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In a series of posts, I am going to intro­duce the reader to the exis­tence of ISO 17025 and its impor­tance.  I am going to intro­duce it in bite-sized bits for easy diges­tion.  Just like all mat­ters of learn­ing, knowl­edge is incre­men­tal over time and builds upon pre­vi­ous exposure.

In our first post we answered the ques­tion:  What is ISO 17025?

The next post we answered the ques­tion:  Why do we need stan­dards? Why ISO 17025 and pol­icy, pro­ce­dures and instruc­tions matter.

Then we answered the ques­tion:  Why is ISO 17025 so impor­tant to us in foren­sic science?

Just two days ago, we asked and answered:  Why should the crim­i­nal defense com­mu­nity care about ISO 17025?

A lit­tle while ago we exam­ined how ISO 17025 pro­vides a sim­ple method to develop themes to cross-examine experts.

Just a few days ago, we had a post con­cern­ing how ISO 17025 can be used by the crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tioner to help get his dis­cov­ery.

Most recently we explored how ISO 17025 can answer the ques­tion over who is the actual ana­lyst.

Today is the con­tro­ver­sial topic of: Who is the “cus­tomer” per ISO 17025 and why is it important.

Who the “cus­tomer” is defined as being is cru­cial for ISO 17025 labs

It is impor­tant to appre­ci­ate that per 1.3 “Notes” are not require­ments, but they do pro­vide impor­tant clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the text and guid­ance for achiev­ing best practices.

Per Sec­tion 4.7.1 note 1, a lab­o­ra­tory under ISO 17025 should pro­vide the customer’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive rea­son­able access to the rel­e­vant areas of the lab­o­ra­tory for the wit­ness­ing of test and/or cal­i­bra­tions per­formed for the customer.

This may be a way for the crim­i­nal defense prac­ti­tioner to seek to have an inde­pen­dent cer­ti­fied qual­i­fied lab­o­ra­tory audi­tor inspect a laboratory.

For the crim­i­nal prac­ti­tioner, one of the major improve­ments between the ASCLD/LAB Legacy pro­gram and ISO 17025 is Sec­tion 4.7 (Ser­vice to the cus­tomer). This Sec­tion in con­junc­tion with Sec­tion 4.8 and 4.10[i] is where the crim­i­nal prac­ti­tioner can have mean­ing­ful poten­tial impact into the occa­sion where a state expert wit­ness or lab­o­ra­tory ana­lyst tes­ti­fies falsely or in a less than sci­en­tif­i­cally hon­est way in the courtroom.

Sec­tion 4.7 (Ser­vice to the cus­tomer) and specif­i­cally 4.7.2 pro­vides a require­ment wherein the lab­o­ra­tory must seek feed­back from the “cus­tomer.” This means actively seek­ing com­ment rather than a pas­sive col­lec­tion of comments.

In ASCLD/LAB inter­pre­ta­tion of ISO 17025 (ASCLD/LAB Inter­na­tional), the crim­i­nal defense prac­ti­tioner and the accused are labeled as ter­tiary cus­tomers. This is not with­out con­tro­versy. It is won­dered by this blog­ger why the accused and the crim­i­nal defense lawyer are demoted to such a low level of input if the test­ing is sup­posed to be con­ducted by a neu­tral lab. y pro­mot­ing the pros­e­cu­tion to a pri­mary cus­tomer, then this can­not be fairly termed as neutral.

As a ter­tiary cus­tomer in the ASCLD/LAB inter­pre­ta­tion of ISO 17025, the  voice of the crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tioner will not be as strong as that of a sec­ondary or pri­mary cus­tomer under the schematic.

