Opinion ID: 2773131
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Criminal Investigation Of The OCME

Text: In February 2014, the Delaware State Police (“DSP”) and the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) began an investigation into criminal misconduct occurring in the Controlled Substances Unit of the OCME.18 The investigation revealed that some drug evidence sent to the OCME for testing had been stolen by OCME employees 17 Id. at A66. 18 The facts are set forth in a 36-page preliminary report issued jointly by the DSP and DOJ on June 19, 2014 entitled Investigation of Missing Drug Evidence: Preliminary Findings, a copy of which is included in the Appendix to Brown’s Opening Brief at A23-58. 7 in some cases and was unaccounted for in other cases. Oversight of the lab had been lacking, and security procedures had not been followed. One employee was accused of “dry labbing” (or declaring a test result without actually conducting a test of the evidence) in several cases. Although the investigation remains ongoing, to date, three OCME employees have been suspended (two of those employees have been criminally indicted), and the Chief Medical Examiner has been fired.19 There is no evidence to suggest that OCME employees tampered with drug evidence by adding known controlled substances to the evidence they received for testing in order to achieve positive results and secure convictions.20 That is, there is no evidence that the OCME staff “planted” evidence to wrongly obtain convictions. Rather, the employees who stole the evidence did so because it in fact consisted of illegal narcotics that they could resell or take for personal use. On June 5, 2014, almost two months after Brown filed his appeal, the DOJ sent a letter to Brown’s counsel stating that one or more of the individuals in the chain of custody for his case was indicted on criminal charges resulting from the OCME investigation. The letter further stated that the State has no evidence that 19 See State v. Irwin, 2014 WL 6734821,  (Del. Super. Nov. 17, 2014). 20 Compare United States v. Smith, __ F. Supp.3d __, 2014 WL 7179472 (D.Mass. Dec. 15, 2014) (noting that a laboratory chemist in Massachusetts had pleaded guilty to multiple charges of tampering with evidence by adding controlled substances to the samples she tested in order to achieve a positive test result). 8 the bags seized from Brown did not contain heroin or had in any way been tampered with or altered.21