By Deandra Grant, J.D., M.S. (Pharmaceutical Science), ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist
When a forensic laboratory analyst takes the stand in a DWI or drug case, one of the first things the prosecution establishes is that the laboratory is “accredited.” The word is deployed like a seal of infallibility: the lab is accredited, therefore the results are reliable, therefore the defendant is guilty.
Judges accept it. Juries accept it. Many defense attorneys accept it without challenge.
They should not.
A landmark article published this month in Forensic Science International: Synergy — one of the most respected peer-reviewed journals in forensic science — directly confronts the assumption that accreditation equals reliability. The article, “The Limits of Accreditation: Monopoly, Insularity, and the Need for Openness in Forensic Science” (Olson & Pridgen, 2026), documents how accredited laboratories have produced scientifically indefensible results for years, how the accreditation system failed to catch the problems, and why the structure of forensic accreditation in the United States makes these failures predictable rather than anomalous.
As an ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist who teaches forensic chromatography and drug analysis at Axion Analytical Labs, I have seen firsthand how accreditation is invoked in court as a substitute for scientific scrutiny. This article explains why that is dangerous and what defense attorneys should do about it.
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What Accreditation Actually Is — and What It Is Not
Forensic laboratories in the United States are accredited under ISO/IEC 17025, an international standard for testing and calibration laboratories. The standard requires laboratories to document their procedures, validate their methods, and maintain quality management systems. It was not originally developed for forensic science. It was adopted because no forensic-specific quality management standard existed.
Accreditation evaluates whether a laboratory has written procedures and whether its personnel follow those procedures. As Olson and Pridgen note, accreditation assessors often describe their standard with the phrase: “Say what you do, and do what you say.”
That principle ensures procedural consistency. It does not ensure scientific validity.
Accreditation does not evaluate whether the underlying scientific approach is appropriate for the analytical problem. A laboratory can be fully accredited while using a method that is scientifically inappropriate for its intended purpose. This is the critical distinction that prosecutors gloss over and that defense attorneys must understand: accreditation is a floor for procedural compliance, not a ceiling for scientific quality.
Three Accredited Laboratories, Three Systemic Failures
The Olson & Pridgen article centers on three cases where accredited laboratories produced unreliable results for years before the problems were discovered — and in each case, the accreditation system was not what caught the problem.
Randox Testing Services (United Kingdom, 2017)
Randox Testing Services was one of the largest forensic toxicology providers in the United Kingdom. It was accredited. It processed thousands of cases. And laboratory staff allegedly manipulated calibration and quality control data so that analytical runs appeared to meet acceptance criteria when they did not.
The manipulation occurred upstream in the analytical process, meaning the altered data looked legitimate to both the scientists interpreting the results and to the accreditation body reviewing the laboratory’s documentation. The accreditation system did not catch it.
What caught it: a defense expert in a single impaired driving case who demanded the underlying analytical data behind a summary forensic report. That deeper review revealed anomalies suggesting calibration data had been manipulated. What began as scrutiny of one case expanded into a national investigation affecting approximately 10,000 criminal cases across the United Kingdom. Dozens of convictions were overturned. Thousands of cases required review.
Maryland Department of State Police Forensic Sciences Division (2011–2021)
The Maryland State Police forensic laboratory used a single-point calibration curve for blood alcohol analysis in casework which is a practice that is widely recognized as scientifically inappropriate for quantitative forensic toxicology. Single-point calibration does not span the relevant analytical range. It is the equivalent of measuring one point on a ruler and assuming the entire ruler is accurate.
This practice continued for a decade. The laboratory passed accreditation assessments in 2015 and again in 2019 before the problem was formally cited in 2021.
Ten years of blood alcohol results generated by a scientifically inappropriate method, inside an accredited laboratory, reviewed by accreditation assessors, and never flagged until 2021. Every defendant convicted on the basis of those results deserved better.
