that I liked was how he organized the review. It made it very easy to read and comprehend what he was trying to say. The last aspect of the review that I liked was how short the review was. I wasn't overloaded with lots of information but I also felt like there wasn't enough information which leads me to the suggestions I have for the review.
My first suggestion to Ralph would be to add more detail on the critique of the article because I felt like we would have gotten more information about it. Finally my last suggestion to Ralph is to explain more on what “dry labbing” is so we get a better understanding of what it is and why Forensic scientist do it.
In all, Ralph did a great job picking a good article and writing an amazing review with lots of interesting things to learn; one of them being that Mr. Shah handled 7,827 cases that all might need to be reviewed because of his “dry labbing” technique.
Zaremba, Justin. "Lab Tech Allegedly Faked Result in Drug Case; 7,827 Criminal Cases Now in Question." NJ.com. 2 Mar. 2016. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
http://www.nj.com/passaic-county/index.ssf/2016/03/state_police_lab_tech_allegedly_faked_results_in_p.html
Ralph’s article review was quite compelling. I like how he gave his concern for the previous cases Kamalkant Shaw had worked on. It seems that Shaw faked the results on his last drug analysis examination and got caught. Ralph pointed out the possibility that previous convictions may have been based on false results. I also liked his idea that there may have been a reason why Shah did this: perhaps to keep a friend from going to jail? Perhaps to get an enemy convicted? I also enjoyed the conspiracy theory Ralph offered. He said that one of Shah’s co-workers may have known about the events that transpired and kept his or her mouth shut about it.
I wish there was more information provided about the proper procedure to test for the drugs. It would have been nice to know the time it takes to complete the proper analysis and exactly how long Shaw took. For example, if it takes 10 hours for a sample to be identified, and Shah turns them around in a couple of hours, that is suspicious. Also, what was he doing instead of testing? And why did he take shortcuts. In addition, I wish it was mentioned what case was the last he was trying to solve when they found out, how he got caught and what they are doing about him and his work now. Do investigators have to dig into each of his completed case files and retest all the evidence. What if people were wrongly convicted? What if criminals are running free? What if evidence is missing or no longer viable?
I learned that the good people upon which our lives and freedom are dependent, might be bad guys after all, who do not care about accuracy, ethics or morality. I hate to sound jaded, but I already knew there were people like this out there. I just hope, if I am ever in an unfortunate situation, that there are good, honest, trustworthy, responsible people on my side and working on my case.
This review did a great job at explaining an example of ‘Dry Labbing’ with marijuana case. This review also explained very well why what Mr. Shah did was so bad. Lastly this review explained well that all of Mr.Shah’s cases which people were convicted have to be reopened and retested.
Overall this review was very well written. To improve this review I would elaborate more about Dry labbing. Also I would describe more about Mr. Shah’s cases that had to be reopened.
I was surprised that it took the prosecutor's office so long to figure out that Mr.Shah was wrongly convicting individuals with fake results.
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