Andrew Pantazi

apantazi@jacksonville.com

A Jacksonville man has spent the last three months in jail awaiting trial on cocaine trafficking charges, despite not having any cocaine, according to a new laboratory test.

Last December, Jacksonville police pulled Kena’z Edwards over for having a taillight out. When they searched his car, they found a bottle that said it contained lidocaine. When they asked him what it was, he told them it was lidocaine. But when they used a field drug test — a test that is inadmissible in court because it frequently finds false positives — it came back as cocaine. Prosecutors filed trafficking charges that carried a mandatory minimum of three years in prison.

The case is the latest example for the Jacksonville State Attorney’s Office, which refuses, per State Attorney Melissa Nelson’s policy, to send drugs for lab testing until a case is set for trial. Defense attorneys have complained the policy causes innocent people to plead guilty or to spend months in jail while waiting for justice.

WATCH OFFICERS CONDUCT A FIELD TEST ON EDWARDS’ SUSPECTED DRUGS

Nelson was not available for an interview, but in a statement, the office said it was not planning to change its policy.

“The current practice is that controlled substances are not submitted for further testing until a case is set for trial,” the statement reads. “To submit every seized controlled substance in advance of a case being set for trial would result in an unreasonable volume of submittals to FDLE and the unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Where factual circumstances warrant an exception, we will always work with our partners to have the controlled substance at issue tested on an expedited timeline.”

Other prosecutors’ offices, however, do test every suspected drug. Kendall Davidson, an executive assistant state attorney in the Sixth Circuit, which covers Pinellas and Pasco counties, disputed the idea that it’s too costly to test every drug report, estimating it cost maybe $100 per substance. “Certainly in a trafficking case, that would not be cost-prohibitive.”

He said it’s rare for his office to even accept a plea deal without first lab-testing suspected drugs.

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Edwards’ attorney, Assistant Public Defender Erin Mason, said she repeatedly asked the State Attorney’s Office to test the drugs to no avail. While waiting for those tests, Edwards was held in jail on a $178,000 bond.

“He had a job,” Mason said. “He was being productive. He has a family. He has a girlfriend. All those things are compromised while you’re sitting in there.”

Edwards was also charged with possession of a weapon by a convicted felon because police found in his car a battle ax that he bought at a flea market. Mason said it was for decoration, and looked like a “Game of Thrones” prop. “It looked like something you would — bad decorating purposes — but like something you would put on the wall. A crime wouldn’t be committed with it.”

As of Wednesday, Edwards was still in jail, but the State Attorney’s Office has accepted a plea deal for Edwards that would drop the trafficking charge and release him with a time-served sentence for the weapon possession charge and for two separate misdemeanor cases, one for a battery and the other for driving with a suspended license. A judge has not yet approved the plea deal, and Edwards’ next court date is March 26.

“The problem for our clients is that, of course, by definition they’re indigent,” said Chief Assistant Public Defender Lewis Buzzell. “If the amount of the white powder that’s at issue is large enough — and as you know it doesn’t have to be very much — it changes it from a simple possession to trafficking, which was the case in this instance. Trafficking bonds are typically higher, so it’s harder for our clients to make bond and be at liberty on bond and be at liberty while we’re waiting for the drug test.”

Edwards’ arrest report also said Edwards told officers the powder was cocaine, but body-worn camera footage contradicts that. He told them it was lidocaine in the footage, and the powder was in a bottle that said it was lidocaine. The arrest report also said Edwards was unemployed, but he told them he worked for a Realtor.

That footage showed officers conducted the field test and the swab came back blue, indicating cocaine. “It’s blue,” an officer said. “It’s not a little blue. It’s real blue.”

Mason said nothing in the video made it appear the officers conducted the test inappropriately. The tests are notoriously inaccurate and in the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Justice said they shouldn’t be used as evidence. A ProPublica investigation in 2016 found that in Florida, more than one in five times evidence submitted as methamphetamine to FDLE came back as something other than meth.

Defense attorneys aren’t the only ones who’ve questioned Nelson’s policy. State attorneys in some other Florida jurisdictions require testing before filing charges.

“I’m kind of surprised they had a trafficking case they didn’t immediately get a lab report on,” said Davidson, the executive assistant state attorney in the Sixth Circuit. “I can’t imagine that happening in our circuit, certainly not for an extensive period of time. We would have that lab report pretty quickly. On any trafficking case, we’d be pushing to get that quickly.”

In Pinellas, Davidson said, the county has its own forensics lab. Jacksonville does not. If prosecutors can’t get test results back within 33 days, he said, then the defendant is released from jail while waiting on prosecutors to file charges.

“I’ve been here over 30 years,” Davidson said. “We’ve always wanted lab reports” before filing charges.

This isn’t the first time this has happened during Nelson’s time as state attorney.

Last year, during a State Attorney’s Office forum about race, criminal defense attorney Dexter Van Davis pointed to the lack of lab testing as a particular problem for black defendants. He said then that office should ask for testing before filing charges or ask that defendants be released from jail while waiting for test results.

In January 2018, a Jacksonville defendant had cocaine possession charges dropped. He had claimed the suspected cocaine was just salt, and lab testing later confirmed it. He had to pay a $5,003 bond while waiting for the test results.

In another case, defense attorney Dale Carson said, one of his clients was arrested after field tests showed he had cocaine, despite his insistence that it wasn’t a drug. Lab tests later proved he’d been telling the truth. His case, he said, was during Nelson’s predecessor’s term. “It’s a hell of a problem,” he said. “I will just tell you from my perspective, when people lose their freedom, it’s a lot more important than taxpayer dollars.”

Buzzell said his concerns about the state attorney’s policy was “of paramount importance,” and he plans to address that with the State Attorney’s Office.

Buzzell said the case is also indicative of how police are able to use any number of traffic laws — in this case a faulty tail light — to give police the opportunity to stop drivers. “It’s not hard to find something in the Florida Statutes, under 316, that’s a violation for anyone driving on the road.”