A 53-year-old Palmer man has been charged with six felonies following a seven-month investigation into irregularities in reference standards used in the testing of illegal drugs at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage.
The charges against Stephen Palmer accuse the former forensic lab analyst of adding adulterants to reference standards in an attempt to cover up the theft of drugs, some of which were opiates. Reference standards are pure substances used in laboratories to establish a base of measurement for evaluating similar substances. There's also the matter of missing drug evidence, which raises the possibility of tainted cases and may prompt requests for full discovery in a plethora of drug cases.
In all, Palmer has been charged with four counts of tampering with evidence, scheme to defraud, second-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance, and four counts of "official misconduct," which means he used his government position to perform a crime unauthorized by his duties.
An Alaska State Trooper investigator looked into instances involving missing or substituted controlled substances at the crime lab. Evidence from two cases had gone missing from the lab sometime after Aug. 29, 2011, and in each incident, Palmer was the lab analyst who ran tests on the drugs, the charges say.
A forensic background to adulterate
Palmer started working at the crime lab as an analyst on May 20, 1992 and resigned in late 2011, "for no apparent reason," the charges say.
It was Palmer's job to test the drugs, which lab technicians organize in "totes." He'd have to request the evidence to test it and electronically log the evidence. This system was meant to ensure all evidence at the crime lab is continually accounted for.
The investigation started summer 2013, when a lab analyst discovered a reference standard for oxycodone contained foreign matter. Tests found the standard consisted of only 49 percent of the drug. A morphine reference standard had also been reduced to 25 percent morphine, the charges say.
Inositol, a vitamin-like substance, was found in the oxycodone reference standard. It's reportedly not used at the crime lab, and no standard should've contained it, the charges say.
As 15 separate standards made their way to an independent lab for testing, adulterants were found in others, though the charges do not indicate how many.
"During the course of the investigation, (investigator Gordon) Bittner identified Stephen Palmer ... as a suspect. Palmer had access to all of the reference standards and while employed, and had the forensic background to adulterate the standards," the charges say.
Missing drug evidence
On or around Dec. 1, 2011, around the same time Palmer's resignation became official, it was discovered during a routine inventory that the contents of one of the totes was missing.
Palmer allegedly checked out evidence from two separate cases and placed them in the tote. However, none of the lab techs accepted the storage box back into the evidence section. It allegedly "was simply replaced on the shelves; it was not logged in as being returned by Palmer," the charges say, and the evidence that should've been in the box were never found.
The evidence included tablets of methadone, oxycodone, promethazine, diazepam and diphenhydramine. Those drugs disappeared in August 2011.
In an earlier alleged incident, "tablets of suspected methadone" were replaced with similar looking non-narcotic tablets.
After Palmer's resignation, an analyst retested the drug evidence originally handled by Palmer. He discovered a missing tablet, and five tablets Palmer identified as methadone were an over-the-counter cold medicine. "The tablets had the word 'Zyrtec' inscribed across them," the charges say.
Detox gone awry
Interviews with Palmer's family determined the alleged thief is addicted to drugs, according to the charges. His son, Craig Palmer, told an investigator that he learned on Jan. 2, 2012 his father was addicted to heroin and was trying to detox. Palmer allegedly told his son he never had to pay for the drugs, and he never went more than 12 hours without "hitting up" during his addiction.
That same day, Palmer's wife Colleen had called 911. She'd hung up her original emergency call, but police called back. She told troopers she didn't think she needed help; her husband was "trying to detox" and she'd caught him with drugs.
When troopers responded, they reportedly found Palmer unconscious on a bed in the Palmer residence with what appeared to be drugs and drug paraphernalia nearby. Colleen gave the troopers a jar of clear liquid and seeds and stems. Residue from the cap of the jar later tested positive for morphine and heroin, as well as two other substances, the charges say.
Palmer was allegedly argumentative with the responding troopers and told them he was a chemist and had "made the extraction himself." He described the contents of the jar as poppy straw.
Letter describes Palmers alleged drug use
Craig provided a letter signed "Dad," dated Jan. 17, 2012, to investigator Bittner. The seven-page letter, also signed Stephen Palmer, is alleged to be an account of alcohol and drug abuse, as well as Palmer's attempts at rehabilitation.
The list of drugs reportedly written in that history include "various opiates," methamphetamine, heroin, Xanax, MDMA and ketamine.
"The list indicated that he had been 'clean and sober' from 1989 to 2003"; he then began taking various drugs daily and meth three to four times a week in 2004, the charges say. Then he began taking meth and heroin daily from 2005 until 2011.
But when Palmer was interviewed by the trooper investigator, he denied the drug addiction and offered no explanation for the missing crime lab drugs, the charges say. He allegedly said that when Colleen called 911 he'd been sick and sleep deprived, and the couple got into an argument about the poppy straw. He said he didn't recall any of the comments he'd made to troopers.
According to an Attorney General's Office press release, the Department of Law doesn't believe the discovered irregularities in the reference standards "have negatively impacted the scientific validity of testing performed by other analysts in the lab," though authorities are still reviewing past tests done by Palmer to look for anything that raises concerns about the integrity of convictions in cases tied the drugs he analyzed.
The alleged crime of scheme to defraud occurred between Jan. 1, 2004 and Nov. 1, 2011.