PHOENIX -- There's a backlog at DPS crime labs in Arizona, and it could have a huge impact on court systems across the state.
Todd Griffith oversees all four regional crime labs for the Department of Public Safety.
He’s been in forensics since 1968, and during that time has helped pioneer advancements in DNA analysis.
In part due to those improvements, Griffith explained, “DNA is now applicable to a whole variety of cases not just violent crime cases”.
That includes cases of burglary, and means demand for DNA is up.
“We are seeing a tremendous number of cases that are being submitted. We had a 15.7 percent increase in DNA submissions in the last year alone,” Griffith said.
It's all coming at a time when DPS continues to deal with budget cuts.
“We have 24 positions that we can't fill right now,” explained Griffith, “ so that's right at 15% of our work force. When we look specifically at DNA we are in the same boat, there it's actually 15.2% of our workforce is vacant right now in the DNA arena.”
The result is backlog.
“Currently we can get a violent case started pretty much when it comes in the door but for burglary cases non-violent crimes we are putting those into the backlog,” Griffith said.
It can take up to 10 months to tackle burglary cases submitted for DNA evidence.
What is most concerning for Griffith is what the future holds if the state continues to etch away at the budget.
Griffith said in addition to their current vacancies, other positions are vulnerable too.
“In my tenure here, which is significant,” explained Griffith, “we have never had sufficient personal, you always have a backlog, with the budget shortfalls as they are it really makes things a lot worse.”
In the 2009 fiscal year, his office handed 60,107 cases. Of those, 5,545 involve DNA analysis.
Griffith said the cases sitting in backlog are nonviolent, the majority of which are burglaries.
“We prioritize based on the type of crime. Violent crimes get top priority and we also prioritize based on court dates. So if a case is a violent crime and someone has been arrested then that will be one of the first types of cases that are analyzed. Number two priority is to get to that violent crime case where there is no suspect because we want to get those analyzed and into the DNA database to see it we can get a hit and identify a suspect who is still at large who is possibly committing other violence crimes.”
Griffith explained why a violent crime case involving an arrest takes priority over a violent crime case where a suspect has not been identified, “because if you cannot meet the court deadlines the potential for a case to be dismissed and someone let back out on the street becomes higher at that point.”
Don’t think Griffith underestimates the importance of solving burglaries.
He said, “when we get hits in the database for sex assault cases, about 61 percent of those are hits against people convicted in burglary and other nonviolent crimes so getting to those cases does become very important.”
The problem is there just aren’t enough people in his labs to get it all done, and Griffith thinks the backlogs could climb to 30 percent if the state's economy doesn't rebound soon.
“I think he's absolutely right,” said Robert McWhirter, senior attorney for the Maricopa County Legal Defender’s Office. “It will get worse, they need to fill those positions, it's too crucially important both for conviction of the guilty and exoneration of the innocent not to have those positions funded.”
A spokesman for Maricopa County Superior Court said it is impossible for them to know how the DNA backlog is affecting court cases because they don't track the reasons why cases are continued.
“I'm sure there are people working really hard on this at the crime lab trying to get this thing going, [but] from the defense point of view, they are slowing things down,” said McWhirter.
McWhirter said it is hard to plan a defense when you are still waiting on evidence, “you don't get information on just what's happening in your case until the case is much farther down. Ideally they should have DNA evidence determined before they even indict somebody and they should have that nailed down. Realistically they don't do it which means you can have a case go on for months and months the DNA evidence comes in and it changes the whole thing."
Griffith said a little know fact about his crime labs is, “we actually exonerate way more individuals than we ever identify.”
“To give you an example, with the Chandler rapist we did some 350 suspects and eliminated them before the final suspect was identified and the DNA was very important because they were able to then get him arrested before he fled the country,” Griffith said.
“Clearly the hardest part is finding the samples,” said Larry Turner, Director of the Forensics Science Program at Scottsdale Community College.
For example, in the case of a black sweater it could take hours or even days to track down stains.
“The samples don't come in boxed up in nice little pretty bows on it and say semen, blood, or saliva. You have to look through the physical evidence and find the different body fluids and sometimes tissues before you can actually perform the analysis.”
He said when criminologists are looking for is evidence of cross transfer from victim and suspect.
“It’s like putting a puzzle together some puzzles are very easy. The snoopy puzzle, the Snoopy puzzle has about 5 or 6 pieces. I could give one piece of that Snoopy puzzle and you can look at the nose and say that's Snoopy. Now imagine this, a 1,000 piece puzzle of a deer in the forest and I only give you 10 pieces. Sometimes cases come in and we have very little to work with so you take 10 pieces, even 100 pieces, even 500 pieces of a 1,000 piece puzzle of a deer in a forest where the predominant colors will be green and brown it sometimes takes a long time to figure out if that's a deer in the forest or if that's a forest by itself.”
Turner said one way to manage the work load is to narrow the focus on which items should be analyzed, “determine what are the most pertinent items based on the scenario of the crime, what we know at that point based on the investigation. Then we work those items of physical evidence first, now we're taking a chance on that, but if we can get to those items of physical evidence first than we can shorten the time of making that connection between a victim and a suspect.”
Turner also spoke about the “CSI Effect”. Forensic science television shows like CSI often delivery unrealistic expectations of how and how long it takes a crime to process evidence.
“The good side of that is it is allowing individuals to realize how important forensic science is so forensic science entertainment is great, the flip side of that is that it really distorts the ideas of how soon, how quickly we can work cases and what we can do what we do find physical evidence.”
