Public defender asks for second shot in drug lab cases
Fall out from the lab scandal makes its way to Delaware's federal court as drug felons seek relief.
- In 2014, drug thefts from the state Controlled Substances Lab were uncovered.
- The defendants are requesting that they be allowed to withdraw their guilty pleas.
- Two former lab employees were charged in connection with the scandal.
After finding no relief in the state's court system, the Delaware Public Defender's Office is pushing for the federal court to give drug felons in Kent and Sussex counties a second chance at justice in light of a scandal in which dozens of pieces of evidence were stolen from the state's drug lab.
Assistant Public Defender Nicole Walker filed petitions in U.S. District Court in Delaware last week on behalf of approximately 40 defendants in the two counties who pleaded guilty to drug offenses before the thefts and tampering were discovered in 2014.
"If these defendants had had that information, that could have affected their pleas," she said Monday.
The defendants are requesting that they be allowed to withdraw their guilty pleas, and that if they are allowed to do so, that the state not be permitted to seek a conviction that is harsher than what was originally obtained.
The Delaware Department of Justice disagrees.
"The convictions in all these cases have already been upheld by the Delaware Supreme Court, and we are hopeful they will be upheld in federal court as well," DOJ spokesman Carl Kanefsky said.
The filings are the latest in the years-old saga that shuttered the state's Controlled Substances Lab in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
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The scandal erupted in January 2014 when an evidence envelope opened during a trial contained blood pressure pills instead of the painkiller OxyContin. The subsequent investigation and audit found that the lab was in disarray and at least 55 pieces of drug evidence were stolen or tampered with between 2010 and 2014.
In one instance, a man accused of supplying a drug ring had to be set free after 2 kilograms of tightly packaged cocaine used to convict him was retested and found to no longer be drugs.
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.
Dr. Richard T. Callery, the former chief medical examiner who was fired, also pleaded no contest to two counts of official misconduct for using state resources to run a private consulting business and was sentenced to a year of probation.
The lab's duties were reassigned to the newly created Division of Forensic Science under the Delaware Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
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In light of these issues, the Public Defender's Office, which represents those who cannot afford an attorney, has tried unsuccessfully to persuade state Superior Court judges in Kent and Sussex counties to vacate the plea deals for defendants serving time on drug charges.
After the Delaware Supreme Court also refused to reopen the cases in October, Walker filed a writ of habeas corpus, or a petition in which a prisoner argues they are being illegally held, on behalf of each defendant.
While each of the approximately 40 petitions is slightly different based on the individual facts of the case, all allege that the prisoners are being held in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and have exhausted all state remedies for their claims that the guilty pleas were involuntary due to the state's failure to disclose government misconduct.
"This, in turn, allows for a reasonable conclusion that a significant number of cases were likely to have been affected by misconduct at the crime lab over the course of several years," the petitions said. "Thus, at the very least, further investigation, discovery and/or an evidentiary hearing in this case was necessary rather than a summary dismissal in state court."
Approximately 150 similar cases are also still pending before a Superior Court judge in New Castle County. If the Public Defender's Office is unsuccessful with those cases, they likely will proceed through a similar appeal process before the Delaware Supreme Court and then federal system.
Contact Jessica Masulli Reyes at (302) 324-2777, jmreyes@delawareonline.com or Twitter @jessicamasulli.