Alan C. Posted June 28, 2013 Posted June 28, 2013 Report: Former state lab supervisor involved in possible cover-up The audit, conducted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, determined in March that Cynthia Burbach, the former supervisor of the state’s CDPHE lab, may have tampered with or even lied about forensic tests in court. . . . “The D.A.’s may have known there’s been a problem with state lab and still sat on it,” Dan Schoen, the executive director of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, told FOX31 Denver Sunday. “They’ve possibly blocked these disclosures and violated their responsibility by sitting on this information knowing it’s been affecting cases. They are constitutionally required to disclose this and we’ve had months of convictions and defendants taking pleas possibly without evidence being disclosed that could have freed them.” Burbach, who served in the position for more than a decade before she abruptly resigned last week, stopped signing the laboratory’s official reports shortly after the audit was completed, according to Schoen, who has long been suspicious of the state lab and has spent three years trying to bring this information to light. . . . According to the press release, the lab supervisor, whose identity has thus far been withheld, operated with a bias “against individuals accused of crimes who were seeking exoneration at trial” and “in favor of getting convictions over doing justice and of helping prosecutors win trials over advancing science and the truth seeking process.”
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