D.A. DEFENDS FAKE-DRUG RESPONSE

Prosecutors said Tuesday that they warned a detective in September
about a large cocaine bust that involved fake drugs but that it took
another four months for police to hand over their files to help
identify defendants who may have been wrongfully accused.

During a media briefing, Dallas County District Attorney Bill Hill and
his assistants released a timeline to show what they knew about the
so-called fake-drug cases. They said they gathered information as
quickly as possible to put together pieces of a "complicated,
developing" puzzle and worked to remedy a problem they inherited after
a series of questionable Dallas police drug busts.

Dallas Police Department spokeswoman Janice Houston declined to
comment on prosecutors' comments Tuesday, citing the FBI investigation
into the drug cases.

Prosecutors noted that they had called a detective now on suspension
after they received a Sept. 12 lab report showing that a large cocaine
bust contained only trace amounts of illicit drugs.

Even after talks with police supervisors, prosecutors said they didn't
grasp the scope of the fake-drug problem until mid-January, when
police gave them information on 59 now-dismissed cases. The 59 cases
involved two undercover officers and four questionable confidential
informants.

"Until we got down to the point of putting together those 59 cases, we
didn't have our arms around this," said First Assistant District
Attorney Mike Carnes. "We were trying to put the pieces together to
figure out what the puzzle was, but we still, in the month of January,
were getting information. ... After we were able to make a list of 59
cases, that's the first time that we had a sense of just how far back
this went [and] how many defendants were included."

By late September, prosecutors said they were seeing the bad drug
cases multiply but still didn't have the name of the primary informant.

After talks in September and October with the detective, whom they
didn't identify, prosecutors said they contacted a Dallas police
narcotics supervisor Oct. 26 about results of what by that time were
six lab tests that had found little or no drugs. Prosecutors said the
overwhelming question was why repeated positive field tests were being
refuted by more sophisticated laboratory analysis.

Mr. Carnes said the main informant took a lie-detector test Oct. 12.
As of Tuesday, prosecutors still haven't received a copy of the
polygraph results, which police say the informant passed.

Steve Tokoly, who oversees felony prosecutions, said his office was
reviewing adjudicated cases dating to 1999, when the main informant is
believed to have begun working for police. Mr. Tokoly and other
prosecutors say there still is no system in place to link an informant
to a particular officer.

On Nov. 20, prosecutors and police met with officials at the drug lab
at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences to discuss how
positive field tests could be refuted by further analysis.

Mr. Carnes said they came away with the realization "perhaps this was
a training issue ... but it didn't answer all the other questions. It
may be a problem with training or something more," he said.
Prosecutors worried that "if someone can manipulate the results ...
that's a problem."

When Dallas police began their internal investigation Nov. 30,
prosecutors "still didn't have many answers at all," Mr. Carnes said.

It wasn't until Jan. 11 that police gave prosecutors crucial
information that led to prosecutors identifying the 59 now-dismissed
cases "associated with several informants," Mr. Carnes said. "Until we
got to the point of the 59 cases, we had only fragments" of
information.

Mr. Hill applauded his prosecutors, saying he didn't think anything
else could have been done, given the information they had at the time.

"Considering the complications of putting all this together, and the
fact that they were trying to do something that was almost impossible
to do - and that was to gather facts when they didn't have the
resources to gather those facts - I don't feel let down at all," he
said.

Prosecutors repeatedly stressed that they took action as quickly as
they learned about problems. They attributed a mishandled lab report
in one of the most recent dismissals for fake drugs as being
inadvertently overlooked by a prosecutor juggling 150 pending drug
cases. They said prosecutors dismissed the four charges against two
defendants immediately after discovering the error.

Prosecutors also emphasized that they had suspended prosecution of the
questionable cases in mid-November. Court records show, however, that
defendants in at least two cases were offered plea bargains as late as
December. Prosecutors are now requiring lab tests on any suspected
illegal substance before seeking an indictment. Previously, they
submitted cases to the grand jury based on field tests.

The district attorney's office said last week that it had expanded its
inquiry into Dallas police narcotics cases to include more officers
besides the two on administrative leave but would not say how many
officers were under investigation. Prosecutors are working to dismiss
more than 70 cases related to the investigation.

The FBI is still in the process of gathering police records and
evidence from the questionable cases, said Dallas FBI Special Agent in
Charge Danny Defenbaugh.

Agent Defenbaugh said the bureau was casting a wide net, gathering
information about narcotics cases dating to 1997 to ensure that
nothing is missed. He said the bureau had not begun to analyze what it
had gathered so far.

"We're literally at the preliminary inquiry stage and haven't had a
chance to review all the documents and records," he said.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is assisting the FBI's
efforts, said Anne Estrada, the agency's Dallas-based executive
district director. At least two informants used in the drug cases are
in INS custody.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed last month alleges that the
Dallas Police Department failed to take corrective action, despite
knowing as early as September that innocent Mexican citizens were
jailed on false drug charges.

The lawsuit filed in January seeks unspecified damages from the city
and Senior Cpl. Mark Delapaz and Officer Eddie Herrera, now on paid
leave. Dallas Police Chief Terrell Bolton has declined comment on the
lawsuit.