SUSPECTS MAY WALK AFTER SHERIFF SLIP-UP

Deputies Failed To Send Drugs To Lab

A Smithfield lawyer is pushing a judge to drop high-level drug charges
against two clients because Johnston County sheriff's deputies forgot
to send the evidence to the state crime lab.

Robert Elden Lucas Jr. and Jerry Lynn Pierce have waited too long for
their cases to be heard, lawyer Jack O'Hale argued in a motion filed
Wednesday in Johnston Superior Court.

Narcotics agents nabbed Lucas, 29, of Benson in October 2003 in an
undercover buy of powder cocaine. Agents arrested Pierce, 42, of the
Princeton area a few months later on charges of trafficking marijuana.
Pierce was a guard at the Johnston County jail at the time of his arrest.

The sheriff's department has taken the blame for the
slip-up.

"It was an oversight that it was not submitted, but it was not
intentional," Sheriff Steve Bizzell said. "This was a mistake, and we
take full responsibility."

Prosecutors and sheriff's deputies will urge a judge to let the
charges stand.

"If these cases just go away, it will be an injustice to the
community," said sheriff's Capt. A.C. Fish, head of the narcotics
division. "These oversights of ours in no way justifies it being
thrown out."

Lucas and Pierce have been out on bail since soon after their arrests,
Bizzell said.

Prosecutors stalled Lucas' and Pierce's cases for about a year as they
waited for lab results from the State Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant District Attorney Ann Kirby thought the cases were lost in
the backlog at the SBI lab. It wasn't until she requested a rush job
on the evidence that she discovered the evidence had never arrived.

"I dropped the ball," said Jason Guseman, a narcotics agent who
handled the Pierce case. "I had been doing drug work for six months
and had just gotten my feet wet."

What didn't happen

When investigators seize drugs, they designate whether the evidence
should go to the lab for processing. The drug evidence in the Lucas
and Pierce cases was not flagged for processing.

There is no hard-and-fast rule for which cases are sent to the lab,
Fish said. Agents typically hold on to evidence when they suspect a
plea deal will be struck to avoid adding to the SBI lab's backlog.
Kirby said she avoids bargaining trafficking-level drug cases without
lab reports.

At the lab, drugs are weighed and tested for authenticity, an issue in
many cocaine buys. Kirby said she typically waits six months to get
results back and tries to avoid sending evidence to the state lab
unnecessarily.

The four ounces of powder cocaine that investigators say Lucas sold to
an undercover informant had been under lock and key in the sheriff's
evidence room from October 2003 until last week.

So has the marijuana, just shy of a pound, that deputies say they
seized during a surprise search of Pierce's home in December 2003.
Pierce, who was fired by the sheriff the night of his arrest, had
stashed the weed under a shirt in his room and in his 16-year-old
daughter's bedroom, Kirby said. The teen, who Kirby said helped
package the dope, was also charged that night. Her case is still pending.

Prosecutors and sheriff's deputies said the error was an isolated
event. Given the volume of drug cases in Johnston County, the mistake
was understandable, Fish said.

Kirby said if she stacked the files for all pending felony drug
charges, they would reach the ceiling in her office. At any given
moment, she said, she is handling felony drug cases against 250 to 300
defendants.

Kirby acknowledged that the delay might have hurt both prosecution and
defense in the Lucas and Pierce cases.

"Something this old, memories will have faded," she said. "The jury
will wonder why we were just now getting around to it."