In his legal filings and an interview last week, Mr. Luibrand said there was no case against his client: No “buy money” for the alleged sexual acts was found, nor had Detective Gavigan produced a recording of the transaction he asserted had occurred. Mr. Luibrand also said the police had at one point falsely suggested drug activity was taking place at the spa.

“The overkill on this case was profound,” he said.

Both Mr. Luibrand and Mr. Port said they believed that the Albany police had arrested Ms. Liu, who always asserted her innocence, because they mistook her for Mr. Port’s wife.

“They didn’t know one Chinese woman from another,” Mr. Port said.

Steven A. Smith Jr., a spokesman for the Albany Police Department, had no comment on the particulars of the case, but suggested that it would approach such cases differently.

“If we had to take on one of these operations in the future,” he said, “we would certainly weigh out our investigatory options before making our decisions.”

A spokeswoman for David Soares, the Albany County district attorney, said the decision to support the dismissal came after evaluating the evidence and finding “significant proof problems.”

The drug unit that Mr. Port and Brendan J. Lyons, a reporter, investigated was disbanded around the same time as the raid at the Green Garden, according to Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple. The raid also prompted an internal review. Sheriff Apple’s office did not respond to requests for comment about the Green Garden case, the drug unit or the findings of that internal investigation.

Mr. Luibrand said Ms. Liu, who lives in Flushing, Queens, did not speak English fluently but was a longtime aesthetician and was pleased that her name had been cleared. “She’s thrilled by it, she’s happy,” he said.