State v. Roche
| Decision Date | 25 November 2002 |
| Docket Number | No. 48501-6-I, No. 49228-4-I. |
| Citation | 114 Wash.App. 424,59 P.3d 682 |
| Court | Washington Court of Appeals |
| Parties | STATE of Washington, Respondent, v. James Barrett ROCHE, Appellant. In re Personal Restraint Petition of Roy Bret Sweeney, Petitioner. |
Mark David Mestel, Attorney at Law, Everett, WA, for Appellant.
Mary Kathleen Webber, David Frederick Thiele, Snohomish County Pros. Office, for Respondent.
Soon after James Roche and Roy Sweeney were convicted and sentenced for methamphetamine possession, it became public knowledge that Michael Hoover, a chemist at the Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory, had been self-medicating with heroin sent to the crime lab for testing purposes. Hoover was the chemist who had tested the substances recovered in both Roche and Sweeney's cases and reported them to be methamphetamine. Roche moved for, and was denied, a new trial based on this newly discovered evidence. Sweeney filed a personal restraint petition raising the same issue, after his request for court appointed counsel to help him move for a new trial was denied by the trial court. Because we agree that this newly discovered evidence of Hoover's malfeasance broke the chain of custody and tainted the integrity of Roche and Sweeney's trials, we reverse both convictions and remand for new trials, if the State should elect to retry them.
Michael Hoover began working as a chemist for the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory in 1989. At some point in 1998 or 1999, chemists James Boaz and David Northrop, who worked with Hoover at the crime laboratory in Marysville, noticed that Hoover was assigning himself a disproportionately large number of heroin cases. Hoover was also removing heroin cases from other chemist's file drawers and reassigning them to himself.
Northrop discovered that Hoover had specifically requested that black tar heroin cases be assigned to him. When Northrop asked Hoover why he needed black tar heroin cases, Hoover said that a Washington State Patrol canine officer had requested an extraction of pure heroin for use in training drug dogs. Northrop asked the administrative staff not to comply with Hoover's request. But Hoover continued to remove heroin cases from the drawer of unassigned cases and self-assign them.
Boaz observed that Hoover's lab data seemed sloppy. Boaz also suspected that Hoover was reducing his workload by testing a single purified sample and applying the results across a number of cases, a practice known as "dry labbing." Boaz suspected that Hoover was dry labbing because, in Boaz's professional opinion, Hoover's spectra for separate criminal cases were too similar to have come from different samples. Boaz documented at least 14 possible dry labbing incidents from August to October 2000, including several for methamphetamine from Snohomish County cases. One of these 14 cases was Sweeney's.1
Northrop and Boaz also noticed that Hoover behaved furtively around his workstation, attempted to conceal his activities from them, and kept a large amount of white powder in an evaporating dish on his desk. Boaz would sometimes hear scraping sounds coming from Hoover's desk area, followed by snorting sounds. Boaz also noticed that Hoover continually turned down the lights in the lab, that Hoover had taken to wearing long sleeved shirts and never rolled back his cuffs, that Hoover's face often appeared flushed at the end of the day, and that he often slipped out early at the end of the day. Northrop and Boaz reported their concerns to Erik Neilson, the supervisor at the lab.
In September 2000, Neilson confronted Hoover about the substances at his workstation. Hoover again said that a canine officer had requested purified heroin for dog training purposes. Neilson told Hoover that no such project had been approved, and ordered him to discontinue it. However, Boaz and Northrop noticed that Hoover continued to collect heroin at his workstation.
In November 2000, Neilson asked the Washington State Patrol to investigate Hoover. Detectives placed a hidden video camera above Hoover's workstation, and learned from watching the videotapes that Hoover was scraping the residue from evaporation dishes into small vials and hiding them on his person or around his workstation.
Detectives obtained a search warrant, and interviewed Hoover on December 22, 2000, more than 2 years after Boaz began noticing that Hoover was taking heroin cases that had been assigned to Boaz out of his file drawer. At first, Hoover continued to claim that he was purifying heroin for a canine officer, although he said he could not recall the officer's name. He also denied that he was using drugs. However, when the detectives revealed that they had been videotaping Hoover at his workstation, he finally acknowledged that he had been taking heroin samples from evidence sent to the lab for testing, purifying it, and using it to self-medicate his back pain. Hoover also admitted that he frequently used heroin at the lab shortly before leaving work. Hoover was given a urine test, which tested positive for heroin.
