Fixes detailed for Nassau crime lab

The door of the Nassau Crime Laboratory's fingerprint examination room - found unlatched when an inspector visited in November - now closes automatically, and staff members need a code to get in.

Drugs that were not being inventoried properly back in November now are stored in vials with bar codes, allowing technicians to carefully track drugs as they are being tested.

A month after a national accrediting organization put the crime lab on probation for failing to meet 25 "essential" or "important" protocols, the lab's new director, Pasquale Buffolino, wrote to that organization's board explaining his plans for fixing the problems.

In a 16-page report sent Monday to the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, Buffolino addressed each of the lab's failures and his proposed solutions. In some cases, Buffolino said the problems have been solved. In others, he said, have not.

Other fixes he proposed include marking drug samples more clearly for identification, and re-examining about 147 cases assigned to one examiner who was not doing adequate research to determine what the drugs were, according to the report.

Newsday obtained a copy of the report after submitting a Freedom of Information Law request to the New York State Commission on Forensic Science, a state licensing board that received a copy.

Buffolino, asked Tuesday to name the most important changes he is making at the lab, said, "Ask me next year, when we only have one or two areas where we're not in compliance, and I'll tell you which one is most important. Right now, everything is important."

Buffolino took on the crime lab post in addition to his work as director of the Department of Forensic Genetics laboratory within the Nassau medical examiner's office, which accepts evidence submitted by law enforcement agencies, prosecutors or the medical examiner's office.

The crime lab, which is part of the police department, was put on probation Dec. 3, making it the only one of nearly 400 labs in the country currently on probation. It is the second time since 2006 that the lab had been put on probation.

Det. Lt. James Granelle, who had been the lab's director since 2003, was reassigned after revelations of problems at the lab.

The lapses at the lab cited by the accreditation agency could call into question evidence used to prosecute defendants in past and current criminal cases, legal experts say, and already has led to at least one legal motion seeking to dismiss cases or overturn convictions.

Buffolino began the report by outlining some of the big-picture problems he thinks the lab has faced, including bad internal communication, insufficient funding and staff shortages.

In an interview, Buffolino said he still is figuring out how much money and staff the lab will need to perform all its work - both to retest samples in past cases and to do the lab's work going forward.

The lab's 2009 expenditure was about $4.4 million, according to county officials. Twenty-one police officers currently work there.

"The determination of the root cause of past and current laboratory issues and the prevention of recurrence is the long-term goal of this endeavor," Buffolino wrote in a letter addressed to Robert Stacey, staff inspector of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.

The society will review Buffolino's proposed changes to decide if they are adequate. Once the fixes have been made, the agency will inspect the lab again and make a decision about whether and when to lift the probation.

William Kephart, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association, said he does not believe the proposed corrections are enough. Kephart and others have said they expect a surge of legal motions from defense attorneys who believe their clients were arrested based on faulty testing by the lab.

"A lot of these proposals are for future remedies that have no date," he said. "What's being done right now?"