Nassau has not yet picked interim lab

More than a week after officials closed the Nassau County crime lab amid new revelations about botched evidence testing, prosecutors say they still have not decided where to send materials that require tests while the lab is closed.

Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice is "still in the process of finalizing details," about outsourcing testing, a spokeswoman said Monday.

"Obviously, when you change decades of policy practice, it's going to take a few days to arrange logistics that are efficient and conform to legal and scientific standards," said the spokeswoman, Carole Trottere.

County officials are also unsure how much the change will cost, and who will foot the bill, said a spokeswoman for County Executive Edward Mangano.

In a few cases where it is critical prosecutors present evidence quickly or risk having suspects let out of jail, Rice's office is sending evidence to a private laboratory in Pennsylvania for now, Rice's chief of staff, Meg Reiss, said last week.

William Kephart, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association, said it is wrong to make defendants wait. "There are a lot of people being accused right now who have the right to know what the evidence is," he said.

The police crime laboratory was put on probation in December by a national lab accreditation agency that cited 26 violations. Rice and Mangano closed the lab Feb 18 following revelations that high-ranking police officials may have known about problems with drug testing for months and failed to speak up.

On Friday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appointed state Inspector General Ellen Biben "to review the Nassau County police crime lab's testing procedures and protocols."

If an investigation shows police knew evidence was compromised and did nothing, hundreds of arrests and criminal convictions could be challenged, lawyers and experts said, and those who hid the information could be prosecuted.