Detectives found 7 test tubes at the back of Hoover's workstation that appeared to contain controlled substances. The vials had various labels, including "meth" and "heroin." Testing revealed that 6 of the test tubes contained heroin, and one contained methamphetamine. Boaz and Northrop thought the quantity of material in the test tubes was larger than normal for "marker samples" commonly kept in the work area.
Hoover was charged with evidence tampering and official misconduct. On July 3, 2001, he pleaded guilty to both charges.
In December 1999, detectives from the Narcotics Task Force served a search warrant at the Lake Stevens home of James Roche. The police announced their arrival with a loudspeaker. During the search, police found Roche's wife, two daughters, and another man on the premises, but not Roche. After entering the house, there was a delay of several minutes before police went upstairs to search. In an upstairs bedroom that was apparently being used as an office, a detective noticed that the window was open, causing him to suspect that Roche may have escaped through the window and into the woods across the street. On the sidewalk below the window, police found a pouch containing a substance that looked like methamphetamine, along with a razor blade and a paper rolled into a device commonly used to ingest drugs.
In the same bedroom, police found a red toolbox containing a gray bag. Inside the gray bag, police found several baggies of a powdery substance that appeared to be methamphetamine; a traffic citation issued to James Roche; a scale; a ledger of drug sales; and $3,000 in cash. The toolbox also contained additional baggies of a substance that appeared to be methamphetamine. In a desk drawer, police discovered two more baggies of powdery substance, plus a rolled up dollar bill. Police took photographs of the scene, showing the open toolbox, baggies, and associated items. These items and photos were made trial exhibits and admitted into evidence.
At trial, Deputy Sheriff Terrence Warren testified to his discovery of trial exhibit 1, consisting of baggies which contained a substance that, in his opinion, looked similar to methamphetamine. Deputy Warren testified that the substance was packaged in a manner common in the methamphetamine trade. Deputy Warren field-tested the substance and obtained a positive result for methamphetamine. Deputy Warren and Detective Mike Thompson also testified to finding the other baggies and associated items described above, and identified them in court. The officers testified that the items were packed up and sent to the crime lab for testing.
Michael Hoover testified at trial that he was the state crime lab chemist who tested the substances found at the Roche residence. Hoover testified that his routine for testing a substance is first to put a small amount of the suspected drug on a clean plate and add chemicals to it, and to look for certain color changes indicative of controlled substances. Next, he confirms those preliminary results by placing a small amount of the substance on a clean slide, adding chemical reagents, and examining the sample under a microscope, looking for uniquely shaped crystals that grow only if methamphetamine is present. To further confirm the results, he runs an infrared spectrophotometer test and prints out the resulting spectrum, which shows a "unique fingerprint pattern" for each drug.
Hoover said that after testing, he reseals the evidence with evidence tape and initials it. Hoover identified trial exhibit 1 by the laboratory's blue evidence tape with his initials on it. Exhibit 1 consisted of 18 plastic baggies containing a chunky tan powder with a total net weight of 61.3 grams. Hoover testified that he used the abovementioned standard testing procedures to test the contents of one of the baggies in Exhibit 1, and found it to be methamphetamine. Hoover also identified Exhibits 5 and 6 by the blue tape and his initials, and testified that he tested the contents of one of the baggies in each exhibit and found them to contain methamphetamine.
The only defense witness was Samuel Swain, who testified that Roche was at Swain's house in Wenatchee at the time the police searched the Roche residence. Defense counsel argued that Roche's absence negated the State's theory that Roche constructively possessed the drugs found at Roche's house, and that the drugs must have belonged to someone else.
A jury convicted Roche of possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver; he was given a standard range sentence on November 16, 2000.2 After news of Hoover's malfeasance became public, Roche moved for a new trial or to arrest judgment, based on newly discovered evidence of Hoover's malfeasance at the crime lab. Roche also raised the possibility that...
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