Case List Turned Over in Drug Lab Errors

Nearly six months after learning about the blunders of a police chemist, Los Angeles County prosecutors decided Thursday to give defense attorneys a list of 972 narcotics cases the man handled.

Defense attorneys said they would review the list to determine whether their clients were hurt by chemist Jeff Lowe’s miscalculations.

Prosecutors believe Lowe, who began working in the LAPD crime lab’s narcotics division in May 2003, incorrectly weighed drug evidence in 47 cases.

Crime lab supervisors said that the errors occurred in only 27 cases and that they filed follow-up reports correcting those mistakes. The revelation of Lowe’s miscalculations prompted both agencies to conduct inquiries.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton defended Lowe and the crime lab at a news conference Thursday morning, calling the mistakes “clerical.”

“The errors, although minor in nature, were treated with the utmost concern and gravity,” Bratton told reporters. “Am I concerned? Certainly. But I think we’ve addressed this very appropriately.”

The district attorney’s office is turning over the list of cases to the offices of the public defender and the alternate public defender, the Criminal Courts Bar Assn. and court-appointed defense attorney Gigi Gordon, who represents alleged victims of police corruption.

The list was compiled by LAPD officials. Supervisors re-weighed the evidence in each of those cases. The list does not include cases Lowe has worked on since being retrained and returning to narcotics analysis duties. It also does not include cases in which he analyzed blood and urine evidence before moving to the narcotics division.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay said Thursday that he did not believe the weight miscalculations would have made a difference in the criminal cases. But he wanted the defense attorneys to be able to assess that for themselves. Then, he said, both sides could litigate the relevant issues in court.

“It’s a work in progress,” Livesay said. “They’ve got a good list to work from.” Gordon, who heads the Post Conviction Assistance Center, said she was pleased by the district attorney’s decision, though she believed the information should have been handed over months earlier. Gordon said she would also like to know how the errors occurred and how the situation was investigated.

“Handing me a haystack and saying, ‘Go find a needle’ isn’t really going to help,” she said. “It’s a good place to start, but where is the rest?”

The problem came to the attention of Lowe’s supervisors after a judge ordered evidence re-weighed in one case. Lowe’s supervisors then conducted a review of the rest of his narcotics cases. They believe some of the mistakes may have been caused by a failure to subtract the weight of the containers.

The Police Department informed the national accreditation board of the problems and the board is continuing its evaluation of the lab.

Assistant lab director Joe Hourigan said Thursday that he was still trying to figure out how Lowe made the mistakes. “The only thing we could come up with is carelessness,” he said. Hourigan said that Lowe’s work was still being monitored, but that he was a “good employee.”

Bratton said Lowe’s credibility was intact. “He made a mistake,” the chief said. “He didn’t commit a mortal sin. He didn’t commit a crime.”