New York Forensic Expert Takes Life: Proper Lab Procedures Not Followed; Another Criminal Justice System On the Alert;

"LISA SCHREIBERSDORF, PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK STATE ASSOCIATION OF CRIMINAL DEFENCE LAWYERS, SAID THAT THE NEWS WAS "BEYOND TROUBLING" IN PART BECAUSE JURIES RARELY QUESTION THE CREDIBILITY OF POLICE FORENSIC EXPERTS.

“IT STARTS MAKING YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THE CASES WHERE THE EVIDENCE FROM THE PROSECUTION DIDN'T JIBE WITH WHAT ELSE YOU KNEW ABOUT THE CASE MS. SCHREIBERSDORF SAID.""

NICHOLAS CONFESSORE: NEW YORK TIMES; 12 JUNE, 2008;

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A story in today's New York Times sent shivers down my spine.

It's by reporter Nicholas Confessore and appears under the heading, "Police Review Lab Work After Suicide of Scientist."

A good friend sent me the story with a note that said,"Charles Smith Number Two?"

Although, it is far too early to make any comparisons - and no evidence of tainted evidence has been unearthed -I thought it would be useful to draw the story to our readers attention so they can follow developments.

"New York State Police officials are notifying district attorneys across the state that evidence in criminal cases may have been compromised by a forensic scientist who committed suicide last month after auditors discovered that he had not followed proper procedures in some cases, officials said Tuesday<" the story begins.

"The scientist, Garry Veeder, worked at the State Police crime lab for more than 30 years analyzing so-called trace evidence, such as fibers, physical material and impressions left at crime scenes," it continues.

"The agency is reviewing his work going back at least a decade and cannot yet say how many cases could have been compromised.

But police officials and some local prosecutors said that the cases included burglaries, assaults, murders and nearly every other variety of criminal case.

Mr. Veeder, 58, hanged himself in his garage on May 23.

No evidence has emerged so far that Mr. Veeder issued inaccurate findings or that prosecutors relied on false evidence in a criminal trial.

But the district attorneys are being notified so that they can retrieve their own files on the cases and await further information from the agency, officials said.

“None of the evidence in the cases reviewed has been found to be inaccurate or incorrect, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t find something,” said Lt. Glenn Miner, a spokesman for the State Police. “He wasn’t following our procedures, and because he wasn’t following our procedures, we need to let the district attorneys know.”

Lieutenant Miner said that once investigators had identified all of the cases for which Mr. Veeder had provided fiber analysis, the agency would select an outside forensic consultant to perform a technical analysis of each case.

News of Mr. Veeder’s misconduct has spread rapidly through the state’s trial bar, and some lawyers say they have been scouring old case files to see if Mr. Veeder provided evidence against their clients.

Lisa Schreibersdorf, president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that the news was “beyond troubling,” in part because juries rarely question the credibility of police forensics experts.

“It starts making you think about all the cases where the evidence from the prosecution didn’t jibe with what else you knew about the case,” Ms. Schreibersdorf said.

The State Police crime lab handles roughly 10,000 cases a year and provides forensic services to law enforcement officials around the state, chiefly in more rural areas where local police departments do not operate their own crime labs.

The vast majority of that work involves testing illegal drugs seized during raids or arrests, Lieutenant Miner said.

But Mr. Veeder was the lab’s sole expert on fiber evidence, such as threads recovered from clothing at crime scenes.

State Police procedure requires at least two tests on fibers.

The initial test, known as a relative refractive index test, helps scientists narrow the type of fiber being studied.

But a confirming test, known as a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy test, is required to definitively identify the fiber.

According to Lieutenant Miner, on at least some cases, Mr. Veeder skipped the preliminary test and conducted only the confirming test.

The discrepancies came to light during a routine audit by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, one of several organizations in the United States that accredits crime labs.

Some crime labs view the preliminary test as superfluous and do not require it, Lieutenant Miner said, because the confirming test will identify the type of fiber.

In some cases, Mr. Veeder apparently reported a result for the preliminary test based on what he had learned in the confirming test.

One of the cases under review involves Mr. Veeder’s fiber analysis and testimony in the death of Joseph Corr, a police officer in New Hartford, N.Y., who was shot and killed while pursuing suspects in a jewelry-store robbery in 2006.

That case involved comparing fibers found in a broken display case with a glove linked by prosecutors to a suspect, Toussaint Davis, who was later convicted of second-degree murder.

Scott D. McNamara, the Oneida County district attorney, said that he expected Mr. Davis’s lawyers to request a postconviction hearing, though State Police officials have told Mr. McNamara that there was no indication yet that Mr. Veeder had provided false evidence in the case or had perjured himself.

Prosecutors in Franklin County and Chautauqua County said they received calls from the State Police on Wednesday involving two cases in each county, including one burglary, one assault and a homicide from 1976, a cold case in which no arrests were made.

“I know all my big cases, and I don’t have anything where fibers were a big deal for that,” said Derek P. Champagne, the Franklin County district attorney.

Mr. Veeder also performed work on at least two cases in New York City, where the Police Department normally performs its own forensics work, Mr. Miner said.

One case involved analysis of a 1999 train accident in Staten Island, investigated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; the other involved a 1996 product-tampering case in Manhattan, handled by the state agricultural agency.

Neither involved evidence gleaned from suspects.

Mr. Veeder’s death staggered an agency already reeling from the suicide of a recently retired trooper, Gary A. Berwick, just days before.

Mr. Berwick, 48, who also hanged himself, was said to be distraught over a separate investigation by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo into whether the State Police engaged in political espionage against elected officials, though no evidence has emerged that he was a target of the investigation."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;