Justice Postponed

LACK OF CRIME LABS IN THE OZARKS HAS LAW ENFORCEMENT FRUSTRATED, CRIMINALS
ON STREETS.

The woman was asleep in her northwest Springfield home when the man broke
in through the garage.

She remembers the outline of his face. She remembers the knife held tightly
to her throat as she tried to break away from his grasp. And she remembers
the voice that ordered her to lie still.

Realizing that her little boy in the next room had been awakened by her
struggles, she screamed out: "Stay in your room!"

Although he whimpered quietly, the boy minded his mother. He cried in his
room as the man raped his mother, then bolted from their home.

That was nearly two years ago. Since then, the woman and her son have
worked to start life anew, to work through the sudden brutality of that
warm summer evening.

But the victim has waited in vain for someone to blame, for authorities to
reassure her that the predator won't hurt her, or anyone else, again. She's
not waiting on police work or the legal system.

She's waiting on science.

The key to justice has at times sat unattended, wrapped in a brown-paper
bag among dozens of other evidence bags, at the Missouri Highway Patrol's
crime lab in Jefferson City. For 20 months now, the Springfield woman has
listened as Cpl. Robert Pitts regretfully explains what police across the
state are up against - a long line at the patrol's understaffed and
overwhelmed crime lab that processes evidence.

Fingerprints, DNA and trace evidence meticulously gathered at crime scenes
around the Ozarks can sit unopened for months in Jefferson City.

"It's extremely frustrating," said Capt. Terry Luikart, who oversees the
crime lab at patrol headquarters. "Justice isn't being served in Missouri."

Law enforcement leaders in the Ozarks say the solution is simple: A
full-service crime lab in Springfield. While police departments in Kansas
City and St. Louis each have their own labs for analyzing all evidence,
Springfield has only a small lab to handle drug cases.

So law enforcement officers in the Ozarks must send their evidence to the
state crime lab, which does analyses for police agencies statewide. And the
state crime lab is now down three criminologists from 57, positions frozen
by the state's financial shortfalls. That means the seven-month wait for
toxicology tests - and more than a year for DNA analyses - will get worse.

"We're a big enough city now to have our own lab," said the 31-year-old
Springfield rape victim. "I don't understand why we have to send our stuff
to another lab."

Nor do Greene County law enforcement officers. For several weeks they've
been working on a proposal to create an accredited Ozarks-based lab capable
of processing all evidence.

In the next several days, they will send the proposal to U.S. Rep. Roy
Blunt's Springfield office to see if any federal funds are available in the
next fiscal year.

Blunt is reluctant to make promises. "We'll look at the numbers and see how
it fits into the priorities of the budget this year," he said. "We have to
ask for things that fit this wartime budget."

A lab won't be cheap. It would cost more than $6 million for the building
and equipment. Officials believe it would cost about $1 million a year to
operate the lab and pay its team of 12 to 15 criminologists and
administrative staff.

The need for proof

The evidence backlog is easy to explain. New, sophisticated technology for
investigation can mean better police work. And attorneys, judges and juries
have come to expect it.

"It used to be you could point to a guy across the room and say, 'Yeah, he
did it,' and that's all that was needed," said Springfield Police Chief
Lynn Rowe. "Now juries want to see proof. They are conditioned for that."

And because of that conditioning, there has been an astronomical rise in
the number of items sent for testing. In one recent Springfield police
case, 84 items were sent to the lab to be processed.

Christian County Sheriff Joey Matlock said his investigators send anything
they think has the possibility of bearing DNA, trace evidence or
fingerprints. Agencies across the state use the same philosophy.

"They send cigarette butts, aluminum cans, letters where they can peel the
stamp off," Luikart said.

Records show that in the past 10 years, the number of cases sent to the lab
for testing has doubled. The number of lab employees has not.

'The time has come'

And getting money out of state leaders, when Missouri is facing the most
severe budget cuts in its history, won't be easy. Still, Greene County
Prosecutor Darrell Moore said, the county and its citizens cannot afford to
do without an accredited crime lab.

In December, when Springfield resident Rick Norman was killed in his home,
Moore and Springfield police were forced to send evidence to Kansas City's
lab for the first time. It proved a viable one-time option, but didn't
follow a protocol followed for years. And it could lead to additional costs
if lab staff are later called as expert witnesses. But because the backlog
is only increasing, the county and city could send more cases to other labs.

The Missouri Highway Patrol labs accepted 18,336 cases in 2001, including
3,664 cases from Troop D - which includes Greene County.

"We can't afford to be caught up in the backlog in Jeff City," Moore said.
"I tell the people at the lab, 'It's not your fault, you're just drowning.'
The time has come for this area to have a bonafide crime lab. It's
inexcusable not to have one."

'You've got to be joking'

In the Springfield woman's case, lack of evidence was not an issue. There
were traces of DNA left behind in her home.

"Some victims don't have that," she said, "I know that."

The first round of testing, during which two possible suspects were
identified, took several months to return from the lab. The evidence didn't
match the two men police had been investigating.

