SAN DIEGO CRIME LAB EMPLOYEE TESTIFIES FALSELY; SAN DIEGO DUI ATTORNEY DEMANDS PROSECUTION
When I last posted in the Dirty Tricks in the Crime Lab Section, I told you about how San Diego Superior Court Judge Mike Smyth - when he was a chief prosecutor at the San Diego Office of the City Attorney - had written to the San Diego Sheriff's Department in 1995 complaining that San Diego Sheriff's lab analyst Belen Hebreo testified incompetently in DUI cases. Ms. Hebreo even testified in a murder case I handled. No one ever told me about the hidden truths about Ms. Hebreo's historically false testimony.
Nothing was done, the complaint was ignored, and Smyth and his coven of unethical prosecutors continued to use Ms. Hebreo without a single prosecutor ever alerting defense attorneys about her false testimony. I found out about it fully 11 years after Smyth, now a judge, wrote that damning letter.
Now, San Diego DUI Defense Attorney Michael Fremont is making claims that a San Diego Police Department lab criminalist testified falsely in the case of People v. Poitrowski.
In a letter obtained by me from Fremont to San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, dated October 29, 2007, Fremont asks Dumanis to charge San Diego Police Department criminalist Larry Dale with perjury because "he did not tell the truth as to the ASCLAD accreditation for the crime of breath testing."
He goes on to say "The statement made by Dale on direct that 'every part of the lab has been accredited in terms of how they do business, under ASCLAD' was in fact false and constitutes perjury. An investigation should be opened and he should be charged."
Fremont has not yet received a response from Ms. Dumanis.
Note: When it was revealed that former San Diego Sheriff's department criminalist Ray Cole had falsified his resume to include that he had earned a degree in pre-medicine, neither DA Dumanis nor San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre took action, even though Cole had testified in hundreds - if not thousands - of DUI, DUI w/injury and DUI homicide cases over more than 15 years. Can we expect anything more from this new allegation? Don't hold your breath. Prosecutors in San Diego stand by the old addage "the ends justify the means." In other words, "whatever it takes to win"
