Dozens of people accused of felonies in Nassau County — five of them already convicted — have filed legal challenges seeking to throw out charges based on potentially tainted evidence at the county’s now-shuttered Police Crime Laboratory.
The 42 defendants in cases dating to at least 1991 include ex-Marine James Farr, convicted of fatally injuring two brothers while driving drunk in East Meadow, and an inmate serving 12 years for felony drug possession. One filed his own motion from prison. Another has been granted a new trial.
Most of these cases are based on potential evidence problems at the lab and eight are based more generally on the fact that the lab has been closed.
Of all the motions filed — the vast majority are for pending cases — 18 are drunken-driving charges, and eight are drug charges, prosecutors said. The remaining 16 are on a variety of charges and grounds, including a 1991 kidnapping case and a 2009 murder charge in which the defendant is challenging the ballistic evidence collected by the lab.
While experts caution that no prisoners should expect easy dismissals or overturned convictions, the fact that challenges are coming from those already convicted raises the stakes for the county as it tries to contain long-term damage from the lab’s ills. The older the case, the harder it will be for the county to gather witnesses and other evidence. And there could be civil challenges ahead.
Defense lawyer Michael DerGarabedian, of Rockville Centre, said he expects to file about 12 motions this week, all for clients who pleaded guilty to drug charges before learning about problems at the crime lab.
“How do you begin to compensate someone for years of their life that they lost in prison?” he said.
A special judge has been assigned to hear allegations of botched lab evidence in the felony cases, and lawyers say the number of challenges is likely to multiply if evidence of mismanagement or mistakes at the lab mount. What’s more, there are an unspecified number of misdemeanors facing or likely to face challenges.
“This is just the beginning,” said William Kephart, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association.
County officials closed the lab in February, two months after it was placed on probation because of concerns over the handling of evidence and other deficiencies. On March 24, Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice notified nearly 300 prisoners that their cases might be affected. State Inspector General Ellen Biben is investigating the history of lab deficiencies.
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
