Pittsburgh, PA. Drugs burned before trials, jeapordizes DA's cases.

Twice last week Pittsburgh narcotics detectives went to the bureau's property room to retrieve drug evidence in pending cases, one a major heroin bust.

Twice they left empty handed because the evidence had been prematurely destroyed due to oversights by police and the Allegheny County district attorney's office.

The mistakes have led local prosecutors to back off of one of the cases and could present challenges for federal prosecutors, who are pursuing the other.

The snafus, the first of their kind in recent memory, also have exposed communication gaps that officials have pledged to fix.

Detectives last week learned that about 14,000 stamp bags of heroin worth more than $107,000 on the street had been burned after prosecutors filed notice not to prosecute the case at the state level. Prosecutors were removing themselves from the case because it had been taken over by the U.S. attorney's office.

The property room periodically reviews cases to determine whether evidence can be destroyed.

The heroin case appeared to be closed to Sgt. Lynn DeVault, who supervises the property room, and to the district attorney's office, which reviewed and authorized her request that the evidence be destroyed.

Although state charges were not being pursued, the defendant, Tiona Jones, 31, of Beechview, was federally indicted on charges that included drug possession with intent to deliver and firearms violations.

Up until these errors came to light, there was no mechanism in place to ensure that evidence in cases not prosecuted at the state level is preserved if a case moves to federal court.

Prosecutors don't necessarily need drug evidence to prevail in a drug case, legal experts say, but problems can arise for them without it. They must be able to explain how the evidence was handled and the circumstances of its destruction, and generally must rely on documentation or testimony from the county's crime lab and technicians.

"It doesn't shoot the case dead, but it introduces a series of problems for the prosecutors and opportunities for the defense," said University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris.



Link: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10356/1112489-53.stm