Using the momentum from the exoneration of a man who served 22 years of a 40-year sentence for rape before evidence surfaced that showed he was innocent, the Innocence Project has reopened 17 investigations.

The added cases, all of which were closed in the last decade after police said the evidence was lost or destroyed, bring to 23 the number of open investigations at the Innocence Project, a legal clinic at Cardozo Law School that helps people convicted of a crime get DNA tests.

At the heart of the reopenings is a concern that the New York Police Department does not properly store DNA evidence at the Pearson Place Warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, a staff attorney for the project, Vanessa Potkin, said.

The facility stores crime evidence for the five boroughs and contains more than 1.6 million invoices for property. A single invoice could represent dozens of items: A counterfeit shipment of hundreds of compact discs could be registered under one invoice, police officials said.

While in prison, Mr. Newton, 45, tried three times to get the rape kit’s DNA evidence tested, which wasn’t courtroom protocol when he was arrested and convicted, but police told his lawyers in a letter that the rape kit was destroyed at a previous facility. The evidence was eventually found — with the help of the chief sex crimes prosecutor in the Bronx, Elisa Koenderman — in the exact place it was supposed to be stored, Ms. Potkin said.

A spokesman for the police department, Assistant Chief Michael Collins, said Mr. Newton’s evidence couldn’t be found earlier because the property invoice was lost during one of two accidents at an old facility at the corner of Meeker and Morgan avenues in Brooklyn. The first incident was a fire in July 1995 that was started by sparks from a construction site at the Bronx-Queens Expressway, and the second was an asbestos leak in September 1995 after a truck crashed into the facility. Without an invoice, it is nearly impossible to determine where a piece of evidence is located in the warehouse, Chief Collins said.

The sergeant who contacted Mr. Newton’s lawyers, Patrick McGuire, wrote similar letters to the Innocence Project in at least three of the cases that were recently reopened, Ms. Potkin said.

“Officials at Pearson Place don’t even know what evidence they have inside,” Ms. Potkin said.”We have an easier time finding evidence in the back roads of Mississippi than we do in New York City. Quite frankly, we get more cooperation from police officials there, too.”

Sergeant McGuire retired from the police department in February 2002, Chief Collins said. Following Mr. Newton’s exoneration in early June, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, ordered a special group to look for ways to make “improvements in the management of DNA evidence” across the department, he said. (The property clerk last updated its protocols in 2000, when it began storing all DNA evidence away from other types of evidence.) The group, which includes police officials from the detective’s bureau, the police lab, the evidence collection unit, and other units, is expected to deliver a preliminary report to Mr. Kelly next week, Chief Collins said.

As for the 17 cases the Innocence Project has reopened, Chief Collins said: “If anyone or any groups wants us to look for a piece of property that was previously looked for and they can provide us with the facts — especially the original invoices — we will make every effort to locate that property.”

Since the day Mr. Newton walked out of prison a free man, the Innocence Project has reached out to police officials to ask them to investigate the Pearson Place Warehouse. In talks with those officials and the city’s five district attorneys, the project has asked for a state-of-the-art system at the facility so crucial evidence is never lost again, a spokesman for the organization, Eric Ferrero, said.

Of all the cases the Innocence Project opened nationally in the last 10 years, about 32% were forced to close because evidence was lost or destroyed, according to its analyses. In New York, 50% had to be closed over the same time, the analyses show.

The 17 cases that have been reopened include convicted men with stories similar to Mr. Newton’s. One man, who wasn’t identified because of confidentiality rules at the Innocence Project, was convicted in 1980 of rape and sodomy. Biological evidence was taken but never tested during his trial. When lawyers tried to locate the evidence, Sergeant McGuire said it was destroyed in a fire.

Mr. Newton, meanwhile, has been living with a family friend since his release in early July. He enrolled Tuesday to receive a bachelor’s degree in business at Medgar Evers College, part of the City University of New York, on a full scholarship.

“If they would have gave me the evidence when I first asked for it 12 years ago, then I would have been out of jail 12 years ago,” he said. “If somebody had been doing their job, I would have not been going through this. … Obviously, it’s a major problem and it should be mandatory that all cases closed by the Innocence Project for that reason should be reopened.”