Articles

Crime Lab Battles Backlog Of Cases; GBI's Staff Shortage Slows Analyses

Rhonda Cook, AJC Staff
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 30, 2003

Staffing problems at the GBI Crime Lab have created a backlog of work that is threatening to short-circuit some criminal prosecutions.

The state has spent millions of dollars upgrading and expanding crime lab facilities, but the Georgia Bureau of Investigation does not have enough employees to do the work.

"What's going to happen is cases are going to have to be dismissed because we can't get crime lab results in a timely manner," Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter said.

"We're seeing the backlog in cases continue to steadily grow," GBI Director Vernon Keenan said Tuesday.

The problem is not as serious as it was in 1997, when prosecutors were dropping cases because of an unacceptable delay in analyzing evidence, Keenan said.

But in two years, the GBI budget has declined from $66.6 million to $63.2 million.

According to information the GBI distributed to sheriffs this week: "The state crime lab is greatly understaffed for the amount of work that is currently being requested by local agencies. Vacancies and the absence of additional positions needed to meet the increasing workload have created significant backlogs in the lab and these backlogs will continue to grow."

The memo said the agency needed 109 more people, at a cost of more than $4.8 million, to control and then reduce the backlog.

As a result, the agency has shifted funds from other areas to pay the salaries of scientists, Deputy Director Dan Kirk said. The scientists perform autopsies and analyze drugs, alcohol tests, DNA samples, spent bullets and fibers, and other trace evidence collected from crime scenes.

Even so, the only way a prosecutor can get already-submitted evidence analyzed is to make repeated requests.

"Once should be enough," Porter said. "[But] you have to push the crime lab to get it done."

In June, the GBI received 157 requests to "expedite" cases set for trial, Kirk said.

As of the end of June, the lab also had more than 11,000 cases that were more than 30 days old, 9,100 of them in drug analysis. It has had some cases more than a year.

A year earlier, about 4,170 cases had been at the lab longer than a month, 508 of them for drug analysis. The GBI was completing testing on 90 percent of the cases it received within 30 days.

"So, we're sort of heading back into the hole." Kirk said.

On Monday, the GBI notified local law enforcement agencies that it would no longer test suspected marijuana if less than 10 pounds is seized, which could pose a problem for prosecutors once they get to court.

"We have to have further testing," Porter said, because field test findings are "not sufficient evidence for a conviction."

Five years ago, when district attorneys were dropping cases because they could not get timely analysis of crime scene evidence, a GBI official at the time said the lab had become the "bottleneck of justice."

Upgrades advised
A 1998 study by a panel of experts, police, prosecutors and judges recommended that Georgia spend $50 million for new labs, updated equipment and about 200 additional people just to meet the lab's demands over the next 10 years.

The crime lab got little more than half of what the panel said it needed to make improvements.

Last fall, a new lab and morgue opened at the GBI's headquarters in Decatur. New facilities were built to replace labs in Columbus, Savannah and Augusta. Construction on a lab replacing an old one in Macon should be finished next month. A new lab in Cleveland in North Georgia is supposed to be ready in October.

"We are not at the same crisis that we were originally, but we are in what I consider a crisis situation," said Clayton County District Attorney Bob Keller, who was on the 1998 panel.

Keller said he must have a crime lab report on evidence before he will seek an indictment.

Lack of funding
The problem is a lack of money for staffing. In 1998, the panel recommended adding 181 scientists and technicians. The 1999 and 2000 legislatures agreed to pay for about half that number, but the trade-off was money that otherwise would have paid for 23 field agents.

"They just shifted some positions," Gwinnett District Attorney Porter said. "It wasn't a real change."

Subsequent budget cuts have left the agency with only 57 of those 93 new positions. GBI records show that 48 of 266 remaining funded slots at the crime lab are vacant.

The agency has no money to staff the soon-to-be opened Cleveland lab. The medical examiner at the Summerville lab resigned recently. The Columbus and Macon offices have no one to perform autopsies.

Caseloads of Georgia's scientists vary but still are higher than in other states. For example, the 17 state crime lab scientists who check for DNA in evidence from sex crimes each have 10 to 15 open cases; in other states, the average caseload is four to eight cases per scientist, Kirk said, referring to national statistics. The 22 Georgia crime lab drug chemists each average 120 cases a month; elsewhere, a drug chemist might get 100 cases a month, he said.

"Facility-wise, we've made out well," Kirk said. "But ... you can't keep asking people to do more and more. Then they'll start making mistakes."

Reprinted with permission from The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. Further reproduction, retransmission or distribution of these materials without the prior written consent of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution, and any copyright holder identified in the material's copyright notice, is prohibited.