Lab tech may jeopardize cases

Author:
Bazi Kanani

What a former laboratory technician said he did while working at a lab in Broomfield could call thousands of Colorado court cases into question.

Prosecutors in California are already reviewing more than 8,000 cases he might have worked on there.

"We are just in the early stages of figuring out the scope of what this man did," said Brian Connors, chief deputy at the Office of the Colorado Public Defender.

Thirty-year-old Aaron C. Layton worked at Forensic Laboratories in Broomfield in 2000 and 2001. The company has since relocated to Denver. It performs drug and alcohol toxicology tests for numerous law enforcement agencies, county probation departments and even private businesses. While working at the lab, Layton testified in trials in Adams, Arapahoe, Jefferson and Weld counties, and possibly others.

After Layton left the Colorado lab, employment records show he applied for a job with the police department in Columbus, Ohio, in 2003. He failed the first polygraph test. He then passed the second polygraph in which he admitted that while working at Forensic Laboratories, he never conducted second tests to confirm results. Layton said he would claim he did the confirmatory tests on his reports and said he even lied about it when on the stand.

"If you look at his polygraph from Ohio, he says that it was company policy not to do confirmatory tests because of the expense and the time involved," Connors said.

"This could jeopardize every single test that that lab has ever done because it goes to the procedures that that laboratory routinely follows," defense attorney and 9News legal analyst Scott Robinson said. "Anyone who has had a test that was contested from this particular laboratory now can come forward and seek relief."

In March, the Colorado District Attorneys' Council sent an e-mail to every district attorney in the state to inform them of the problem.

Connors says his office will work with other defense-attorney organizations in the state to figure out which cases Layton might have worked on. He will also contact district attorney offices in Colorado and ask them to cooperate by reviewing their records.

"I think it's going to take a lot of investigation, and I think it's a process that's going to take months, if not years, to figure out," Connors said.

Many people whose cases involved Layton's work could have a hard time proving it. Since it has been eight years since he worked in Colorado, many records probably have been destroyed. Connors believes the concern about Layton's lab work should have come to light five years ago when he took the polygraph in Ohio.

Records from a California district attorney's office show that in December 2008 Layton appeared in court to testify as an analyst at Bio-Tox Laboratories. A defense attorney then ran a background check on him and discovered the criminal prosecution in El Paso County. When the attorney requested records to learn more about that case, he discovered the many troubling admissions in Layton's polygraph test.

Layton has not returned calls for comment.

Source:  http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12074467?source=email

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