IAPE Evidence Blog

The Hart­ford Courant, courant.com
BYLINE: JOSH KOVNER, jkovner@courant.com
Link to Article

Hart­ford, CT

The expert panel wrestling with a huge back­log of untested DNA cases at the state crime lab has for the first time set lim­its on how many evi­dence sam­ples the police can send to the lab.

It’s an effort to try to give the lab some breath­ing room as it works to reduce one of the country’s worst log­jams of untested crime-scene evi­dence. The back­log of cases includes dozens of rapes and other vio­lent crimes.

The panel, appointed by Gov. Dan­nel P. Mal­loy in Sep­tem­ber, is also work­ing on a bud­get for the esti­mated $2 mil­lion to $3 mil­lion a year more that the lab will require for addi­tional staffing, and a blue­print for a new man­age­ment structure.

The lab, once the province of inter­na­tion­ally known crim­i­nal­ist Henry C. Lee, was slammed in two fed­eral audits last year and lost its pro­fes­sional accred­i­ta­tion. As a result, the lab lost its access to the national DNA data­base of con­victed offend­ers, main­tained by the FBI. Post­ings to the data bank, known as CODIS, is one of the most impor­tant func­tions of any Amer­i­can crime lab. Offi­cials said that both accred­i­ta­tion and access to CODIS may be restored by next month.

The new guide­lines rep­re­sent the first writ­ten rules on evi­dence sub­mis­sions, said Michael P. Lawlor, Malloy’s chief of crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­icy and planning.

Until now, Lawlor said, police depart­ments “could send in any­thing they wanted,” even from the scenes of minor prop­erty crimes.

Under the new rules, the lab will accept only one or two sam­ples from prop­erty crimes, and five sam­ples from rob­beries and less seri­ous assaults. The lab will no longer accept bul­lets or car­tridge cases that are found some­where, but didn’t hit a per­son or a house – unless they are tied to an investigation.

The lab will eval­u­ate on a case by cases basis how much evi­dence it accepts in homi­cides, sex­ual assaults, and other seri­ous assaults, the guide­lines say.

When sur­faces are swabbed for DNA, known as “touch DNA,” the lab will now exam­ine “only the most rel­e­vant” samples.

Seized guns that have to be tested to see if they’re oper­a­ble will now remain with the police agency until up to three weeks before trial. The computer-crimes sec­tion of the lab will no longer ana­lyze elec­tronic media in sui­cide cases and lar­ce­nies of less than $2,000.

Darien Police Chief Duane J. Lovello said he’d rather there be no limits.

“In a per­fect world, there wouldn’t be,” said Lovello, who serves on the expert panel. But he said that police depart­ments under­stand the sit­u­a­tion at the foren­sic lab, “and we want to be part of the solution.”

He said in that con­text, the guide­lines “are rea­son­able. It’s a prag­matic approach to a long-term problem.”

But he cau­tioned that “foren­sics are all about estab­lish­ing link­ages,” and said a stray bul­let that was found on the street some­where might have high evi­den­tiary value.

“Of course we’d like to know what it is,” Lawlor said of the hypo­thet­i­cal bullet’s ori­gins. “But we have to set pri­or­i­ties to get (the back­log) under control.”

Supe­rior Court Judge Robert J. Devlin, a panel mem­ber who led the effort to come up with the guide­lines, said police offi­cers will have the lee­way to devi­ate from the rules when cir­cum­stances war­rant. He said Chief State’s Attor­ney Kevin Kane, a panel mem­ber, had input into the guide­lines, as did the Con­necti­cut police chief’s association.

“We’re basi­cally ask­ing police to do some triag­ing of evi­dence. We’re try­ing to get the lab to focus its resources on the most seri­ous cases,” Devlin said.

Defense attor­ney Karen Goodrow said she’s seen efforts to stream­line evi­dence work well in small groups of cases, and added that the lim­its could help police save time.

Goodrow is a mem­ber of the expert panel and the direc­tor of the Con­necti­cut Inno­cence Project, which has used newly dis­cov­ered DNA evi­dence to free sev­eral wrongly con­victed defen­dants. She said she has sat with pros­e­cu­tors and foren­sic sci­en­tists and gone over cases that her staff is reviewing.

“We’ve been able to pri­or­i­tize. If a case has 50 pieces of evi­dence, we’ll decide to exam­ine the first five, say, in the first round, then the next five. In this way, I think the guide­lines make sense. It’s a wise use of resources.”

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org