FORENSIC AGENCY TESTED BY LACK OF STATE FUNDING

Department Has Backlogs In Every Case Area, Director Says

Frank discussions about lean times will be on the agenda when 130 members of
the Alabama State Association of Forensic Sciences convenes its annual
meeting today in Huntsville.

The organization is made up mostly of employees of the Alabama Department of
Forensic Sciences who meet each year to share their knowledge and
experiences, said Kimberlie A. Ross, association president.

The department, like other state agencies, doesn't yet have a budget for the
new fiscal year, which will begin Oct. 1. That size of that budget will
likely depend on the results of a Sept. 9 vote on Gov. Bob Riley's tax
package. Already short-handed and short on money, the department is
struggling with backlogs in cases in every category, said its director,
Taylor Noggle Jr.

"The bottom line is that we are going to have to have some funding relief
any way it comes," he said.

If the tax package fails, the department could be looking at drastically
cutting services, Noggle said.

Noggle asked the Legislature in February for an increase of $7 million for
the new fiscal year. The agency had an operating budget of about $16 million
this year, he said. That includes about $8.5 million from the Alabama
general fund, another $6 million from court costs, and about $700,000 in
federal grants to fund DNA work.

The agency also received a $1 million federal grant for crime laboratory
upgrades.

The uncertainty about money makes it difficult to plan, Noggle said. For
years the agency has been falling behind in its case load because of lack of
employees, he said.

The backlog is between 10,000 and 11,000 drug cases, about 2,100 toxicology
cases, about 2,000 DNA cases and around 750 firearms cases. Noggle said his
department would like to get forensic results back to law enforcement
agencies in 30 days. "But we are working cases now on more or less an
emergency basis," he said.

The department received 37,000 new cases last year. About 2,000 of those
were death cases that required autopsies. About 26,000 to 27,000 were drug
cases that require analysis, and about 1,000 were firearms cases. On top of
that, the agency received 18,000 requests for other forensic tests.

"It is not unusual for us to have 30 or 40 items of DNA evidence on a
complicated homicide to work," Noggle said.

The agency has 175 employees in its nine laboratories. "We estimate that we
need 225 to 235 people to do what we need to do in a timely fashion. We have
got to have more people, or we are going to take a look at how we do
business," Noggle said.

The agency expects to receive accreditation in August from the American
Society of Crime Laboratories, said Deputy Director Brent Wheeler. The
society's accreditation board conducted an audit of the department in June,
he said.

"We are the largest agency in the country that is not accredited," he said.
"A lot of courts are asking about it. It will mean we are documented as a
nationally recognized program."

As the convention begins, the agency is tying up loose ends on a big
construction project funded by a $17 million bond issue floated almost three
years ago for various construction projects, including new labs for the
state forensic department in the Birmingham and Montgomery areas.

Today's featured speaker at the association's convention was to be FBI
Special Agent Richard Marx, a forensic scientist who has worked for the
department. Marx, a graduate of Grissom High School and the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, headed the Staten Island Recovery Project where
debris was hauled from the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attack.

The association winds up this year's meeting on Friday.