A Harris County forensic scientist has been fired for failing routine quality assurance tests. Those test results now call into question the work she has done on hundreds of criminal cases, including work on the A.J. Armstrong murder investigation.
Former forensic analyst Rochelle Austen was no stranger to working in high-profile cases. Austen tested evidence in the murder of rapper Takeoff, and now we know she also tested blood connected to the A.J. Armstrong case.
Austen was fired for failing a routine quality assurance test, but the Harris County District Attorney’s Office told ABC13 that investigators didn’t find failures in her actual work.
But A.J.’s lawyer, Rick DeToto, said he feels otherwise in the following statement:
“I have been notified by the district attorney’s office regarding the terminated analyst and their work done on the A.J. Armstrong case. We have started an investigation into this issue and the effect it had on A.J.’s trial. Evidence was hidden, evidence was lost, evidence was all of a sudden discovered, and now an analyst who handled blood evidence had been terminated. This is deeply troubling.”