Waiting for justice amid crime lab scandal

Colin Kowalski hasn't been back to work since a driver charged with driving while impaired struck his van in September. The vehicle rolled, over and over, along Sunrise Highway near the Meadowbrook Parkway, slamming Kowalski's body weight against his arm.

"It was like something you'd see at NASCAR," said Kowalski, 47, an elevator mechanic who lives in Seaford.

His arm bears a deep scar. He had an emergency procedure to save his arm, and later a skin graft. At some point, he will have to have surgery to fix his elbow and his wrist, followed by another skin graft for his arm.

Kowalski has become collateral damage in the unfolding Nassau County crime lab scandal because paperwork problems at the lab led a judge to dismiss an indictment against the suspect in his case.

The lab has been closed since February after it was placed on probation for a second time by an accreditation agency that cited faulty paperwork, poor training of staff and evidence-handling errors.

Kowalski is among those waiting for justice.

"It's been so long and it seems like nothing is happening," Kowalski said in an interview.

That was June 11, at Farmingdale State College, after a Mothers Against Drunk Driving charity walk in which more than 2,000 shoes, representing victims of accidents involving drunk or impaired drivers, were arrayed in a double line down a sidewalk.

In a separate display, the Suffolk County Police Department showed what happens when an adult and a child aren't wearing seat belts when an SUV rolls over.

At one point, an adult-sized mannequin was pinned, half in and half out, of the twirling demonstration vehicle; at another, the mannequin flew out a window, landing on the ground with a sickening thud, all this as the child mannequin kept slamming around in the vehicle, like a plastic toy in an empty clothes dryer.

"I was in a rollover," Kowalski told Officer James Spadaro, who was handling the demonstration. "But I always make a point of wearing my seat belt."

Kowalski knows he got lucky on Sept. 23, 2010.

"It is a miracle that I am alive," he said.

A photograph of his wrecked van shows a roadway littered with what appear to be dozens of tools.

Since the rollover, however, that crime lab paperwork error has left Kowalski and his wife, Maria, struggling to comprehend what's happening in the Nassau criminal justice system.

"All we want is justice," Maria Kowalski said, "and I'm not sure we're going to get that."

In April, Nassau County Court Judge Jerald Carter dismissed an indictment against the suspect in Kowalski's case, Linda Oliver, 47, of Sea Cliff. Court records show she had a blood-alcohol level of .23, nearly three times the legal limit. She also had the painkiller Vicodin in her system, according to the records.

The judge said documentation about the blood evidence presented to a grand jury by the Nassau district attorney's office had a remarkable error in it. The paperwork showed that Oliver's blood was drawn 10 hours before it actually was.

In his decision, Carter called the crime lab "a bastion of alleged malfeasance and incompetence."

The district attorney's office, as allowed by Carter, then presented the case a second time to a grand jury, which, again, voted to indict Oliver. She pleaded not guilty last month to charges that included felony aggravated vehicular assault, criminal possession of a controlled substance, reckless driving and driving while impaired by drugs and alcohol, prosecutors said. The new case was assigned, again, to Carter.

"If he dismissed it once, we're afraid he's going to dismiss it again," Marie Kowalski said.

John Byrne, a spokesman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, said, "It is our position that it [the indictment against Oliver] shouldn't have been dismissed" the first time.

The case is set for a conference this month. "Our office is going to continue prosecuting," Byrne said.

Oliver's lawyer, Brian Griffin, said he would continue to attack the accuracy of the evidence.

"The results in the Oliver case are tainted and not worthy of belief," Griffin said. "When the lab fails, it fails everyone in the justice system.

Which leaves victims like Kowalski still waiting.