Anti-Crime Efforts Hampered By DNA Lab Backlog, Inadequate Facilities
By Cyndi Roy for the State House News Service
       Consistent delays in processing crime scene and DNA evidence are hampering state efforts to prosecute and convict criminal offenders, public safety officials told Beacon Hill lawmakers Thursday.
       Testifying before the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland
Security, top officials said years of underfunding have left the State Police Crime Lab seriously short-staffed, and the workers who are deployed
in labs work out of a small, cramped, converted gymnasium headquarters in Sudbury.
       Those conditions, they said, are delaying many DNA tests by nearly a year, according to state public safety officials, and for as long at 18 months, according to district attorneys. In addition to samples sought by prosecutors, lab workers are additionally faced with the requirement of
collecting DNA samples from thousands of previously convicted felons. The
national standard for DNA tests is 30 days.
       “In order for district attorneys and investigators to apprehend, prosecute, and convict the guilty while protecting and exonerating the innocent, we must have the tools that are consistent with the best practices in existence throughout the country,” Cape Cod District Attorney Michael O’Keefe told committee members. “The public expects it, juries certainly expect it, and the courts expect it.”
       To test DNA samples the crime lab receives from police and district
attorneys’ offices, the state currently employs 12 DNA chemists. Another 12 are in training. According to the Massachusetts District Attorney’s
Association, Massachusetts would need 80 chemists to process DNA evidence in 30 days.
       The committee’s oversight hearing follows last month’s arrest of a suspect in the three-year-old murder of Cape Cod fashion writer Christa
Worthington. According to O’Keefe, DNA evidence collected from the suspect, Christopher McGowen, sat in lab for more than a year because of the backlog.
       Lawmakers and Gov. Mitt Romney agree the state’s forensic system needs more money. The question is how much will be delivered and when. In his fiscal 2006 budget proposal, Romney proposed doubling the State Police Crime Lab’s to $12.6 million, which will allow the state to hire 33 new staff and expand workspace. He included $125 million in a bond bill filed last week to renovate or rebuild the crime lab.
The House budget does not include Romney’s recommended increase, but adds $3 million over the current year to fund the lab at $9.4 million. Public
Safety Committee Co-Chairman Sen. Jarrett Barrios (D-Cambridge) has asked Senate budget writers to include the governor’s request in that branch’s spending plan to be released next Tuesday.
       Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn told the committee that funding
increases in the last three state budgets have allowed the department to
begin addressing some of the staffing and space problems, but said more
needs to be done to eliminate the growing backlog of DNA samples to be tested.
       “The Executive Office of Public Safety and this committee have been aware for some time that while the quality of their analysis is second to none, the operational capacity of the State Police Crime Lab has been inadequate,” Flynn said. “The crime lab’s becoming a time share right now,” he added later. “We’ve got so many people in there vying for the same space, they really have to literally share space.” The concern there, he said, is cross contamination of evidence.
       Dr. Carl Selavka, director of the State Police Crime Lab, said the lab
receives hundreds of cases a year that go untested because of the limited
capacity issues. The lab is now processing about 800 DNA samples in sexual assault cases. An additional 700 are in the “criminological” stage where workers determine whether DNA is available for testing.
Ideally, Selavka said, he would like the lab to be able to handle about
5,000 cases a year, half of which would result in DNA tests.
       “In the short term, we’re always going to have a capacity imbalance,” he told the committee. The committee’s hearing and the administration’s plans for improving the state lab follow the creation of a statewide DNA database and a recent state law requiring criminals convicted of any of 616 felonies to submit DNA samples to the database.
       It also comes amid a renewed effort by the Romney administration to
reinstate the death penalty. Under his plan, certain felons convicted using
forensic evidence would be eligible to receive the death penalty.
       The problems plaguing the state’s forensic unit were first highlighted by a 2002 report by the National Forensic Science Technology Center, which found inadequate facilities, management, staffing levels, and turnaround times at the state crime lab. Committee members and public safety officials both referenced the report Thursday as proof of the need to improve the lab’s operations.
       “These problems did not occur over night and they will not be fixed
overnight,” O’Keefe said. “We need the continued commitment of the
Legislature over the long term to fix these problems and bring us where we should be.”