On February 20, 2014 the Delaware State Police shut down the Controlled Substances Lab inside the Delaware Medical Examiner’s Office after it was discovered the lab had lax security, and drug evidence for criminal cases was missing and in some cases replaced with fake evidence. Within days the Delaware’s Attorney General requested that all drug related criminal cases in the state be delayed, and Delaware Chief Medical Examiner Richard T. Callery was suspended pending an investigation of the lab’s operation.
Delaware Chief Medical Examiner Richard T. Callery
In early March 2014 the State Police began a separate criminal investigation into whether Callery misused state resources to run his private consulting business. Callery’s state salary was $198,500 a year, and he charged at least $200 an hour as an expert witness — primarily for out-of-state defendants.
The State Police investigation was triggered when during a trial in early February 2014 a prosecutor recognized the pills in evidence that were supposed to be Oxycontin were in fact blood pressure medication. The investigation discovered that lab surveillance cameras were disabled, drug evidence was missing, and there were numerous discrepancies between when police log notes showed drug evidence was submitted to the crime lab and when the lab recorded it as having been received — which allowed time for fake evidence to be substituted for drugs and logged in.
When the scandal was first reported Delaware Public Defender Brendan O’Neill told reporters, “I don’t think this is going to end soon. This is the tip of the iceberg.”
In the first wave of an expected 9,500 motions to vacate tainted drug related felony and misdemeanor convictions between 2010 and February 2014, the Public Defender’s Office filed motions on April 30, 2014 to overturn 112 cases. The motions described the state’s crime lab was “an investigative arm” of the prosecutor’s office. As of mid-May 420 motions to vacate drug convictions have been filed by the Delaware Public Defender’s Office.
By Hans Sherrer
Justice Denied
May 15, 2014
