Starke County Prosecutor Receives Report of Erroneous Toxicology Lab Results

Nicholas Bourff

The IU Toxicology Lab was recently audited and was found to have erroneous marijuana lab results that could potentially cause trouble in cases that involved those test results. Starke County Prosecutor, Nicholas Bourff, said he has received two notices involving marijuana cases.

“The toxicology department notified us several months back that they were being audited on some tests from between 2007 and 2009 that some mistakes may or may not have been made. Regardless, they have to notify us of those. We got our first two in and they arrived Monday morning. I’ve been reviewing those two and they were both on misdemeanor cases in Knox City Court and I believe they were from 2008. So far, I haven’t quite been able to determine if those results had anything to do with the outcome of their cases,” said Bourff.

Bourff was asked if more of these notices may come into his office.

“When they explained and they showed us the numbers that came in as far as finding out which tests may or may not have had some problems with them, it was a very small number. That’s in comparison with all of the tests that they ran. I’m hoping that because of that and our relatively small population here in Starke County, I’m hoping that we won’t receive too many more of these.”