ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 31, 1997 TAG: 9701310068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
Fearing that an undetermined number of federal prosecutions could be put in jeopardy, Justice Department officials said Thursday 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.
One of the cases is the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.
In the department's first comments about a still-secret inspector general's report on the lab, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jamie Gorelick said officials have sought to preserve the integrity of prosecutions by reporting evidentiary problems to both sides.
Gorelick said 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.
In a briefing for reporters, Gorelick acknowledged ``a serious set of problems'' had been found during the inquiry but she insisted that efforts have been under way to correct them, partly with help from a panel of outside scientists.
Some details of the inspector general's report emerged 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 Los Angeles Times said investigators also uncovered 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 proven.
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 could suffer if federal courts rule that important pieces of evidence have been tainted by poor lab work.
Mistakes in the Oklahoma case that FBI lab employees interviewed by the inspector general alleged include:
* Shipping critical items to the lab, such as the faded black jeans worn by defendant Timothy McVeigh when he was arrested, in a brown paper sack instead of a sealed plastic evidence bag.
* Sending a gun and a knife purported to belong to McVeigh to the laboratory sealed only in a manila envelope.
* Placing travel cases that were potentially contaminated with explosive residue in an area where bomb debris had been stored awaiting testing. As a result, none of the material could be tested.
* Using improperly cleaned equipment to test material from McVeigh's car, which resulted in a false reading about the presence of cocaine on a sample, which then was discarded.
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