RESUME ERROR MAY SCUTTLE CONVICTIONS

San Diego Alerts Lawyers in Scores Of Driving Cases

SAN DIEGO - The San Diego city attorney's office is notifying defense lawyers that a veteran criminalist who testified frequently in drunken-driving trials incorrectly listed a science degree on his résumé.
The letter from the city attorney's senior discovery attorney, Amanda Fates, was mailed this week and says the information about Ray Cole is being provided under statutory and constitutional obligations to disclose "an error."
A lawyer who defends clients charged with driving under the influence said questions about Cole's qualifications could affect convictions in thousands of cases.
'In Jeopardy'
"It puts every case in jeopardy," said Mike Fremont of the Front Line Law Group in Carlsbad. "Once they have been identified, all of them should be reversed."
Another drunken-driving defense specialist said the disclosure taints Cole's testimony, making it a target if cases must be retried.
"If you're willing to lie under oath about one thing, you'd be willing to lie about another," said San Diego lawyer Mary Frances Prevost.
Records Audit
Cole could not be immediately located for comment.
Gregory Thompson, the sheriff's director of forensic services, said Cole, who is in his 70s, retired after questions about his résumé arose.
Thompson said that when Cole was hired in 1974, a science degree wasn't required for a criminalist. Now a science degree is necessary, he said.
The city attorney's office, which prosecutes city drunken-driving cases, did not respond to requests for comment.
Paul Levikow, a spokesman for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, said the office is aware of the discrepancies in Cole's résumé but still is considering what action to take. The office tries cases in the county that are outside of the city limits. Cole has testified in many of those cases, Levikow said.
The problem arose when a quality assurance manager for the sheriff's crime laboratory discovered what she described as "an error" in Cole's résumé. While performing as audit of employee records, the manager said, she found that the résumé stated Cole earned a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in pre-medical studies. But, she said, a degree confirmation service found that his degree in 1957 was in political science.
In a report accompanying the letter being sent to lawyers, the city attorney's office said that during a Jan. 19 meeting with the lab's supervising criminalist Cole confirmed "his degree was in political science and that his résumé was incorrect."
On Jan. 24, after a second meeting with Cole and top lab officials, "Mr. Cole was counseled that it was his responsibility to ensure accuracy in his résumé and that he was not to testify in future cases," according to the report.
Public Defender Steven J. Carroll said his office was reviewing the matter.
"Generally speaking, I don't think his qualification as an expert depended on his undergraduate degree," Carroll said. "It depended on everything he's done since then."
Fremont said the district attorney and San Diego city attorney should notify defense lawyers of every case in which Cole testified over the two decades he has been a sheriff's criminalist.
The offices should concentrate, Freemont said, on those cases that would have been close without Cole's testimony. Those cases should be voided, he said, even if a convicted driver has served his entire sentence. The effects of a drunken-driving conviction follow a person for years, he said.