Queens atty cleared of charges after Rikers guards said he brought drug-soaked papers to client

Prosecutors did not bring smuggling against a Queens public defender after tests showed that legal papers he brought a client were not soaked in drugs, as correctional officers alleged last month. Eagle file photo by Ryan Schwach

By Jacob Kaye

The Bronx district attorney’s office will not bring charges against a Queens lawyer who was publicly accused by correctional officers of trying to sneak drug-laced papers into Rikers Island.

Bernardo Caceres, a 30-year-old attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services, was cleared of any potential charges after the DA’s office said tests on a stack of legal papers Caceres was delivering to a client held in the city’s jails on June 11 came back negative.

The Daily News was the first to report on the lack of charges against Caceres on Thursday.

Caceres’ arrest was widely publicized by the Correctional Officers’ Benevolent Association, the union representing uniformed guards on Rikers Island who have. In a rare press release celebrating an arrest, the union described Caceres as a drug-peddling attorney.

The union also claimed the arrest was evidence that the Department of Correction’s longtime – and controversial – request to scan detainees’ mail and legal documents should be granted by the agency’s oversight board, which has, for years, rebuffed the proposal, often citing a lack of evidence for its need.

Caceres told the Eagle on Thursday that he believes that officers arrested him, in part, because “they wanted to push this narrative…and were just using me as collateral damage in their pursuit of getting what they want.”

Caceres and his colleague were on their way to meet with a client facing burglary charges on June 11 when a drug-sniffing dog stopped the attorney at a security checkpoint at the Otis Bantam Correctional Center on Rikers Island, according to COBA. The union claimed that the officer alerted to Caceres’ documents, identified by COBA as Officer Calloway, found some of the legal papers to be discolored. The attorneys were immediately arrested.

The union claimed that Caceres was charged after the papers were field tested and revealed to be soaked in THC, however, the attorney said he never formally was hit with any charges and that further tests by the Bronx DA’s office came up negative.

Last year, a Department of Investigation report found that 85 percent of the DOC’s field tests resulted in false positives for fentanyl. Because of the test’s high rate of inaccuracy, the DOI recommended the DOC end its practice of arresting people based on the results of field tests.

“There's really no ramifications for DOC for creating a false allegation,” Raymond Queliz, an attorney at Caicedo & Queliz LLC who is representing Caceres, told the Eagle.

A COBA representative did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Caceres said the arrest and allegation have had serious consequences for both him and his client, who was also arrested.

“My name was just dragged through the mud,” the attorney said.

Caceres had his clearance to visit with clients on Rikers Island and in other secured areas revoked by the Office of Court Administration.

He also will no longer be allowed to represent his client, who was just about to be tried for the burglary charges he faces. Now, the client’s case will be transferred to a new attorney and the trial, which was days away from beginning, will be delayed for months. The client has already spent over a year on Rikers Island awaiting the resolution of his case.

“I obviously cared about the outcome of this case, cared about giving him adequate representation and knew, more than anyone, the ins and outs of this case,” Caceres said. “Now, someone else is going to have to start that process over, and that's an incredible injustice to [my client].”

Queliz said the allegations could have ramifications beyond just Caceres and his clients.

“Now you have attorneys that have to rethink, ‘How is my client going to get his discovery now? How is my client going to get paperwork?’ Because if a false positive leads to this, imagine what can happen later down the line,” he said.

For years, the DOC has claimed that drugs and other contraband on Rikers Island have gotten through security checkpoints via mail and, sometimes, privileged communications with attorneys.

In 2023, the DOC, then run by former DOC Commissioner Louis Molina, asked the Board of Correction to allow them to open non-privileged DOC mail and digitally scan it, rather than handing the physical mail over to detainees.

The board declined to vote on the request, leaving it in limbo.

The agency, now run by DOC Commissioner Lynelle Maginley-Liddie, again revived the request earlier this year, asking the BOC multiple times to allow them to open the mail before delivering it to detainees.

The BOC recently declined the request.