University of Illinois Chicago Analytical Forensic Testing Laboratory (2016–2024)
The UIC laboratory’s LCMS method for THC testing could not adequately separate Δ8-THC from Δ9-THC which are two structurally similar but legally distinct compounds. Δ9-THC is the psychoactive form relevant to DUI-cannabis prosecutions. Δ8-THC is a different compound with different legal status. If the analytical method cannot distinguish between them, a positive result for Δ9-THC may actually reflect the presence of Δ8-THC, or a combination of both, making the result forensically meaningless.
Internal testing in 2021 indicated that the method could not achieve adequate separation. The laboratory’s management knew about the problem. Yet the methodology remained in place until 2024, and the laboratory remained accredited throughout.
The consequences have been devastating. An investigation by Injustice Watch revealed that the laboratory processed more than 2,000 DUI-cannabis cases using scientifically discredited methods and faulty machinery. The lab’s senior forensic toxicologist testified in court in ways that prosecutors later acknowledged were misleading. At least 18 convictions have been vacated so far. At least two people are currently serving prison sentences based on the lab’s work. Defense attorneys estimate hundreds of additional wrongful convictions may exist.
Just last week (March 12, 2026) the Illinois Forensic Science Commission publicly stated that UIC’s own internal investigation report was insufficient and that the commission “does not consider the UIC report to be an authoritative document for criminal justice stakeholders to evaluate the competency or accuracy of forensic testing.” The commission recommended an independent audit be conducted “posthaste.”
The laboratory was accredited by ANAB throughout the entire period.
Why the System Fails: The Monopoly and the Silo
Olson and Pridgen identify two structural problems that explain why accreditation failed to catch these issues.
The Near-Monopoly
In the United States, just two organizations (ANAB and A2LA) accredit more than 99% of forensic providers. ANAB alone accredits approximately 94%. This means that a single private vendor functions as the de facto regulator of government forensic operations across the country. But private accreditors are not public regulatory agencies. They are not subject to transparency laws, public accountability mechanisms, or enforcement mandates. When one entity dominates the accreditation landscape, the entire field becomes dependent on that entity’s interpretation of standards, assessor culture, and internal norms.
The Silo Problem
In most non-forensic ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation programs, assessors are drawn from a broad pool of technical experts representing multiple testing and calibration disciplines. That diversity introduces perspectives from different measurement and analytical fields and helps prevent the normalization of weak practices.
Forensic accreditation operates differently. The assessor pool is drawn largely from within the forensic laboratory community itself. Lead and technical assessors are typically volunteers from other crime laboratories rather than independent experts from outside the forensic sector. These assessors attend the same conferences, publish in the same journals, belong to the same professional organizations, and often work under the same law enforcement hierarchical structure.
As Olson and Pridgen observe, this creates a structural conflict of interest: assessors drawn from peer laboratories may have an unintended incentive to overlook issues in neighboring laboratories to avoid reciprocal scrutiny when those same organizations conduct future assessments of their own facilities. More fundamentally, if a questionable practice becomes normalized within forensic culture, as single-point calibration apparently did in Maryland, it may pass unchallenged by assessors precisely because it is familiar to everyone in the room.
The Texas Context
Texas has one advantage that most states lack: the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC). Olson and Pridgen specifically cite Texas as having “one of the most developed oversight models in the United States,” noting that the TFSC investigates allegations of professional negligence or misconduct and conducts broader scientific reviews of forensic disciplines.
But the TFSC is not a substitute for rigorous defense scrutiny. The Commission is a reactive body which means it investigates complaints and conducts reviews, but it does not audit every lab on every method in real time. The accreditation system is supposed to do that. And as the three cases above demonstrate, the accreditation system has failed repeatedly to catch fundamental scientific problems.
In Texas DWI cases, blood alcohol testing is performed primarily by headspace gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (HS-GC-FID). The accuracy of those results depends on proper calibration, appropriate internal standards, adequate chromatographic separation, correct headspace temperature and equilibration, and competent quality control. None of this is guaranteed by the fact that the lab has a certificate on the wall.
