The short answer: The Texas Forensic Science Commission accredits crime labs, licenses analysts, and publishes what goes wrong. Here is what it covers, what it cannot touch, and how to use its records.

Welcome to the Forensic Science Commission Dispatch.

Juries often convict people based on laboratory results. A number on a blood report, a DNA match, a comparison of two bullets. Juries treat those as facts rather than as claims made by a person inside an institution. So the question worth asking: who checks the labs?

Four times a year, the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC) puts out an agenda listing every problem a Texas crime laboratory has been required to report about itself, every complaint anyone has filed, and every investigation it has finished. In this series we read that docket so you do not have to. We cover what was disclosed, by which laboratory, in which discipline, and what it could mean for a case built on that laboratory’s work.

Before we open the first docket, you need to understand the body that produces it. This post is the foundation. It explains what the Commission is, which laboratories and disciplines it reaches, what it can actually do about a problem and where the records live.

What the Commission Is

The Texas Legislature created the Forensic Science Commission in 2005, in the aftermath of the Houston Police Department crime lab collapse. Its authority sits in Article 38.01 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is administratively attached to the Office of Court Administration, and its members are not paid.

It does four things. It accredits crime laboratories. It licenses individual forensic analysts, a requirement since January 1, 2019. It investigates allegations that a laboratory or an analyst committed professional negligence or professional misconduct. And it publishes what it finds.

Two of those matter more to a defense lawyer than the others. Texas law requires accredited laboratories to report their own significant problems, which means a large share of the docket consists of confessions the laboratory had to file. And the Commission’s final investigative reports are public records you can read, cite in argument, and use to frame a cross-examination.

What It Covers

The Commission’s accreditation authority covers a defined list of disciplines, set out in 37 Texas Administrative Code Section 651.5:

  • Seized drugs, including qualitative identification and weight
  • Toxicology, including blood alcohol
  • Forensic biology and DNA
  • Firearms and toolmarks
  • Materials and trace evidence, including gunshot residue and fire debris

Article 38.35(a)(4) defines forensic analysis and then carves things out of it. The term does not include latent print examination. It does not include digital evidence. It does not include a test of a specimen of breath under Chapter 724 of the Transportation Code. Section 651.6 carries those exclusions into the accreditation rule.

A blood alcohol result is a forensic analysis performed by an accredited laboratory subject to Commission oversight, disclosure duties, and analyst licensing. A breath test is none of those things. Breath testing is regulated by the Department of Public Safety under Transportation Code Section 724.016 and 37 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 19, where operators and technical supervisors are certified by DPS rather than licensed by the Commission. Two tests, two regimes, and only one of them appears on the docket this series covers.

The Commission has also exempted twenty further disciplines by rule, under Section 651.7. Among them: the location, identification, collection or preservation of physical evidence at a crime scene; crime scene reconstruction; fire scene investigation, including cause and origin; forensic anthropology; document examination; and polygraph examination.

Autopsies are outside as well. Article 38.35 does not apply to the portion of an autopsy conducted by a medical examiner or other forensic pathologist who is a licensed physician, and a pathologist is not a licensed forensic analyst.

Being outside accreditation is not the same as being outside the Commission entirely. Article 38.01 lets it investigate latent prints, breath testing, digital evidence and other non-accredited work. The difference is what it may conclude: for those, and for unaccredited laboratories, the Commission may make observations, identify best practices and issue recommendations, but it may not make a finding that negligence or misconduct occurred.

Who Sits on the Commission

Nine members, all appointed by the Governor, serving staggered two-year terms. The composition is fixed by statute:

  • Two members with expertise in forensic science
  • One prosecuting attorney, chosen from a list of ten names submitted by the Texas District and County Attorneys Association
  • One defense attorney, chosen from a list of ten names submitted by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
  • One faculty or staff member of the University of Texas specializing in clinical laboratory medicine
  • One faculty or staff member of Texas A&M specializing in clinical laboratory medicine
  • One faculty or staff member of Texas Southern University
  • One director or division head of the University of North Texas Health Science Center Missing Persons DNA Database
  • One faculty or staff member of the Sam Houston State University College of Criminal Justice

The Governor designates the presiding officer. A separate Licensing Advisory Committee, also nine members, handles analyst licensing questions and includes a prosecutor, a defense attorney, and seven scientists or laboratory directors.

