TROY – Rensselaer County District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly says that when she and her staff began sifting through the paperwork left behind by her predecessor, Joel Abelove, they found the office failed to collect more than $100,000 in forfeiture money.

It was a simple step that wasn't taken. A form had to be sent to the police department that seized the money and it would be released from the evidence room to be distributed.

The overdue funds come from years of prosecutions, and the failure to apply for the money seems to stretch through Abelove's four-year tenure and into a prior period when Arthur Glass served as the acting district attorney before Abelove's 2014 election, she said.

The funds were part of money and property seized in criminal cases handled by local police, the State Police and other local and federal agencies. Local law enforcement agencies can claim funds forfeited in criminal cases and use them for operating expenses and other costs.

"It is shocking. It's money on the table — it's money that could be spent for prevention in the community, for assisting law enforcement, and for the office," Donnelly said a recent interview at her third-floor office in the county courthouse.

The failure to collect the forfeited funds is the latest example of the missed opportunities triggered by poor record-keeping that plagued Abelove's office. During a tenure that ended with his defeat by Donnelly last year, Abelove and his prosecutors failed to present hundreds of felony cases to a grand jury, and inaction led to the dismissal of 40 percent of the cases when they were returned to local municipal courts.

Abelove did not respond for a request for comment.

Donnelly campaigned on a pledge to end mismanagement of the office, reduce the backlog of cases and improve operations to prevent cases from being lost. She said the excavation of old cases is well under way.

"I think it was to a certain extent what we expected. There is a backlog. We have attempted to not only address that but to prevent the same going forward," Donnelly said.

Donnelly said her office is in the process of claiming the forfeited funds.

“So, it’s predating the prior administration. Most of it was in the last four years obviously. We found files with the forfeitures agreements set forth,” Donnelly said. “It’s just a lack of doing your job.”

Since taking office in January, Donnelly said she has given her assistant district attorneys greater freedom to handle cases. The prosecutors, she said, no longer have to get her consent to resolve cases in local courts.

The office, she said, is keeping better track of cases and prosecutors are regularly comparing the evidence gather by police with the charges lodged against suspects to make sure the cases will withstand the scrutiny of judges.

Donnelly has met with the leaders of the county’s police departments and with local judges. She is visiting each court.

Troy Police Chief Brian Owens and North Greenbush Police Chief David Keevern said improved communications with Donnelly's staff have changed everything. Cases are coordinated and discussed, they said.

The assistant district attorneys stay in touch and the department is kept abreast of what is developing in the way cases are prosecuted, Keevern said. The department is informed about what's needed for grand jury presentations of cases, he said.

"We're not waiting for case to go to grand jury," said Keevern.

Owens said there's an effort to ensure prosecutors and detectives are tracking cases. "Workflow is improving," Owens said. "We have email groups."

“When we get a felony case, we’re going to evaluate that case so that these cases don’t languish, so they don’t come in as felonies and sit, as we know has happened in the past, and get lost in the shuffle after being waived up to a grand jury,” Donnelly said.

When cases aren’t scrutinized and tracked, they can “fizzle out,” Donnelly said. “Then you don’t only go from a felony to a misdemeanor, but you go from a felony to a dismissal.”

Donnelly kept on nearly every assistant district attorney when she took office, and has hired others. Her primary addition was Chief Assistant District Attorney Matthew Hauf, who assumed responsibility for several high-profile cases, including prosecution of two men accused of killing two women and two children in a Lansingburgh home in late 2017. One of the defendants has pleaded guilty to murder and the other man goes on trial at the end of the month.

Evaluating old cases has resulted in both hard decisions and unexpected situations, Donnelly said.

The discovery of a sticky note that read “DO NOT DISCLOSE” on a file in the case of Eulogio "Lewis" Cruz, who was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 100 years behind bars for a sex crime, is an example.

Donnelly agreed to a plea bargain that ended Cruz's prison term after 13 years amid concern about the note, and the possibility the long-forgotten file contained evidence that could have led to Cruz' exoneration.

Donnelly said she doesn’t have the resources to pursue an internal investigation of how the case was originally handled, noting she had little to go on beyond the sticky note.