A former employee of the State of Alaska Crime Detection Laboratory has pleaded guilty to several charges stemming from an investigation into his theft of drugs from work.
Stephen Palmer, 54, was arrested in March of last year, and faced 10 charges before agreeing to a plea deal, reducing the list of charges by half. Palmer was accused of stealing drugs from the crime lab by replacing a portion of the lab’s primary reference standards with inositol, a chemical commonly used to lower the purity, or “cut,” drugs. The standards are nearly 100 percent pure versions of various drugs and are used by the lab to compare with evidence brought in by law enforcement.
He will be sentenced in June for one consolidated count of second-degree theft, one count of tampering with physical evidence, two counts of fourth-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance and one count of official misconduct.
Palmer faces up to 21 years in prison and $210,000 in fines.