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DECRIED CHEMIST DIES, 52 Discredited Work Led to Costly Settlements The Associated Press, Reported in Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11-4-02, P. 14A CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Fred Zain, a former West Virginia State Police chemist whose discredited work resulted in the payment of millions of dollars to wrongfully convicted defendants, has died at the age of 52. Zain, head of the State Police chemistry lab from 1986-89, died Monday at his home in Ormond Beach, Fla., his lawyer, Tom Smith of Charleston, said Tuesday. Zain was suffering from colon cancer. In addition to West Virginia, Zain's work had come under fire in Texas. Prosecutors said Zain lied on the witness stand and faked test results, and thus accepted his fees and salary under false pretenses. Last year, a West Virginia jury was unable to reach a verdict on four counts of obtaining money under false pretenses. Three of the charges dealt with expert witness payments Zain received after he left the state in 1989. He was to have been retried in July, but the trial was delayed indefinitely because of his cancer. Besides the expense of investigating and prosecuting Zain, and retrying cases related to him, West Virginia has paid at least $6.5 million to settle lawsuits by wrongfully convicted defendants. No one knows precisely how many convictions resulted from Zain's testimony, or how many people are still imprisoned in West Virginia, Texas and other states where he served as a consultant. A West Virginia State Police investigation identified as many as 182 cases that might have been affected by Zain's work. In a 1997 interview in Texas, Zain said he had been made a "scapegoat" by powerful political forces in West Virginia and Texas. Zain worked as a West Virginia State Police chemist from 1979 until 1989, when he took a similar job in Bexar County, Texas. Zain was fired by Bexar County, Texas, after his work in West Virginia was discredited in 1993. He later moved to Florida where he worked for a state-run environmental lab. WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS | ||
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