What Counts as Negligence or Misconduct

The two terms are defined in 37 Texas Administrative Code Section 651.302, and the difference between them is a state of mind.

Professional negligence means the analyst or laboratory, through a material act or omission, negligently failed to follow the standard of practice an ordinary analyst or laboratory would have followed, in a way that would substantially affect the integrity of the result. The act was negligent if the analyst should have been aware of the accepted standard and was not.

Professional misconduct is the same failure done deliberately. The act was deliberate if the analyst was aware of an accepted standard of practice and consciously disregarded it.

Substantially affecting the integrity of a result does not require that any criminal case was affected, or that any erroneous report went out the door. It includes conduct that calls the analysis, the analyst, or the laboratory into question regardless of how the underlying case turned out. A problem can be real and reportable even where nobody was convicted on the strength of it.

Two Doors: Self-Disclosure and Complaint

Matters reach the Commission two ways.

The first is self-disclosure. Under Section 651.219(c)(5), crime laboratory management must make timely and full disclosure to the Commission of any non-conformance that may rise to the level of professional negligence or professional misconduct. Note the threshold. The laboratory does not have to conclude that it did rise to that level. If it might, it gets filed.

The same rule requires laboratories to tell their analysts that they may report negligence or misconduct to the Commission without fear of adverse employment consequences.

The second door is a complaint: anyone can file one. There is no standing requirement, no fee and no oath. A defendant, a defense lawyer, a prosecutor, an analyst, or a member of the public can submit one online or by mail. On a single recent docket, complaints came from the Innocence Project, from the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs and from individual defense attorneys named on the public agenda.

You can file anonymously, but the Commission cannot guarantee anonymity, and once a final report issues the file is generally subject to the Public Information Act. Practical note: submissions should reach the Commission at least fifteen business days before a quarterly meeting to make that agenda, per Section 651.305.

What Happens to a Complaint or a Disclosure

The path is structured:

  • Screening. Staff review for jurisdiction. Autopsy complaints and matters that are not forensic analysis can be recommended for dismissal at this stage. DNA mixture complaints may be routed to a statewide triage team.
  • Recommendation. A screening committee presents each matter to the Commission with a proposed disposition: dismiss, accept for investigation, review for educational purposes, or find no further action necessary.
  • Vote. The Commission votes at a public quarterly meeting. Accepting a matter for investigation is a vote, and it appears in the minutes.
  • Investigation. Complex matters go to an investigative panel of at least three Commissioners, which can collect records, interview people, and retain outside experts. Simpler matters are investigated by staff.
  • Adoption. Nothing is final until a majority of a quorum adopts a written report at a public meeting.

This is why a case number on an agenda is not a finding. A line reading forensic biology and DNA beside a laboratory’s name tells you a matter was filed and reached the agenda. It does not tell you what happened, and it does not tell you the Commission concluded anything. Getting past that means requesting the file.

What the Commission Can and Can’t Do

If the Commission finds negligence or misconduct, or a violation of its code of professional responsibility, it can revoke or suspend an analyst’s license or a laboratory’s accreditation, refuse to renew either one, or issue a reprimand. It can impose probation with conditions. It can require corrective action, and it can order a laboratory to go back and re-examine evidence in prior cases.

A sanction is not self-executing. The analyst or laboratory has twenty days to accept it or demand a hearing before the Judicial Branch Certification Commission, which decides whether substantial evidence supports the determination and, if so, what discipline to impose.

