PROSECUTORS AGREE TO CUT LAB'S WORKLOAD

WINSTON-SALEM -- Prosecutors will start sending less evidence from some
cases to the State Bureau of Investigation crime laboratory to help reduce
its workload. The lab has been taxed recently by an increase in the number
of clandestine methamphetamine operations in North Carolina, the lab
director said, while seven of the SBI lab's 22 drug chemist positions in
Raleigh are vacant.

The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys agreed to the change
involving misdemeanor marijuana and property-crime cases. Prosecutors said
sending less evidence in these cases will help the lab cut its backlog.

Still, the lab needs more money and employees to keep up with the demand to
process forensic evidence, the conference president said.

"I just don't throw around the word critical or crisis, but we are really
getting to that stage, if we haven't already gotten there," said Jeff Hunt,
district attorney for five western North Carolina counties.

SBI Director Robin Pendergraft met with conference leaders last month and
asked that prosecutors help reduce the evidence the lab receives in certain
cases.

There is no need for forensic evidence in many marijuana cases, Hunt said
Friday. Marijuana accounts for about 25 percent of drug cases the lab receives.

"In the run-of-the-mill marijuana case, we can substitute the law
enforcement officer's testimony that he's familiar with marijuana and that
this is marijuana," he said. "That's sufficient evidence in a criminal case."

Lab director Jerry Richardson said the SBI will continue to test any drug
that the state's 700 law enforcement agencies need tested.

"We don't want to stop taking any case from anybody," he said. "We just
want to make sure that we're going to be taking the cases that are going to
be tried in court."

There are 9,000 drug cases pending at the lab, and chemists will work on
more than 30,000 cases this year, Richardson said.

The lab backlog has affected prosecutors such as Forsyth County District
Attorney Tom Keith, who waited months for a report on forensic evidence in
the November beating death of a man at his home in Winston-Salem.

Keith's office just received the lab report two weeks ago and is reviewing
it to determine what charges to bring against five teenagers who are being
held in the killing.

State officials said last December that they would add seven employees at
the lab after reports that about 20,000 untested rape kits were sitting in
police evidence rooms because the lab could generally accept evidence only
in rape cases linked to a suspect.

Attorney General Roy Cooper last year called the lab's backlog a threat to
public safety. He asked for the extra workers, who are now in training.
Cooper will lobby the General Assembly for more money to hire employees at
the lab, Richardson said.