Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2004
Source: Dallas Morning News (TX)
Copyright: 2004 The Dallas Morning News
Contact:  http://www.dallasnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117
Author: Robert Tharp, Matt Stiles

EARLY ON, FAKE-DRUG QUESTIONS

No. 2 In DA's Office Says Prosecutors Still Unsure If Police Tested Powder

Prosecutors were dissatisfied with explanations from Dallas police about a 
series of bogus drug seizures in fall 2001 and remain unsure whether 
officers ever performed field tests on the substances, according to 
testimony from the district attorney's second-in-command.

Questions about the veracity of police detectives' accounts of the drug 
cases are just one detail to emerge from daylong and often-contentious 
questioning of First Assistant District Attorney Mike Carnes for a 
deposition about the role of the district attorney's office in the 
fake-drugs scandal.

A copy of the deposition, which has not been made public, was obtained 
Tuesday by The Dallas Morning News.

In the October 2003 deposition, which is related to a lawsuit filed on 
behalf of dozens of people falsely arrested on drug charges, Mr. Carnes 
said prosecutors met in November 2001 with narcotics detectives who 
performed field tests on the seized substances.

The purpose of the meeting was to determine how the detectives received 
false positives on field tests, which are done immediately after drug 
seizures. More thorough lab tests later found that large quantities of 
powder packaged as cocaine or methamphetamine were bogus.

Under questioning by the plaintiffs' attorney, Don Tittle, Mr. Carnes said 
he was dissatisfied with the detectives' explanation. And he said 
prosecutors never did receive a satisfactory answer to how the false 
positives occurred.

Mr. Carnes said in his deposition that he still could not explain the false 
test results and that he did not know whether the field tests had, in fact, 
been conducted.

The district attorney's office had asked a federal judge earlier this year 
to restrict disclosure of the deposition, but the judge declined.

The district attorney's office had asked the FBI to take over the 
fake-drugs investigation in January 2002.

Several confidential informants who worked with police detectives have 
testified that they framed dozens of innocent people by planting fake drugs 
on them and duping police into arresting the people.

Detective Mark Delapaz was acquitted of federal civil rights violations in 
November. Prosecutors alleged that Senior Cpl. Delapaz lied on police 
reports, leading to the incarceration of some of the falsely accused.

Separate inquiries by the city and by a special prosecutor for the district 
attorney's office have begun since the not-guilty verdict.

In his deposition, Mr. Carnes also said prosecutors noticed handwriting 
discrepancies on Police Department payment forms to the confidential 
informants and realized that the bogus cases could involve more than just a 
crooked informant.

Mr. Carnes said he had no direct knowledge of some statements in press 
reports attributed to his office that were critical of the Police 
Department's response to prosecutors' requests for information about the 
problem cases.

He said several months passed before police officials provided prosecutors 
with the information necessary for them to track down all of the cases 
involving the two detectives and the informants who worked with them.

On Tuesday, District Attorney Bill Hill stood by his earlier criticism of 
the Police Department's response to the scandal, saying police officials 
were slow to act on his office's requests for key information. Mr. Carnes 
also said a prosecutor began talking with Detective Delapaz about problems 
with one large drug case in August 2001, a month earlier than previously 
disclosed.

Most of those falsely arrested were indicted based solely on the officers' 
reports and the preliminary field tests. But Mr. Carnes said in his 
deposition that in at least one of the cases, a grand jury indicted a 
small-business owner, Yvonne Gwyn, who was charged with possession of 30 
kilograms of cocaine, or 66 pounds, after lab tests showed the substance 
contained only trace amounts of cocaine.

The deposition is unclear about when police received the lab analysis and 
whether they forwarded the report to prosecutors before the grand jury 
indicted Ms. Gwyn.

In an interview Tuesday evening, Mr. Hill said that if prosecutors had 
known the drugs were not real in Ms. Gwyn's case, they would not have 
sought the first-degree felony drug charges against her.

After the results were known, Ms. Gwyn's bail was reduced and prosecutors 
later recommended a lesser charge of delivery of a simulated controlled 
substance.

The case was later dismissed.

In all but one case, Mr. Hill said, prosecutors quickly notified defense 
attorneys about lab results that showed the evidence was not drugs. In the 
case that was an exception, the prosecutor has said she mistakenly thought 
a lab report in her file indicated the drugs were real and didn't examine 
the document until the day of the trial.

Mr. Hill acknowledged that prosecutors did not communicate with each other 
as they individually encountered the bogus drug cases and did not see a 
pattern, partly because they were reassured by Detective Delapaz and police 
officials that the innocent victims were drug dealers attempting to sell 
fake drugs.

"We probably should have caught it quicker, and I'm sorry we didn't," Mr. 
Hill said. "It wasn't like we were intentionally trying to do it."
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