A
Funny Story
By Lisbeth L. McCarty
As an appellate attorney, I read all of the transcripts
of what took place in an assigned case. I was working on a drug case,
and the prosecutor took great pains to qualify the chemist as an
expert.
Then, the prosecutor questioned the chemist about the
tests used to determine the chemical nature of various substances.
The chemist explained that first, he would conduct several presumptive
tests on a substance.
In this particular case, the substance tested presumptively
as an illegal drug. Next, because the presumptive tests indicated
the possible presence of an illegal drug, the chemist said that he
then proceeded to conduct an infrared spectrofluourometer attenuated-ternal
reflex as a confirmatory test.
In hundreds of pages of transcript, the prosecutor
then questioned the chemist ad nauseum about the nature of the machinery
and how the machinery worked.
Finally, the prosecutor reached the crux of the matter
when he asked the chemist how the test was actually conducted on
this impressive-sounding confirmatory machine.
The chemist responded succinctly, “I add the
sample and hit the go button.”
Ms. McCarty practices in Norman.
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