Now the limits:

  • It cannot decide guilt or innocence. Article 38.01 forbids the Commission from issuing any finding related to the guilt or innocence of a party in the underlying case.
  • Its reports are not admissible. A written report prepared by the Commission is not admissible in a civil or criminal action, and it is not prima facie evidence of anything it contains. You can use it to investigate, to frame discovery, and to prepare cross-examination. You cannot hand it to a jury.
  • It cannot reverse a conviction, order a new trial, or affect a pending case. The one case-level lever it has is referral to the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs.
  • It cannot prosecute anyone. It can refer a matter to another agency, and that is the ceiling.
  • For unaccredited laboratories and non-accredited disciplines, it cannot find that negligence or misconduct occurred at all, only make observations and recommendations.

One piece of history is worth knowing: In 2011 the Attorney General read the original statute to bar the Commission from considering evidence tested before September 1, 2005, and to limit it to accredited laboratories in accredited disciplines. That opinion is what curtailed the Cameron Todd Willingham inquiry which remains a controversy to this day. The Legislature removed those limits in 2013. No date restriction survives in the statute today.

Where the Records Are

All of it is public, free, and searchable:

  • Self-disclosure database. Searchable by laboratory, discipline, case number, status and date. This is the one to run before anything else in a case that turns on a lab report.
  • Complaint database. Searchable by analyst or laboratory, and the same portal is where you submit one.
  • Final investigative reports. Roughly fifty reports from 2011 forward, tagged by type and discipline.
  • Meeting agendas and minutes. Quarterly, generally January, April, July and October, with supplementary materials and video.

One timing rule to know. Information filed as part of an allegation, and information obtained during an investigation, is not subject to public release until the investigation concludes. So an open matter will show up on an agenda with far less detail than a closed one.

Why Any of This Matters in a Real Case

A disclosure or a complaint is not just news about someone else’s laboratory. It is leverage.

It can be Brady material. The State has a constitutional duty to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, including impeachment evidence, and a documented problem touching the analyst who worked your case, the method used on it, or the relevant time period is impeachment evidence.

It drives discovery. The Michael Morton Act, Article 39.14, reaches far more than the one-page report: bench notes, instrument data, validation records, corrective action files, proficiency test results, and the self-disclosure itself.

It can reach a closed case. Article 11.073, the junk science writ, provides a post-conviction path where the scientific evidence has changed or a method has been shown unreliable.

And there is an admissibility rule that is narrower than it first appears. Article 38.35(d) makes forensic analysis and related expert testimony inadmissible if the laboratory was not accredited at the time of the analysis. But subsection (e) is the exception, and prosecutors know it: the evidence still comes in if the laboratory was eligible for accreditation at the time of the examination and obtains accreditation before anyone testifies. Check both halves before you build a motion on the first one.

The theme underneath all of it is that accreditation is not oversight. Accreditation asks whether a laboratory has the right systems, procedures and equipment. It does not verify the result in your file, and it does not supervise the person who produced it. A fully accredited laboratory can employ an analyst who is cutting corners, and has.

What’s Next in the Dispatch

Now you know the machinery: what the Commission is, which disciplines it reaches and which it cannot touch, what negligence and misconduct mean, how a matter moves from filing to final report, and what the Commission can actually do at the end of it.

In the next installment we open the docket. Real Texas laboratories, real disclosures, and what each one could mean for a case built on that laboratory’s work. The Commission meets quarterly, so the Dispatch does too, and each issue closes the loop on the one before it.

Deandra Grant holds a Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Science, a Graduate Certificate in Forensic Toxicology, and the ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientist designation. Deandra Grant Law handles DWI and criminal defense across North and Central Texas.

Sources

This post provides general information about a public agency and its public records. It is not legal advice. Citations should be independently verified against the current statute and rules before use in any filing.

The post Who Checks the Crime Labs? Inside the TFSC appeared first on Deandra Grant Law – Texas Criminal Defense & DWI Defense.