Nev­er­the­less, Sec­tion 4.8 sur­rounds com­plaints. There must be both a pol­icy and a pro­ce­dure in place as to how to col­lect, eval­u­ate and address com­plaints from “cus­tomers” and other par­ties. It should include some sort of method of tes­ti­mony mon­i­tor­ing whereby super­vi­sors or a defined per­son mon­i­tors the tes­ti­mony either by review­ing the writ­ten tran­scripts and/or live court­room tes­ti­mony. In com­bi­na­tion with Sec­tion 4.7.2 as dis­cussed infra, it is through this mech­a­nism of seek­ing input and com­plaints that even the crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tioner can cre­ate a record of iden­ti­fy­ing, report­ing and most impor­tantly doc­u­ment­ing false or incon­sis­tent tes­ti­mony. These cre­ated doc­u­ments  should con­sti­tute Brady–like mate­r­ial that is required to be turned over by the prosecution.

If the crim­i­nal defense com­mu­nity uses this frame­work, they can finally have feed­back into the ana­lyst who seem­ingly says one thing on Tues­day just to say some­thing dif­fer­ent on Wednesday.

Hyp­ocrites can be doc­u­mented and exposed in foren­sic science

In addi­tion, this mech­a­nism of ISO 17025, if prop­erly imple­mented, should end the cur­rent deplorable prac­tice wherein a lab­o­ra­tory plays the well-known “game” of fre­quently renam­ing what­ever error or com­plaint report­ing sys­tem, if it had one, so as to not be required to dis­close to the defense this record of indi­vid­ual or sys­temic error despite the fact that it may be exculpatory.

Again, this sit­u­a­tion will be less likely to occur pro­vided that there is human integrity and hon­esty in a lab­o­ra­tory through this schema of ISO 17025 as Sec­tions 4.9 (Con­trol of non­con­form­ing test­ing and/or cal­i­bra­tion work), 4.10 (Improve­ment), 4.11 (Cor­rec­tive action), and 4.12 (Pre­ven­tive action) pro­vide a uni­form struc­ture for us to request and obtain doc­u­ments and reports when the lab­o­ra­tory or an ana­lyst does wrong.

An actual com­plaint mech­a­nism that works

In addi­tion, whereas before some lab­o­ra­to­ries played “hide the ball” with con­trol charts or the report­ing and cor­rec­tion of inter­nal error or devi­a­tions from their exist­ing SOPs (old nomen­cla­ture) by a par­tic­u­lar ana­lyst, this no longer can be done per ISO 17025.

[i] ASCLD/LAB adopts a posi­tion that we, as crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tion­ers, are ter­tiary “cus­tomers”.  We should strongly con­test this posi­tion and reject their nar­row def­i­n­i­tion of “cus­tomer.” The impor­tance of the def­i­n­i­tion of “cus­tomer” is man­i­fest. ASCLD/LAB takes the posi­tion that the “cus­tomer” is the pros­e­cut­ing agency as well as the pros­e­cut­ing author­ity. It is the authors’ posi­tion and one that is shared by other sci­en­tists that the “cus­tomer” is the trier of fact. ASCLD/LAB argues and presents that the trier of fact is only a sec­ondary “cus­tomer.” The dis­tinc­tion here is impor­tant in that some of the power of the basic phi­los­o­phy unpin­ning ISO 17025 includes “cus­tomer” spe­cific rel­e­vance in report­ing. The basic schematic of ISO 17025 is plan, then do, then check, then act. It is this last com­po­nent of act that is due to the feed­back of the defined “cus­tomer”. Obvi­ously, with rec­om­men­da­tion num­ber 4 of the National Research Council’s 2009 National Acad­emy of Sci­ences (NAS) report, enti­tled “Strength­en­ing Foren­sic Sci­ence in the United States:  A Path For­ward”, one of the major crit­i­cisms of the prac­tice of foren­sic sci­ence in Amer­ica today is the lack of mean­ing­ful inde­pen­dence between the crime lab and pros­e­cu­tion agen­cies. It seems as if ASCLD/LAB in its inter­pre­ta­tion of “cus­tomer” is seek­ing not to imple­ment this impor­tant admo­ni­tion by the National Research Coun­cil and the NAS.