Public defenders continue push to reopen drug cases
The state should not be allowed to “inconsistently” argue that one drug felon can withdraw his guilty plea while hundreds of others cannot, according to the latest motion filed by Delaware’s public defenders since evidence thefts were discovered in Delaware’s drug lab last year.
The Office of the Public Defender has argued that Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter Jr. should reopen about 230 cases in which defendants in New Castle County pleaded guilty before the drug lab scandal and are still in prison or on probation.
In anticipation of the state’s arguments against reopening the cases, the Public Defender’s Office filed a motion Friday asking Carpenter to bar prosecutors from being allowed to argue that the guilty pleas cannot be vacated just because the defendants admitted guilt.
Assistant Public Defender Nicole M. Walker argued that the prosecution is being inconsistent in how it handles these cases, pointing to Eric Young, a 33-year-old who was allowed to withdraw his guilty plea in May.
Young and his co-defendant, Jermaine Dollard, 41, were arrested in June 2012 after they were stopped while driving Dollard’s Honda Accord from New York to Delaware. Police found 2 kilograms of cocaine in a secret compartment of the vehicle.
Young pleaded guilty and was sentenced to seven years in prison; Dollard was found guilty during a trial and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On a recent appeal, Dollard’s attorney sought to have the cocaine retested, citing the state police investigation that found that at least 55 pieces of drug evidence were stolen or tampered with at the former Controlled Substances Laboratory of the state Medical Examiner’s Office between 2010 and 2014.
The judge reluctantly agreed to the retest. The white substance was found to not be cocaine.
State prosecutors dropped Dollard’s charges, leading to his release.
In May, Young was also allowed to withdraw his guilty plea and then plead guilty to conspiracy. He was given a $100 fine.
“In the end, it appears that the real distinction between Young and the [other defendants] is that Young was ‘lucky enough’ to have a co-defendant obtain retesting in contravention to the Superior Court’s own decisions and the state’s own position,” the Public Defender’s Office wrote in the motion filed Friday.
The motion went on to say that the state has tried to hide from the public this deviation “from its well-publicized position taken against hundreds of Delaware citizens.”
Although the state’s response has not been filed yet, a spokesman for the Department of Justice has said that the relief provided to Young does not impact guilty pleas in other cases.
The judge is expected to rule on whether the New Castle County cases should be reopened, but similar motions in Kent and Sussex County were unsuccessful and are being appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.
The drug lab scandal has since January 2014 put in jeopardy thousands of drug cases.
The controlled substances lab was closed in February 2014, and its duties were assigned to the newly created Division of Forensic Science under the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
Two former lab employees – forensic investigator James Woodson and chemist Farnam Daneshgar – were charged in connection with the scandal but ended up pleading to misdemeanors, or in the case of Daneshgar, having all the charges dropped.
In addition, former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Richard T. Callery pleaded no contest to two counts of official misconduct in June for using state resources to run a private consulting business.
Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at (302) 324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @JessicaMasulli.