Almost a decade ago, a Simi Valley-based medical supply company began providing the California Department of Justice urinalysis tests for law enforcement agencies around the state that didn\u2019t have local forensic labs to test for alcohol.<\/p>\n
For most of that time, the test kits Andwin Scientific supplied were faulty, potentially inflating the results of DUI suspects in the heart of California\u2019s wine country and elsewhere, according to a letter state officials sent to Sonoma County prosecutors that was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.<\/p>\n
As a result, an untold number of criminal cases across California were potentially up for review, with about 60 law enforcement agencies and seven district attorney\u2019s offices informed that cases in their jurisdictions could be affected, a state Justice Department spokesperson said. Generally, urinalysis tests are rarely used to prosecute DUIs.<\/p>\n
Following an audit by the state, officials told The Times this week, the state Department of Justice determined that only a small number of California\u2019s DUI and other cases involving alcohol analyses \u2014 0.07% \u2014 involved the faulty urinalysis tests and needed to be reviewed. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s now up to local jurisdictions such as Sonoma County to do a deeper dive and see if anything was missed. Large counties, such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and Orange counties, which have their own labs, were not affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have alerted the impacted agencies so they can conduct their own review of the case information,\u201d state Justice Department officials told The Times in an email.<\/p>\n
Authorities first learned that the tests were faulty last summer, according to the letter state officials sent Sonoma County. <\/p>\n
For nearly 10 years up until then, the test kits Andwin Scientific supplied the state did not contain the necessary amount of the chemical compound sodium fluoride to prevent urine samples from fermenting, according to the state\u2019s letter. That meant that urine samples with high sugar content could have started fermenting and consequently generated alcohol that could have skewed the test result or created a false positive.<\/p>\n
For that to happen, several different variables would have had to align, Katina Repp, director of the state\u2019s lab in Santa Rosa, told the Sonoma County district attorney\u2019s office in the Jan. 28 letter. <\/p>\n
For the low levels of the fermentation-blocking compound to make a difference, the tested urine would need to contain a high concentration of sugar, which usually only happens for people with diabetes. For that sugar to then ferment and produce alcohol, the person giving the sample would also need to have a yeast infection, she wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is possible, under these ideal conditions described above, that some fermentation may have occurred [in some tests],\u201d Repp wrote. \u201cHowever, this is still not likely as there was at least some sodium fluoride which would help preserve the sample.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being notified of the issue, Andwin Scientific fixed the tests and the state launched an audit of all the criminal cases that it believed could have been affected. The audit ultimately flagged 97 tests that showed near or above 0.04% alcohol in a person\u2019s system \u2014 the maximum allowed for commercial drivers before they could be charged with a DUI. The department did not specify why it chose that threshold. <\/p>\n
Out of the thousands of DUI cases Sonoma County has prosecuted since 2016, ultimately only six were flagged for a deeper review, Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Matthew Henning said.<\/p>\n
In each case, the office concluded there was enough other evidence of intoxication that nothing more needed to be done. In another three criminal cases, the people who gave urine samples were not the defendants, he said. <\/p>\n
Attorneys in each of the cases were informed, including the public defender\u2019s office, according to a letter obtained by The Times from Sonoma County prosecutors to the public defender\u2019s office. <\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough we have attempted to identify all Sonoma County cases that were potentially impacted by what is described in the attached letter, please let us know if there are any other cases you are aware of that should be assessed, and we will promptly investigate those matters,\u201d Assistant Dist. Atty. Brian Staebell wrote.<\/p>\n
In an email to The Times on Wednesday, the Sonoma County district attorney\u2019s office said they were \u201clooking into these issues.\u201d The Sonoma County public defender\u2019s office did not immediately provide comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost a decade ago, a Simi Valley-based medical supply company began providing the California Department of Justice urinalysis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1630,7,9,8,1436,30208,81309,1838,346,17262,103205,225,103206,1523,103208,1791,103207],"class_list":["post-226758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-alcohol","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-case","tag-criminal-case","tag-dui-suspect","tag-letter","tag-office","tag-public-defender","tag-sonoma-county-prosecutor","tag-state","tag-state-justice-department","tag-test","tag-test-kit-andwin-scientific","tag-times","tag-urine-sample"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}