Lab? Rats!
Accreditation mishap in McAlester affecting Haskell County cases

By Doug Russell, News Editor

Jan. 28 — It’s a good news, bad news thing. For some criminal defendants, it could be good news. For police and prosecutors, it could be bad. And, in some cases, it could be a little of both.

Felony cases that were set to go to trial next week in Haskell County have been put on hold or dismissed, all because of a missed deadline at a state agency.

Prosecutors dismissed charges against at least one defendant, while pushing other cases to the next trial docket because the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory in McAlester is no longer accredited.

“I couldn’t go to trial and not be able to use the evidence from the lab,” Assistant District Attorney Russell Tacheira said. “That would have seriously hindered the prosecution of these cases.”

Jessica Brown, spokeswoman for the OSBI, confirmed the McAlester lab lost its accreditation. “It wasn’t that anything was wrong, we just missed the timeline and the accreditation expired,” she said. “The accreditors are coming in this week to start the process of getting it back.”

But regaining accreditation once it’s lost is a time-consuming process and the lab might not be fully accredited again for at least a month.

“We had everything we needed (for accreditation), but we just didn’t have it all pulled together in time,” Brown said.

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