SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia State Police Crime Lab received elite certification from the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board.
“This is the highest achievement you can attain as a forensic laboratory,” crime lab acting director Sheri Lemons said Monday. “We’ve been working on that transition since 2012 and received the news that we were completely officially accredited.”
The crime lab has been accredited but the new recognition is a higher standard from ASCLD/LAB. Lemons said the crime lab’s eight divisions had to meet 400 different standards. She said they not only met them but were not asked to make any corrections following a review of the lab.
“This should just show to the citizens of the state of West Virginia that their one full-service laboratory, here in South Charleston, continues to work with quality in mind and the utmost quality and we’ve proven that now.”
Officials said the recognition shows how far the crime lab has improved from the Fred Zain controversy of the 1980s and 1990s. The work of the lab’s former director of serology was discredited and hundreds of convictions overturned. The retired executive director of the ASCLD/LAB, Bud Keato, told MetroNews the standards now in place at the lab would have detected the shoddy work during Zain’s tenure.
“Technical review is done by someone who is technically competent to insure the results reported by an individual are consistent with the documentation obtained in the analysis of the evidence,” Keaton said.
Lemons said the 50-plus workers at the lab won’t rest on the accreditation. They plan to continue to follow the highest standards and will face a review every year.