Officers had two other potential suspects and they sent new DNA samples to
be processed. Now the wait begins all over again.

The circumstances of the wait are tough to explain to a victim, Pitts said.
You can't blame the state lab, he said. They do everything they can to work
through the backlog.

"It just takes time," Pitts said.

Added Cpl. Maggie Krull, who has been working sexual assault cases since
March: "They (victims) look at you like, 'You've got to be joking.' And
it's totally out of your control. It's like they are being victimized all
over again."

Assistant Prosecutor Jill Geary, who handles sexual assault cases, said
waiting for evidence can cripple even a strong case.

A suspect can flee - or simply move to another area. A victim can grow
weary, frustrated and reluctant to continue with the case.

"I think they (victims) suffer in a lot of ways," Geary said. "I hear a lot
about people saying, 'I just would like it done.' They get sick of waiting."

'It destroys you inside'

William Marbaker, assistant director of the crime lab in Jefferson City,
said criminologists are testing items that five years ago couldn't be tested.

Criminologists are excited by the growing sophistication of their science -
and the new opportunities they have to help serve justice. But at the same
time, the burgeoning caseload, budget restraints hitting all agencies and
tighter staff and space prevent them from doing all that is technologically
possible.

"It hurts you," Marbaker said. "You do this because you love what you're
doing. It destroys you inside knowing we could be doing better. But there's
nothing we can do. It eats you up inside to see the backlog growing.

"There's no one on the face of the earth who wants Darrell Moore to get his
case back earlier than me," Marbaker added. "Unfortunately, some things are
beyond our control."

'Case by case'

At the state crime lab in Jefferson City, criminologists hammer away at
computer keyboards, researching cases or dipping into new technology.
Nearby, criminologists stand at sophisticated lab stations, scrutinizing
microscopic shreds of evidence.

A long row of upright refrigerators are chock full of evidence waiting to
be processed and sent back to agencies. Metal carts are packed full of
large envelopes, taped up and labeled in red: Evidence.

"You have to go case by case," said criminologist Brian Hoey, who
specializes in DNA. "You won't get anywhere if you start getting
overwhelmed with stuff you have to do, scratching your head all day long
and saying, 'What do I do? Where do I start?'"

The backlog has been gradually increasing for several years. At one point
in the mid-1990s, after the lab was given an additional six full-time
employees, evidence was coming in and going out at a rapid rate.

But through staff turnover and retirements, the lab has lost people. And as
the economy worsened, those positions were frozen.

Yet the evidence kept pouring in. Victims waited for justice. Police waited
to file cases and get criminals off the street. Prosecutors were stuck
asking for continuances because they didn't have results back.

Science couldn't move any faster.

Greene County law enforcement officials have seen cases come to a
standstill for months.

"It's like you're racing to the edge; then you get to the edge and you have
to send something to lab. You skid to a halt," said Maj. Steve Ijames of
the Springfield police department. "You're waiting in most cases for months
for evidence to be tested. You put on the brakes in the case."

Pitts points to a case he dealt with during the past two years. A
Springfield woman was attacked in her home by a man she believed was an
acquaintance. He was arrested, but freed after 20 hours because there
wasn't enough evidence to detain him. The investigation continued.

A couple of months later, Pitts got a call from the Houston, Texas, area.
The man had apparently struck again, this time racking up charges of
attempted rape and forcible rape. Pitts worked with the Houston
investigator to get a sample from the suspect to test for the Springfield
rape. The sample was sent off to the Missouri state lab for testing.

A year after that first call from Texas, without having local tests back
yet, Pitts called the investigator back to see how the case was going. The
man was already in prison.

"They had him sentenced and sent off and we were still waiting on lab
results," Pitts said. "It's unbelievable to me."

'Is that the person?'

The Springfield woman violated with her young son in earshot now locks her
doors during the day. She's added a complete security system, wired the
inside of her home. She's always aware of her surroundings, the people
passing by.

And she's still haunted.

"You look at people ... and wonder, 'Is that the person? He matches my
description,'" said the Springfield mother. "I can be in a crowd somewhere
or in a large room of people and hear a voice behind me and think, 'Oh my
gosh, that sounds like the person who attacked me.' It changes your life.

"The person who did it to me could have done it to five or six more people
in the meantime just because we don't have the manpower to do this stuff,"
the woman said.

Police see similar patterns attached to other crimes. For example, when
police test a driver for drug impairment, not alcohol, tests takes eight to
nine months to return from the lab.

Lt. Ray Worley said DWI officers have arrested suspects for being impaired
by drugs and already have cases pending, but must wait for test results.

That worries Geary. Sexual predators also could be roaming the street, able
to strike again, because she's waiting on test results to charge or prosecute.

"That's the worst circumstance you think of," Geary said. "We worry about
what's fundamentally unfair to the defendant, but that seems fundamentally
unfair to the victim."

None of it seems fair to the mother that was attacked - or her son.

"I don't tell him about the DNA part," she said of conversations with her
boy about why no one knows the identity of the man who hurt her.

"I just tell him they are trying."