Nassau DA informs inmates of lab problems

The Nassau district attorney's office has mailed letters to nearly 300 prison inmates jailed locally and upstate telling them evidence foul-ups at the county police crime lab may have affected their cases.

The letters, mailed in the last few days to sentenced drug and drunken-driving defendants, say the lab was placed on probation in December but does not mention its shutdown Feb. 18, stemming from concerns over testing problems and sloppy work. Thirty-nine inmates at the Nassau County jail and 244 in upstate prisons were sent copies of the letter.

Motions by inmates seeking to have convictions thrown out because of lab mistakes could potentially clog the Nassau courts where a judge has already been assigned to handle such cases.

"We have learned of several instances in which lab deficiencies may have affected the results of the qualitative and quantitative tests of some controlled substances," Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice's letter says. "Although we have not discovered any deficiencies in the accuracy of blood-alcohol concentration tests, a limited number of administrative errors in documentation and reporting have been uncovered."

The letters advise inmates to contact their lawyers, the Nassau County Bar Association or the Legal Aid Society if they need legal help concerning lab testing in their cases.

In a news release, Rice said, "Since the revelations about the Nassau County crime lab have come to light, we have gone to great lengths to keep the public, defense counsel and now inmates informed of the errors at the police lab."

A Rice spokeswoman said the office will also try to reach those defendants who are not in jail.

Marc Gann, the Nassau County Bar Association president, said Rice consulted with him about the letters, but he said more people should receive them. "I would like them to send it to any incarcerated individual whose conviction came out of the Nassau County courts for the past three years," Gann said.

And William Kephart, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association, said letters should go to "thousands more who have potentially been affected by the use of tainted evidence from the county's crime lab."

The lab was put on probation Dec. 3 by a national lab accreditation agency that cited 26 violations. The state inspector general is investigating. Rice plans to have all felony drug evidence collected over the past three years -- as many as 3,000 cases -- retested and plans a review of blood-alcohol testing in drunken-driving cases back through 2006.

A Nassau judge recently threw out the drunken driving conviction of Erin Marino of Hicksville because of the lab problems. Marino's attorney, Brian Griffin of Garden City, took issue Thursday with Rice characterizing blood-alcohol testing problems as administrative errors, saying, "The deficiencies in blood alcohol are far more significant . . . they include the lack of calibration [of equipment], supervision and misreporting."