| On May 6, 2014, police in Houston, Texas arrested 25-year-old Patrice Davis after they confiscated a substance that field-tested positive for heroin.
On May 9, 2014, Davis pled guilty in Harris County Criminal District Court to possession of a controlled substance. She was sentenced to 90 days in the Harris County Jail.
On May 21, 2014, the Houston Police crime laboratory tested the substance and no controlled substance was detected.
Later in 2014, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office discovered that although the results of laboratory tests in controlled substance cases were being sent to the office, the reports in cases that had already been resolved were not being forwarded or distributed to the specific prosecutors in those cases.
After the reports were discovered, the District Attorney’s conviction integrity unit began notifying defense attorneys and attempting to locate defendants who had pled guilty to possession of drugs, but whose lab tests were negative for the presence of drugs.
Among those reports was the lab test result in Davis’s case. That report had gone unnoticed by the defense and prosecution at the time.
On March 24, 2017, Davis’s defense attorney, with the support of the Harris County District Attorney’s conviction integrity unit, filed a state law petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On March 30, the trial court judge recommended that the petition be granted.
On May 3, 2017, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ and vacated Davis’s conviction. On June 1, 2017, the prosecution dismissed the charge.
– Maurice Possley
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