Nassau crime lab: New look at 9,000 cases

Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice said Monday that her office will review whether it is feasible to retest samples from among 9,000 drug cases over a three-year period.

The move comes following last week's shutdown of the drug chemistry section of the county police crime lab for poor testing procedures.

"We haven't made a determination yet," Rice said. "We have to find out if there's a viable sample we can test. We are going through a review right now to find out if retesting is even possible."

No final decision has been made about what her office will do regarding the 9,000 cases in which drug evidence was analyzed between 2007 and 2009.

Rice said it will be up to defense attorneys to request reviews and retesting in cases in which their clients were convicted of, or charged with, drug crimes.

She said she is prepared to give defense attorneys as much information as she can.

Rice also said her office will contact all those now jailed for drug crimes committed in Nassau to inform them about the testing problems at the crime lab in case they want to pursue a legal challenge.

"We have to make sure we do everything we can to make sure no injustices were done," Rice said.

The county has not yet decided on a private lab to do the work of the shuttered Nassau drug testing unit. But Katie Grilli-Robles, a spokeswoman for County Executive Edward Mangano, said the choice will probably be a Pennsylvania lab that the county already deals with.

In December, a national accreditation organization, in a rare step, placed the crime lab on probation after finding multiple procedural problems, including a failure to calibrate a blood alcohol collection device. It is the second probationary period for the lab.

Last week, Rice and Mangano agreed to shut the lab's drug chemistry section because repeat testing of samples of the drugs ecstasy and ketamine in nine cases analyzed between 2007 and 2009 revealed procedural errors. Rice said results may have been compromised in six of the nine cases.

William Kephart, president of Nassau County Criminal Courts Bar Association, said yesterday the drug testing unit shutdown is not enough and he questioned the ability of county officials to investigate the crime lab.

"As far as I'm concerned, you need an independent agency, state or federal, to take it away from Nassau to restore confidence," Kephart said.

Defense attorney Gregory Grizopoulos, of Rockville Centre, said his firm last week gave Rice's office a list of their clients charged with drug crimes, saying that they should be let out of jail until the county resolves the crime lab failings.

"We asked them to either reduce the bail numbers significantly" to an amount the clients can afford to post or release them without bail "while we figure out what's going on," Grizopoulos said Monday.

But Rice said she is "basically going to do the same thing as always" in handling drug cases. Each will be evaluated on a "case by case basis" to determine whether defendants will be freed without bail, must pay bail or will be released to probation.

"There's no change," Rice said.

Some attorneys, including Grizopoulos, have asked for convictions to be set aside because of the lab's failings. At least 16 court motions have been filed by attorneys questioning the lab's testing results in drug and drunken driving cases.