Case Results
What Defense Attorneys Must Do
The lesson from these scandals is not that accreditation is worthless. It is that accreditation is not enough. As Olson and Pridgen conclude: “Accreditation should be the beginning of scrutiny, not the end of it.”
In every DWI, drug, or other case that depends on laboratory evidence, defense counsel must go beyond the accreditation certificate and examine the actual science:
- Demand the underlying data, not just the report. The Randox scandal was uncovered because a defense expert demanded the raw calibration data behind a summary report. If the defense had accepted the summary at face value, as happens in most cases, the manipulation would have continued indefinitely. Request chromatograms, calibration records, quality control data, internal standard preparation logs, and maintenance records for the specific instrument and analytical run that produced your client’s result.
- Evaluate the method, not just the result. Maryland’s single-point calibration problem was not a data manipulation issue. It was a methodological failure. The method itself was inappropriate for quantitative forensic toxicology. Ask the laboratory for its standard operating procedure and have it reviewed by someone with the scientific training to evaluate whether the analytical approach is appropriate for the specific analytical question being asked.
- Challenge separation and specificity. The UIC laboratory’s failure to separate Δ8-THC from Δ9-THC is a specificity problem. The same type of problem can arise in any analytical method that relies on chromatographic separation, including blood alcohol analysis by HS-GC-FID. If the column, temperature program, or conditions are not adequate to resolve ethanol from potential interferents, the result may be artificially elevated. Ask whether the method has been validated for specificity against relevant interferents, and request the validation data.
- Do not accept “we’re accredited” as an answer. When a laboratory analyst testifies that the lab is accredited and follows rigorous quality standards, the defense should be prepared to cross-examine on what accreditation actually evaluates, what it does not evaluate, and whether the specific method used in the defendant’s case has been independently validated. The three scandals documented by Olson and Pridgen are powerful cross-examination material: each involved an accredited laboratory producing unreliable results for years.
- Retain a forensic science expert when the stakes warrant it. The complexity of evaluating calibration models, chromatographic separation, method validation, and quality control data exceeds what most attorneys can do alone. A qualified forensic toxicologist or analytical chemist can identify problems that are invisible to someone without scientific training and can explain those problems to a judge or jury in terms they can understand.
The Bottom Line
Accreditation is a minimum standard for procedural compliance. It is not a guarantee of scientific accuracy. It is not proof that the method used in your case was appropriate. It is not evidence that the specific result reported for your client is correct. And when the accreditation system itself is dominated by a near-monopoly provider operating through an insular assessor pool drawn from the very community it is supposed to oversee, the limitations become structural.
The Randox scandal in the UK. The Maryland blood alcohol testing failure. The UIC cannabis DUI catastrophe in Chicago. All accredited. All producing unreliable results. All caught by someone other than the accreditation system.
At Deandra Grant Law, we do not accept laboratory results at face value. My pharmaceutical science training and ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist designation provide the foundation to evaluate the actual science behind the number including the calibration model, the chromatographic separation, the quality control data, the method validation, and the instrument maintenance records. When we challenge laboratory evidence, we are not attacking science. We are demanding that the science be done correctly.
If you are facing a DWI, drug, or any charge that depends on forensic laboratory evidence in Texas, contact Deandra Grant Law at (214) 225-7117 or visit texasdwisite.com.
References
Olson, A. & Pridgen, B. (2026). “The Limits of Accreditation: Monopoly, Insularity, and the Need for Openness in Forensic Science.” Forensic Science International: Synergy, 12, 100671. doi: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2026.100671
Dukmasova, M. (2025). “How a Rogue Chicago Forensics Lab Got People Convicted for Driving High” Injustice Watch, August 14, 2025.
Gestring, B.J. (2025). “The Invisible Crisis Facing Forensic Providers in the United States” Forensic Science International: Synergy, 11, 100631.
Olson, A. & Ramsay, C. (2025). “Errors in Toxicology Testing and the Need for Full Discovery” Forensic Science International: Synergy, 11, 100629.
National Research Council (2009). Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. National Academies Press.
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