BOSTON — Drug traffickers could walk free because state criminal laboratories do not have enough analysts to both process samples and testify in court, after a Supreme Court ruling last month struck down a Massachusetts law, Gov. Deval Patrick has told lawmakers.

The governor, spurred by a Supreme Court ruling in a cocaine case that found Massachusetts law permitting lab analyses of drugs without live testimony is unconstitutional, is pushing the Legislature to pass a measure allowing criminal defendants to demand to confront state chemists in court. But Patrick said he is doing so to prevent courts from dismissing valid criminal charges in cases where analysts are not available to testify.

In the case, Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the court, in a 5-4 ruling, called forensic lab evidence testimonial, and said lab workers needed to appear, invalidating two state statutes.

The decision blocks prosecutors from establishing that controlled substances are in fact drugs simply through lab documents. Patrick said the labs are already stretched thin, with about 30 drug analysts serving the state, and frequent waits as long as six months for the documents.

"If the status quo is maintained," Patrick wrote, "the courts may have to dismiss numerous valid criminal charges in cases in which an analyst is not available for trial."

Bristol County District Attorney Samuel Sutter convened a meeting Monday at the Fall River Police Department with police chiefs from throughout Bristol County to discuss the ruling and responses to it.¬ 

"It certainly is a problem right now because everything is at a standstill while district attorneys try to figure out how we're going to deal with the decision," Sutter told the State House News Service.

Police departments are already dealing with uncertainty around how to enforce the state's marijuana laws, after a ballot referendum approved by voters last November decriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana. Police officers and prosecutors have said the law's implementation has led to difficulties enforcing existing laws. Police in Gloucester and Manchester had both sought stiffer local penalties to tighten the state legislation, but Gloucester's City Council declined to add local penalties to the new state regulations, and Manchester selectmen have referred the issue to the town's Board of Health.

The issue of heroin use has also been put back in the spotlight in Gloucester through the fatal overdose of a 22-year-old city man 10 days ago, the arrest of three women connected with distributing heroin to the woman who was with him when he died, and the probation sentence handed to a Rockport man on heroin distribution charges stemming from a separate case in Gloucester District Court.

Working with Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, Patrick wrote a bill requiring prosecutors to notify defendants when they intended to use certificates of analysis and allowing defendants to demand a lab analyst's attendance.

"This procedure protects defendants' constitutional rights, while at the same time allowing prosecutors and the state laboratories to better manage their limited resources," Patrick wrote in a filing letter to lawmakers.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts that state law allowing the certificates of analysis from state labs to be admitted as prima facie evidence on the composition, quality, and weight of controlled substances violated the so-called "confrontation clause" of the U.S. Constitution's sixth amendment.

The case dates to the 2001 arrest of Luis Melendez-Diaz, who was arrested on charges of trafficking crack cocaine in Boston. Jurors were told they could rely on lab technician analysis. After his conviction, Melendez-Diaz appealed and was rejected by the state Appeals Court. He appealed to the state Supreme Judicial Court and was denied again, then took the case to the Supreme Court.

Drug cases make up about 47,000 of the 300,000 criminal cases brought every year in Massachusetts, Sutter said. He said he didn't think anyone envisioned chemists being available to testify in all of those cases.¬ Sutter identified gun cases as among other types of cases that could be affected by the ruling.

In drug cases, Sutter said, disputes are usually not about whether the drug is what prosecutors say it is, but whether the amounts of drugs involved in the case are consistent with requirements for distribution charges, he said, or whether a defendant is part of a drug operation.

Quick passage of the legislation would clear up confusion, Sutter predicted.

"You're going to see the issue discussed, debated, argued on almost a daily basis in the courts," he said.

Material from the State House News Service was used in this report.