County Drunk-Driving Tests Violate State Order

Contrary to a state order, the Ventura County sheriff’s crime lab has continued to oversee breath tests for suspected drunk drivers--a breach that could force prosecutors to reopen dozens of cases, officials said Wednesday.

Even though state inspectors temporarily yanked the lab’s license to conduct such tests in March, Sheriff’s Cmdr. Bill Wade said the lab continued to calibrate breath-test equipment for agencies across the county because of a “‘bureaucratic Catch-22.”

State rules say the calibration can only be done by the crime lab, Wade said. But an April 9 letter to Sheriff Larry Carpenter from Emil R. de Vera, chief of the Food and Drug Laboratory Branch of the Department of Health Services, states:

“This Department informed you that your laboratory should not perform any forensic or breath alcohol analysis activities.”

Wade said the department was trying to comply with the order--and has sent scores of blood and urine tests to another lab--but has had difficulty resolving what officials see as conflicting bureaucratic rules.

“We’re really caught between state regulations,” he said.

Although Wade said he has “no doubt as to the accuracy of [the lab’s] breath testing,” he expected defense attorneys to challenge the tests.

On Wednesday, defense attorney Kevin DeNoce, a former deputy district attorney who headed up DUI prosecutions for the county until late last year, made the first challenge for a drunk-driving client he is defending.

He is hoping to see the case dismissed.

“This is what happens when you have nonscientists running the crime lab,” DeNoce said, criticizing the department’s reasons for failing to comply with the state order. “They are intentionally violating the law.”

DeNoce said he found out about the breath tests Wednesday morning and now plans to call officials from the state Department of Health Services to testify in that case.

He expected other defense attorneys would also challenge test results from the lab.

Prosecutors have begun reviewing old convictions, as well.

“Let’s just say the impact remains to be seen,” said John Cardoza, a deputy district attorney who oversees the 13 attorneys prosecuting drunk-driving cases in the county. “It certainly is going to present some very time-consuming and work-intensive review of cases for us.”

The prosecutors each handle, on average, 80 drunk-driving cases at any given time, Cardoza said.

The district attorney’s office sent a letter out Tuesday to defense attorneys in the county notifying them of the problems with the crime lab, he said.

“We want to be proactive in dealing with this,” Cardoza said.

DeNoce credited the district attorney’s office for its quick action. “There’s no fault on their side of the ledger,” he said. “This is a crime lab problem. The [D.A.’s office] did not know about this.”

The crime lab licensing woes began late last year with the retirement of Norm Fort, the department’s forensic alcohol supervisor for more than a decade.

The state gave the lab a 90-day extension to find another scientist to oversee the testing. During that period, state inspectors tested the lab’s analysts.

One of the five analysts failed the test in February and two weeks later the state took over testing at its Santa Barbara lab, officials said.

Since then state and local officials have been reviewing lab protocol to correct the problem.

The names of three scientists at the lab--rather than one, as was the case with Fort--will probably be included on the license so it remains valid even if one of them leaves.

The crime lab has already made changes in its testing protocol and could get its license back by June, said Scott Lewis, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Services.