Officials hail new crime lab
SUDBURY -- Officials yesterday hailed the opening of an addition to the State Police crime lab as a key step toward eliminating the 1,000-case backlog of criminal investigations waiting for DNA tests.
The 12,000-square-foot office and lab will act as a kind of triage for cases and will free space at the main lab in Sudbury, officials said.
''I'm happy to report that there's a pretty significant change underway and that there's a lot further to go," Governor Mitt Romney said after a tour.
Romney had pushed for beefing up the state's scientific processing. The governor spoke at a press conference after the tour, which included police officials, district attorneys, and legislators.
Even with the new expansion -- and a 100,000-square-foot facility being planned for early 2007 -- the backlog of DNA cases probably will not be cleared for years, Major Mark Delaney, commander of State Police forensic services, said in an interview.
Romney has proposed a bond bill calling for a $125 million, 230,000-square-foot facility to be completed by 2012. Only then will the state be equipped to process cases as they come in, Delaney said; a turnaround of 30 days is the target.
Though urgent cases can be processed in as little as a week, a typical analysis now averages nine months, Delaney said. Some can take as long as 18 months.
The state has 12 DNA analysts. All had been working from one lab and frequently had to share equipment, and had to sign up for lab time. ''We were on top of each other," Delaney said.
The backlog of cases fell into the spotlight this spring when it was reported that authorities took more than eight months to process a DNA sample in the 2002 slaying of Christa Worthington, the writer who was raped and slain in her Cape Code home. The testing, while delayed, led to the arrest of a trash hauler.
''It certainly was illustrative of the problem and certainly was instrumental in bringing us to where we are," Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said after the press conference.
