LAB MIX-UP ALARMS ATTORNEYS

The director of the state crime laboratory in Ripon is investigating how
one of his staffers mistook diet supplement for methamphetamine in capsules
taken from a man arrested in Lodi earlier this year.

A contrite John Yoshida, director of the California Department of Justice's
laboratory, said he's struggling to understand the gaffe so the mistake
isn't repeated. The lab has no record of erring like this before, he said.

"We are looking at every possibility under the sun," to figure out how the
mistake occurred, Yoshida said. "Regrettably, it did happen."

Defense attorneys in San Joaquin County said the shoddy analysis raises
doubt about the lab's credibility. The lab analyzes DNA, fingerprints and
firearms that form the bedrock evidence used to put away scores of criminals.

For Lodi resident Ryan Tetz, the lab's work could have brought him up to
four years in state prison that he didn't deserve, said his attorney
Kristine Eagle. She hopes other attorneys will be skeptical of the lab's
results.

"I think they have something to prove here," Eagle said. "I think they have
a problem."

A California Highway Patrol officer arrested Tetz, 24, on April 23 in Lodi
after the officer said Tetz was driving erratically. Tetz was first charged
with misdemeanor drunken driving and two felony cocaine counts in
connection with four plastic baggies of a white powdery substance.

A San Joaquin County deputy district attorney added two felony charges when
the Ripon lab returned its results, saying another 54 white capsules Tetz
had were filled with methamphetamine.

Questioning the meth results, Eagle sent the capsules to an independent lab
in Sacramento for further analysis. The capsules didn't contain
methamphetamine but probably a health supplement, the independent lab
found. She didn't ask for retests of the alleged bags of cocaine.

Tetz, who entered pleas of not guilty on all counts, returns to court Sept.
19. Deputy District Attorney Patrick O'Hern said he will review the case.
The methamphetamine charges will be dropped if the final tests came back
negative, he said.

Eagle said her concerns run deep.

"How many samples are not retested and are in error?" Eagle said. "Unless
we test every sample, we're not really going to know."

Tetz's pills were analyzed in a Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, an
instrument considered the "gold standard" in drug testing, said Edwin
Smith, a criminalist for the independent Drug Detection Laboratories in
Sacramento. Smith did the analysis for Eagle's client.

The mistake likely happened because the instrument wasn't cleaned well
before Tetz's pills were tested, or airborne methamphetamine contaminated
his test sample or the wrong sample got tested, Smith speculated.

"It's very embarrassing for the laboratory," he said.

Yoshida said he had an analyst work for two weeks investigating the meth
mix-up. No conclusions have been made about how the error occurred, Yoshida
said.

The state's $12 million crime lab that opened in Ripon in 2002 does crime
analysis for about 80 law enforcement agencies in five Central Valley
counties. The lab each year analyzes some 21,000 samples of drugs, Yoshida
said.

San Joaquin County's lead public defender Jim Larsen called the mistake
worrisome. The instrument used to test drugs has earned a reputation for
reliability independent of the analyst operating it, so attorneys don't
usually ask for back-up testing, he said.

"That's what's particularly alarming about this situation," Larsen said.

Jim Stam, a San Diego crime analyst and president of the California
Association of Criminalists, said mistaken analysis is very rare. More
often, small traces of a drug are likely to lead an analyst to find the
test inconclusive, in favor of the person facing charges, he said.

"We're taught to be conservative because somebody's life is on the line,"
Stam said.