Evidence lost in NYPD warehouse fire could mean the end of the fight for the wrongly convicted

Dreams of freedom for the city’s wrongly convicted might have gone up in smoke.

A still-smoldering NYPD warehouse fire could affect both efforts to overturn wrongful convictions and the closing of cold cases once investigators determine the extent of damaged DNA evidence stored in the waterfront Brooklyn building, a pair of defense attorneys said Wednesday.

“For defendants challenging old convictions, the fire is catastrophic,” said veteran defense lawyer Ron Kuby as firefighters remained on the scene for a second day.

“I’m quite confident in saying there are many prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted, who may never be able to prove it because evidence was destroyed in this fire,” said Kuby. ”... The casualties of this fire are not firefighters, but the wrongfully convicted who will never be able to open their cases.”

NYPD sources confirmed the DNA stored there involved cases from 2012 and earlier, with some of the evidence bizarrely stored in 55-gallon drums. “Can you believe that?” asked one source.

The Red Hook blaze began early Tuesday at the Erie Basin Auto Pound on Columbia St., with firefighters still on the scene into Wednesday evening putting out pockets of fire inside the building where thick black smoke made visibility almost zero. The cause of the blaze remained under investigation.

While authorities had yet to sort out exactly what was lost, a police source said another area of concern was cold cases where old evidence could be tested with new technology. The evidence involved both current cases under investigation and others that the NYPD was planning to give a second look, the police source said.

“The facility is really old and antiquated, including the electrical system,” said another police source. “Cold case files got destroyed. Vehicles got destroyed and [police vehicles] involved in line-of-duty deaths.”

The flames spread too quickly for the building’s sprinkler system to extinguish the blaze, with an FDNY spokesman explaining the fire was already “very advanced” by the time firefighters arrived.

Defense attorney Cary London echoed the concerns about those behind bars with legitimate complaints about the justice system.

“If evidence was destroyed that relates to clients with pending wrongful conviction cases, this could be the end of the line,” said London. “The destruction of evidence could be the nail in the coffin for those clients, unfortunately.”

A law enforcement source said his understanding was that most of the DNA evidence stored in the building was previously tested, and “authorities should be able to move forward with those cases even without the physical item.”

There was no immediate response from the district attorneys’ offices in the five boroughs.

The NYPD can’t enter the partially collapsed building and catalog what evidence was lost — including the cold cases — until the embers from Tuesday’s 10:30 a.m. blaze are cold. It remains unclear what, if anything, can be recovered from the heavily damaged building.

The city Buildings Department will conduct a structural stability inspection to see if the warehouse can be salvaged, said an agency spokesman.

The Buildings Department will also check neighboring buildings to see if their stability was compromised by the fire. At least one adjacent business claimed the blaze caused his building to shake and vibrate, the agency’s website noted.

Fourteen NYPD employees and six contractors were working in the warehouse when one of the contractors saw smoke coming from a “high shelf,” said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

The warehouse contained hundreds of seized e-bikes, dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles along with “biological evidence” — clothing and other items that were tested for DNA, Maddrey said. Vehicles held as evidence in criminal investigations, such as cars that victims were shot inside, are kept there as well.

FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said Tuesday that it appeared most of the building’s contents were damaged. The fire was not the first time the building endured major woes: Hurricane Sandy destroyed 5,000 55-gallon cardboard drums filled with DNA evidence when the ground floor was flooded in 2012 by the storm surge.

With the ruined evidence in those cases, prosecutors were able to use photographs of the evidence, a law enforcement source said.

“If forensic evidence was destroyed that, if properly tested, might indicate a current defendant’s innocence, such defendant’s chance of an acquittal will decrease,” said defense attorney Joel Rudin, who specializes in wrongful conviction cases.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information Julian Phillips said the department will catalog what was damaged or destroyed and will notify the relevant agencies.

Three firefighters, three EMS members and two civilians suffered minor injuries, authorities said.