FBI Warns of Possible Flaws in Lab Evidence

WASHINGTON — Fearing that an undetermined number of federal prosecutions could be put in jeopardy, Justice Department officials said Thursday that they have been telling prosecutors and defense attorneys across the country in recent weeks about potential flaws in evidence caused by serious problems at the FBI crime laboratory here.

In the department’s first comments about a still-secret inspector general’s report on the lab, Deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie S. Gorelick said that officials have sought to preserve the integrity of prosecutions by reporting evidentiary problems to both sides.

Gorelick said that she hopes no prosecutions will be compromised by the alleged misconduct and sloppy procedures in the FBI’s lab. But several former federal prosecutors and legal experts disagreed, saying that hundreds of prosecutions could be affected.

These legal authorities said that shortcomings uncovered by the investigation could force the dismissal of some charges in federal or state prosecutions where FBI lab reports were crucial. New hearings could be granted in current cases and some old cases could be reopened, they added.

“This is explosive,” said Neal Sonnett, a Miami defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.

“They have had such a wonderful reputation but if that is called into question it could have a devastating effect in many cases.”

“This is going to be a royal pain in the neck for judges and prosecutors,” said Joseph DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. He predicted that judges would grant many defense motions for additional data about FBI lab tests.

In a briefing for reporters, Gorelick acknowledged that “a serious set of problems” had been found during the inquiry but she insisted that efforts have been underway to correct them, partly with help from a panel of outside scientists.

Some details of the inspector general’s report emerged earlier this week when the FBI transferred three laboratory officials and suspended another for poor management.

Although first reports suggested that the lab was found to have used sloppy procedures in some cases, documents obtained by The Times said investigators also uncovered far more serious allegations that lab employees were pressured to alter the conclusions of their analyses of evidence and that supervisors sometimes changed the findings to support criminal prosecutions.

Gorelick declined comment when asked if the inspector general has concluded that those allegations, made by several lab workers, had been proved.

The FBI is still “the best law enforcement agency in the world,” she said, even though flaws were documented “in a limited number of units” in the lab.

Other sources said that one of these units deals with analysis of explosives, and that the Oklahoma City bombing prosecution and convictions in the World Trade Center bombing in New York could suffer if federal courts rule that important pieces of evidence have been tainted by poor lab work.

The FBI laboratory conducts more than 600,000 examinations a year for federal, state, local and international law enforcement agencies.

Asked if she could give assurances that no prosecutions were being compromised, Gorelick replied: “Until we have the final report and until the courts have a chance to examine each and every allegation as it applies to each and every case, we won’t be able to make blanket statements.”

She declined to identify any specific case where a potential problem exists.

Other legal sources stressed, however, that for any pending prosecution or past conviction to be seriously affected, attorneys would have to demonstrate that FBI laboratory analysis played a critical role and that any flaws were substantial ones.

Nonetheless, the allegations have damaged the credibility of the lab and seem likely to hand defense attorneys fresh ammunition for cross-examination of FBI officials, legal experts said.

Throughout its nearly century-long history, the FBI crime lab has had a sterling reputation and its forensic reports usually have gone unchallenged. For that reason, allegations of sloppy work or evidence-tampering by lab workers have come as a shock to most trial lawyers and judges.

Sonnett cited two ways in which questions about the FBI lab could have fallout: First, defense attorneys are likely to move for new trials or hearings to attack evidence presented by prosecutors.

Second, jurors could come to doubt the reliability of evidence presented by the government.

“Defense lawyers will have the ammunition to question the integrity of the scientific evidence and we have seen from the O.J. Simpson criminal trial how that can have an effect,” he said.

Washington attorney E. Lawrence Barcella Jr. made the same point. “How a jury views a cross-examination of a laboratory guy is going to be far different from what it was a year or so ago,” Barcella said.

Barcella, also a former federal prosecutor, added that many judges have had “almost an automatic acceptance of FBI lab results. Now you’ve completely reversed that.”

Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor, noted that state prosecutions that relied on FBI lab testing could be affected as well as many federal cases.

Rothstein commended the Justice Department and FBI for acting promptly to tell prosecutors and defense attorneys about potential problems. He pointed out that such notification would be required by federal law under a Supreme Court decision that imposes an obligation on the government to tell defense lawyers about anything the prosecution has discovered that could help clear a defendant.

A similar problem in West Virginia occurred four years ago when authorities discovered that Fred Zain, a state police scientist, had made up or manipulated evidence to help win convictions in at least 36 cases.

The state Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Zain had been responsible for “a long history of falsifying evidence in criminal prosecutions.”

* LAX LAB DESCRIBED: Current, former crime lab workers tell investigators of slipshod procedures. A16