SF public defender asks mayor for 2 more positions to help review crime lab cases

SF Public Defender wants help with crime lab flap

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco public defender has asked Mayor Gavin Newsom for two new positions in his office to review cases possibly affected by a crime lab scandal.

Public Defender Jeff Adachi said on Wednesday that he’s requesting one paralegal and one senior legal processing clerk to help review an estimated 30,000 cases dating back to 2005 possibly tainted by former lab technician Deborah Madden.

Newsom spokesman Tony Winnicker confirmed that the mayor’s office received Adachi’s request on Wednesday. He also noted that Adachi’s office budget has grown some 47 percent since 2004.

“We will be working with his office to try to understand his request better,” Winnicker said.

The request for additional staff comes after interview transcripts obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Madden had acknowledged in a police interview that she used cocaine found at work.

Madden told investigators in February that she started using drugs from her job last fall to mask a drinking problem, according to the transcript. Madden, 60, said she used cocaine that spilled at her work station after she was done testing it as evidence.

“If some of it, you know, fell on the counter after I put the stuff away rather than just throw it in the garbage, which is what I normally did, yeah I did take a little bit of that,” Madden said.

Madden told inspectors she started using cocaine last year after trying it from a friend. She told police that she stole leftovers of cocaine evidence samples five times during a three-month period that began last fall. She said she only used the drug at home.

The transcript is among more than 1,000 pages of documents that a judge ruled Tuesday that police and prosecutors must turn over to defense attorneys regarding the city’s embattled crime lab.

Police closed the lab’s drug testing unit on March 9 after alleging that Madden stole cocaine evidence. She has not been charged.

So far, prosecutors have dismissed more than 365 drug cases and have been unable to charge an additional 450 due to the lab’s indefinite closure.

Madden took a leave of absence from the lab in December following an audit that found cocaine was missing from the lab and retired last month after 29 years. She entered treatment for alcoholism in December.

“I was trying to control my drinking,” Madden told police, according to the report. “I thought that I could control my drinking by using some cocaine. … I don’t think (it) worked.”

Madden’s attorney, Paul DeMeester, said Tuesday that his client used cocaine from her job that was “leftover residue after the analysis was completed.”

DeMeester said Madden’s statements to police two months ago show that any alleged drug use is recent and does not affect any San Francisco drug cases prior to last fall.

During the interview, the inspectors told Madden that 11 of 25 recent cocaine samples she had worked on at the lab showed evidence that the original staples had been removed and the samples later restapled.

She said she didn’t remove cocaine from the samples for personal use.

Recent audits of the crime lab revealed that employees were overworked and not doing their jobs properly. The audits also found that technicians often left drug evidence in unsecured boxes or lockers ripe for possible theft, and technicians did not record when they may have reopened evidence sampling.

The lab also failed to calibrate scales used for weighing drugs, the reports said.

In a criminal case, the weight of the drug can result in suspects getting a greater or lesser sentence.

Madden told police repeatedly during her interview that her fellow co-workers often had “huge discrepancies” when weighing drugs.

“I think if you go back and reweigh cases you are going to find discrepancies,” Madden said. “I think you’re gonna see discrepancies all along throughout the years.”

When police asked her why it had never been reported, Madden replied, “I don’t know, we just kinda just laughed at it.”

During a recent search of Madden’s home, police discovered small amounts of a “white powdery substance” they believed to be cocaine. She pleaded not guilty last week to a felony cocaine possession charge in San Mateo County Superior Court.