1. If EDTA is found in the blood, blood definitely came from vial. 2. If EDTA is not found in the blood, no conclusion can be made. It is possible that test is not capable of testing for EDTA.
Leaving aside the FBI test, the "hole in the vial" theory has some holes in it, namely that a nurse was apparently ready to testify that the hole was how she filled the vial, and doing so that way was not uncommon: http://www.businessinsider.com/steven-avery-blood-vial-test-....
How about his testimony? Even though nothing about 'police integrity' was mentioned in the EDTA test request, he talks about it in his testimony. And he assures that the blood didn't come from the vial for the samples he DID NOT even test. If that is not a proof of bias, I don't know what is.
[I never mentioned the hole in the vial in my comment. I looked in to it and found that it is absolutely possible that the vial has a hole in it. ]
Due to the rushed nature of the test and the fact that it has only been used once before, there are definitely questions about the exact procedure used and if that could invalidate the results. There is also the question of the detection limits of the test. Neither of these things were made available at the time of the trial.
Additionally, there were multiple tests performed on blood from the vial. One of the tests came up negative. I do not believe that this was brought up at trial, and I think it should have served to prevent the tests from being presented.
In addition to the tests itself there are two huge problems with the blood.
1) The evidence seal is broken. This is a huge procedural mistake. Maybe the hole in the top is supposed to be there, maybe it isn't. Maybe it was re-used to extract blood from the vial.
2) The FBI tech that testified has been found to have misconstrued evidence in other cases. His statement of certainty that the untested vials did not contain EDTA is either an outright lie or complete incompetence.
No, it's a _detection_ test. Suppose it can detect EDTA above a certain threshold only. So it would be able say if EDTA is present _above_ that threshold; but its inability to detect would not implay that there is no EDTA, but just that there's insufficient EDTA to be detected. Which could be for a variety of reasons: evaporation? Exposure to UV light?
It's trivial to find examples of this, but I don't know enough about the EDTA test to know how well they, or this reasoning, applies.
I agree the FBI slide was shockingly dishonest, I was stunned at how blatant their false logic was.