About 20 assistant public defenders, private defense counsel, investigators and legal assistants from Rutherford, Lincoln, Cleveland, Haywood and Buncombe counties recently spent half a day touring the Western Regional Crime Laboratory in Hendersonville. The lab there is one of three that serve the state of North Carolina.
After separating into three small groups, defense professionals were able to get a “big picture” perspective of how the lab is set up, what equipment they use, and how they test substances/evidence—drugs, toxicology, DNA, latent evidence, etc.
Ivana Hughes, an APD out of Cleveland County, worked with IDS Forensic Resource Counsel Sarah Olson and Forensic Scientist Manager L. Summer Maffett to plan the tour. Hughes said, “It was a wonderful chance to ask a lot of questions of the analysts in order to better understand what, why and how they do the testing.”
“It was also a great opportunity for us to build trust and establish rapport with the lab analysts; they were very willing to talk with us and they were open to answering our questions,” she added.