CRIME LAB QUESTIONS RETURN; EFFORT TO CHANGE DUI PLEA COULD RESULT IN BROAD RULING.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

The contentious and drawn-out Ventura County crime lab hearings, dormant since a key ruling last fall, are set to resume today with attorneys focusing on a single contested drunk driving case that could set a precedent for dozens of others.

Daniel Gonzalez of Garden Grove will seek the court's permission to withdraw his guilty plea to a February 1997 drunk driving arrest on the grounds that he would have fought the case at trial had he known of problems in the alcohol testing unit of the sheriff's crime lab. Prosecutors steadfastly oppose this change of plea.

The larger issue, though, is whether Superior Court Judge Steven Perren will use a ruling in the Gonzalez case to fashion a broader legal framework to determine who, among some 40 other DUI convicts, can also seek to reopen their case.

``We just need to know what the judge will use for his guidelines,'' said Deputy Public Defender Steve Lipson. ``This is one of the last battles'' in the crime lab hearing.

Last year, defense attorneys spent six months trying to have 600 drunk driving cases dismissed because of questionable lab practices. That effort ultimately failed in late October when Perren denied the dismissals, but allowed individual defendants to challenge test procedures and results on a case-by-case basis.

Of the original cases, about 400 were considered post-plea because the defendant had already pleaded guilty. The other 200 cases were still awaiting trial and are now wending their way through the court system.

At this point, all but about 40 of the post-plea defendants have given up the fight, Lipson said.

The Gonzalez case is seen as a test case allowing Perren to set standards that will determine which of the other post-plea defendants can withdraw their pleas and go to trial.

Gonzalez, 22, was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving Feb. 23, 1997, according to court documents filed by prosecutors. He was stopped by the California Highway Patrol for speeding on the northbound Ventura Freeway near Moorpark Road.

Gonzalez appeared to have been drinking and did poorly on a field sobriety test, prosecutors say. He subsequently took four breath alcohol tests, all of which showed results over the .08 percent legal limit to drive.

Two days later, acting on the advice of a public defender, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to driving with a blood-alcohol level over the state legal limit. In a signed declaration, Gonzalez now says he would not have pleaded guilty had he known the crime lab might have been engaged in sloppy or unlicensed alcohol testing at that time.

At the hearings last year, defense attorneys attacked the lab for not having a state-required alcohol supervisor from Nov. 16, 1996, to May 23, 1997; permitting an unqualified technician to botch dozens of urine and blood tests; and continuing to do breath tests after the state ordered those tests halted March 19.

Prosecutors say Gonzalez has no grounds to withdraw his plea because he took the breath test more than a month before the state order of March 19.

And according to Deputy District Attorney Lisa Lee, ``There was absolutely no evidence presented or findings made (at the crime lab hearings) that any of the breath tests conducted during the time period in question were unreliable or inaccurate.''

Lee says there is evidence to indicate the tests were accurate.

But complicating this matter is the fact that breath samples cannot be stored for retesting at a later date. That means the defense cannot prove Gonzalez had a lower alcohol level than that recorded by police.

``In essence, the defendant entered a plea of guilty based upon the state's representation that the defendant had a certain alcohol level, when in fact his true alcohol level was lower and the testing procedure used by the state was of questionable accuracy and reliability,'' Lipson wrote in his motion.

Lipson expects the judge's ruling will affect all post-plea cases, whether they were based on blood, urine or breath testing.