State crime lab struggles to return results quickly
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
November 20, 2006
SANTA FE (AP) - Prosecutors in many parts of New Mexico say they face a Catch-22 situation because of delays in receiving results from the state crime lab.
If they wait for the state crime lab to analyze DNA or other evidence before charging someone, they risk leaving someone who might be guilty on the street to commit other crimes.
However, if they file charges and go to trial without lab evidence, a guilty person might be acquitted or an innocent person might be convicted.
"Effectively, we can't get DNA analysis. We're not exaggerating the problem," District Attorney Scot Key of Alamogordo told the Albuquerque Journal in a copyright story in Sunday's editions. "It's been a nightmare."
In major cases, evidence is sent to private labs, but testing in a single cases easily can exceed $5,000.
Lower profile cases sometimes are dismissed.
The crime lab has been backlogged for a decade, and now, each of the
state's 19 forensic technicians would have to work 485 hours each
just to handle what's backed up.
State officials, however, insist the backlog has not adversely affected the prosecution of criminal cases in New Mexico, and they say prosecutors have not come forward with complaints.
"This stuff you're telling us, it's news to us," said John Denko, secretary of the state Department of Public Safety, which runs the lab.
Lab officials say the average turnaround for test results in drug cases is 142 days; for DNA samples it's 82 days.
The worst delays have been for evidence the state lab has sent to a private, out-of-state contractor, which has failed to meet what was supposed to be a six- to eight-week turnaround, state officials say.
Denko said his department will ask the 2007 Legislature to transfer $200,000 earmarked for farming out cases to another fund so the lab can hire more staff to do the work itself.
The annual operating budget for the state crime lab is about $2 million, which pays in part for 28 employees, including forensic technicians.
A separate crime lab, funded largely by Albuquerque and Bernalillo County to handle cases in New Mexico's most populous jurisdiction, has a budget nearly triple that of the state crime lab. Prosecutors there say they usually get lab results in a timely manner.
Prosecutors elsewhere say the state crime lab isn't well funded.
State District Judge Michael Vigil of Santa Fe said he has had to delay
many trials because the crime lab was unable to return results.
And District Attorney Henry Valdez of Santa Fe said his office has been forced to charge people with crimes where he knew DNA would be used, then found out later the wrong person was charged.
He noted a case in which a teenage boy was charged with rape and jailed on the basis of the victim identifying his photo. DNA testing cleared the youth, but by then, he'd already spent months behind bars, Valdez said.
District Attorney Matt Chandler of Clovis said he had to try a 20-month-old homicide case without DNA results considered crucial by both the prosecution and defense.
"When we're forced to try capital murder cases without DNA testing, it's very frightening," he said.
Chandler still won a conviction and a life sentence for Steven Duran of Clovis.
Defense attorney Gary Mitchell, who represented Duran, said he is waiting for DNA test results while his client sits in prison. He said he believes the results will clear Duran.