Experts: Crime lab should be independent
Criminal justice experts from Long Island and around the nation say a long-term fix for Nassau County's shuttered police lab will require turning it into an independent agency staffed with science professionals.
Regular audits of lab procedures and forensic training to help prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges spot evidence-testing errors made the experts' must-do list.
"It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up," said Garden City attorney Bruce Barket. "I don't think it [evidence testing] should be done by police at all."
In December, after a national lab accrediting agency put the lab on probation for quality-control issues, supervision of the lab was taken away from police and handed to the medical examiner's office. But the lab's problems snowballed, and officials shut it Feb. 18 following revelations that it provided inaccurate results in drug-case evidence, casting a cloud over prosecutions.
Nassau's facility is far from the only police-run crime lab whose credibility has come into question.
Barket pointed to a 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences that cited training and management deficiencies in crime labs nationwide. The report recommended that labs not be controlled by police or prosecutors.
Edward Blake, a scientist with Forensic Science Associates in Richmond, Calif., said nationwide, the judiciary, prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys have failed to insist on better lab practices.
"The average report [from police crime labs] is a 'trust me' document that is nothing more than a series of assertions," Blake said.
While the Nassau lab is under investigation by State Inspector General Ellen Biben, it will be up to county officials to make it work better going forward.
In the short term, University of Utah law professor Daniel Medwed said, the county should ensure that defendants and people in jail get a chance to challenge evidence if they think lab errors might have affected their cases.
"All of them should be entitled to their day in court in any case where forensic evidence may have affected the outcome because jurors are often swayed by forensic evidence," said Medwed, who is also an expert on wrongful convictions.
"Long-term is more complicated," Medwed said. "There needs to be structural separation between crime labs and prosecutors. Let's take crime labs out from under the law enforcement umbrella."
Carol Trottere, a spokeswoman for Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice, said the county "was already in the process of fully civilianizing the crime lab." The experts called for a lab fully independent from any other agency or department.
Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of law and police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, suggested a commission on the lab's future that excludes law enforcement and includes civilians and private sector experts. He said such a group could bring balance to a review.
The county should look beyond botched testing and ensure prosecutors learn more about how the lab handles evidence in criminal cases so they can detect potential errors, said Monroe Freedman, a Hofstra University legal ethics expert.
"It is conceivable that the prosecutors would not know about all of the incompetence, but they are responsible in uncovering this kind of thing," Freedman said.
Fordham University law professor Jim Cohen said experienced managers or scientists with management skills should run Nassau's crime lab.
"They need to make sure that the lab is properly managed from both a management and handling-evidence standpoint," Cohen said.
James Acker, of the University at Albany School of Criminal Justice, called for a lab ombudsman and he urged ethics training for lab workers.
Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in criminal procedures and wrongful convictions, said staff proficiency testing and regular auditing of lab work might help.
"It's disheartening that most crime labs have not done that, and we keep seeing the result when new scandals come to light." Garrett said.
Rice spokeswoman Trottere said the district attorney agrees with calls for better lab training and "ongoing dialogue" with the criminal justice community on the lab's work.
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