Inmate seeks free lawyer to challenge lab

A prison inmate who wants his 2007 drug possession conviction reversed based on slipshod procedures at the Nassau County police crime lab has handed a judge a legal hot potato by asking for a court-appointed lawyer.

The inmate, Germaine McCants, 27, says he can't afford a lawyer to challenge his cocaine possession conviction. He is serving a 12-years-to-life sentence.

If a judge appoints a lawyer for McCants, that could open the door to other indigent convicts from Nassau seeking court-assigned legal counsel on similar grounds, several lawyers said.

County law prohibits using court-appointed lawyers in cases involving challenges to convictions. The law does allow the county to pay for court-assigned lawyers to represent the indigent through trial and appeals. Once the appeals process is exhausted, the law does not generally allow the county to pay for additional challenges to a conviction except at a hearing where newly discovered evidence is presented.

About three dozen convicts have asked about getting court-assigned lawyers in Nassau to help them with lab-related issues, attorneys have said.

Rockville Centre attorney Virginia Conroy, who represented McCants before, said she believes county law could allow judges to appoint lawyers on such cases.

John Byrne, a spokesman for District Attorney Kathleen Rice, said Rice had no comment on the assigned counsel issue.

Conroy was assigned to represent McCants at his 2007 trial because he could not afford a lawyer. She argued then that a lab employee did not follow proper evidence-handling procedures in his case.

Now Conroy has asked Acting State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Calabrese to assign her to help McCants get his conviction thrown out, with her work paid by the county.

In her legal papers, Conroy says that fear of "the financial cost related to the increased case load" has kept the county from paying for lawyers for indigent people seeking to reopen their cases.

Robert Nigro, administrator of Nassau's assigned counsel plan, said cost is a factor. "The courts are not assigning lawyers because they believe the funds are not available to do this," Nigro said.

Norman Effman, a New York State Bar Association committee chairman, said he does not believe the law permits such assignments.

Joseph Lo Piccolo, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association, said Nassau should find a way to pay for representation of the convicted. "We support Ms. Conroy and hope the courts can find a way to ensure each defendant affected by the failings of the Nassau County lab obtains representation that will ensure their rights are protected," he said.

Marc Gann, chairman of the Nassau Bar's crime lab task force, said a meeting on the issue is planned for tomorrow. The lab was closed in February after it was put on probation by an accreditation agency for failure to follow certain evidence-handling procedures.