CRIME LAB UPGRADE UNCLOGS 'BOTTLENECK'

Fast Forensics By Gbi Speed Court Calendar

Just three years ago, Clayton County prosecutor Bob Keller was looking at
having to drop drug charges because a backlog at the state's forensic lab
had caused an unacceptable delay. It was costing county taxpayers too much
to hold accused drug offenders in jail to await trial.

Not any more.

The wait is much shorter than in 1998, when prosecutors would wait
sometimes more than a year to learn how much alcohol was in a suspected
drunken driver's blood, what drugs were found in the system of a person who
had died, or whether a bullet found at one particular scene was from a gun
used in a seemingly unrelated crime.

"It's like night and day, the difference," Keller said about improvements
at the lab that are close to complete. "It's been great."

The changes came after a series of media reports in 1998 that focused on a
crime lab that prosecutors and judges believed was on the verge of
collapsing from the load and had become the "bottleneck of justice," said
Gib Heuett, director of strategic planning for the GBI and its crime lab at
the time.

A panel of experts and those who use the services of the lab --- police,
prosecutors, judges --- recommended that Georgia spend $50 million to
expand, upgrade and staff the lab.

"At the high water mark, we were 36,000 cases behind," said Terry Mills,
the GBI deputy director who oversees the Forensic Science Division.

"We've got just about everything we needed," Director Milton Nix said.

Regional Labs Coming

Construction on a new annex to the lab and a new morgue at the GBI's
headquarters in Decatur are expected to be finished next spring. The agency
is building regional labs in Cleveland in North Georgia and replacement
facilities in Columbus, Savannah, Augusta and Macon.

And by the end of next year, all the GBI's facilities statewide will have
been updated, and the current equipment will last about five years more.

"But then we'll have a lot of equipment that will get old at the same time,
and that's $5 million to $10 million worth of equipment," Mills said.

All the state's medical examiners at the labs are now board-certified
pathologists, and all cases now are subject to peer review before the
findings are released. The lab is accredited by the International Standards
Organization in Switzerland.

There are currently 11,741 cases pending at the lab, but, Mills said, "We
get 10,000 cases a month in, so we're always going to be in that area
because the volume is so big."

Of the cases sent to the lab this year, work on 88 percent was completed
within 30 days.

"Three years ago, it was 40 percent" of cases completed within 30 days,
Mills said. "So that's a tremendous improvement."

Mills said 10,000 of those 11,700 pending cases were for DNA analysis of
samples taken from state prisoners to be put in an offender database that
is used to cross-reference evidence collected at the scenes of unsolved
crimes. The lab expects to have all those prison cases completed by the
first of the year.

Budget Cuts Expected

But problems still remain in the areas of analyzing evidence such as hairs
or strands of fibers found at a crime scene, as in the evidence used to
convict Wayne Williams in two cases of "missing and murdered" young blacks
in Atlanta 20 years ago. The lab has about 160 cases backed up, which
equals a year of work.

There also are backups in the lab in analysis of fingerprints, documents
and firearms.

Yet, the lab, with a current budget of more than $20.4 million, will cut
some services because the state's revenues are falling.

To save $1.6 million, the GBI is offering to eliminate 18 unfilled slots
for scientists and technicians in the toxicology and firearms areas. "The
state can't spend more money than the state has," Nix said. "I hope the
cuts don't have much impact on us. We've made so much progress."

Keller, the Clayton County district attorney who has seen such a difference
in lab operations, also hopes the impact of budget cuts will be minimal.
"What we hope is the austerity programs . . . do not allow us to regress,"
he said.

But Mills said some services will be reduced.

"We'll eliminate things that are the lowest priority," Mills said. "I
cannot get behind again, because if you are behind, you are not efficient.
We will cut services that are not requested as much or don't give as much
information."

For example, the lab will dump plans to do DNA testing in incest cases and
nonviolent cases. The GBI will stop sending scientists to the scene of a
"clandestine lab" where drugs are manufactured. There will be no more
firearms analysis in suicide cases. The lab also will no longer be able to
tell law enforcement officers the quantity of drugs found in the system of
someone accused of driving under the influence and will test only for
cocaine and marijuana in blood samples.

"We don't have the manpower to do the other," Mills said. "If you don't
have the staff to do it, you can only do so much. Whether you have the
evidence or we refuse the evidence, it doesn't get done."