Opinion ID: 202981
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Chemical Analysis

Text: In our first review of this case, we were particularly concerned about the flaws Higgins had identified in the state forensic chemist's analysis of the fire debris. Dugas IV, 428 F.3d at 334. We explained our concern by quoting Higgins's state court affidavit: [The applicable standard] requires the exact identification of flammable liquids (accelerants). [The state's experts'] report . . . gives a conclusion that they detected medium petroleum distillates . . . As you can see they said they detected but nowhere does it say they identified. In other words, their conclusion says they might have a flammable liquid, but what they fail to say is that they may not have one. Id. at 336. However, following our remand, Higgins himself examined the chromatograms from the debris samples and identified the flammable liquid on two of them as charcoal lighter fluid. He testified at the evidentiary hearing that two of the chromatograms were relatively identical to the reference chromatograms the state had made from charcoal lighter fluid taken from the store. Thus, Higgins himself now seems to agree that even if the standards requiring specific identification of an accelerant had been followed, the resulting testimony would not have helped the defense. In his testimony at the evidentiary hearing, Higgins instead pressed an argument that the chromatograms were abnormal in that they contained some of the lighter components of the accelerant. Lighter components, he explained, generally burn more quickly than the heavier ones and so the presence of the lighter components suggests that the sample had been contaminated or improperly collected. Bouchard effectively countered this contention at the hearing. She said that everything she saw in the chromatograms fell into the category of medium and not light hydrocarbons. Furthermore, if the debris had been thoroughly saturated with accelerant and not completely charred, some of the lighter hydrocarbons could be expected to remain in the sample. In addition, she explained that any minor discrepancies between the debris chromatogram and the reference chromatogram could best be explained by the fact that the charcoal lighter fluid sample could be tested directly while the fire debris had to be heated in the lab to extract the chemicals in it and transfer them to a charcoal strip for testing. This means that the chromatogram that you are going to get as a result of doing this kind of extraction is not going to be a true representation of that liquid if you ran the liquid straight. Bouchard also indicated that, because of this extraction process, a direct examination of the charcoal strips, which had been lost by the time of our remand, would not have been helpful in determining whether some form of contamination of the evidence had occurred. Weighing Higgins's theory of contamination against this evidence, the district court concluded that Higgins's critique of the chemical analysis by the state is unpersuasive and insufficient to support a prejudice determination. Dugas V, slip op. at 33. This finding is not clearly erroneous.