DNA Backlog Means It's No Magic Bullet

As Crime Evidence Goes, DNA Is Highly Effective - But There's A Wrinkle In The System

(CBS)  Debbie Smith's nightmares began in 1989 after a man dragged her from her Williamsburg, Va., house and raped her. He threatened to return, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports.

"The whole time he had me, he continually said to me, remember I know where you live, and if you tell anyone, I'm going to come back and I'm going to kill you," Smith said.

Smith lived in constant fear, contemplating suicide … until 1995 when a prosecutor called. A DNA match had finally revealed her attacker was in jail - and had been for six years.

"I would have killed myself for nothing. Six months after I, six months after he attacked me, he was picked up for another crime," Smith said. "But, I had no way of knowing that - until that DNA match was made."

When used in a timely manner, DNA provides more than peace of mind. It is a powerful tool for prosecuting violent crimes, rapes and murders.

And DNA has already helped solve more than 65,000 cold cases.

But, DNA is not a magic bullet - as it's portrayed on television.

The weak link: The network of labs charged with collecting and testing DNA is overwhelmed. Three-hundred thousand evidence samples are backlogged on shelves - still waiting to be processed.

"People are being victimized, raped and murdered because of that backlog," said DNA expert Chris Asplen, a former federal prosecutor.

"Because we are not testing DNA samples, we are not putting profiles in the database. So we are not taking people off the street who are committing those rapes and murders," Asplen said.

Take the case of Raymont Hopewell. When he was convicted on drug charges in 2004, Maryland police never even collected a DNA sample - and had no way of knowing he'd raped and murdered two women.

So, Hopewell, released after a six month jail term, went on to murder three more people.

It's that fear of not stopping repeat violent offenders...that now has the FBI lab working overtime to clear its own 2-year inventory of untested DNA files - blood taken from 180,000 convicted offenders.

"We don't want to have a backlog at all, we want these samples to come in, we want to run them, we want to get them in the database so they can start being compared to forensic cases," said Robert Fram, section chief of the FBI lab.

And they're counting on technology to catch up. Robots will soon be processing 30,000 DNA samples a month - far more than the 400-a-month technicians used to do by hand.

"We know every case impacts family and people's lives - and that's why we're doing everything we possibly can to get those samples into that database," Fram said.

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Read more about the story at Couric & Co.

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To reduce their backlog, state crime labs around the country need two things: money and resources like staffing. The federal government has helped, with hundreds of millions of dollars given out as grants in the past few years.

The grants, named for Debbie Smith, are set to expire in the next year. Congress is currently negotiating an extension that Smith and her husband, have been working hard for.

If Congress comes through, the Debbie Smith Act could soon be reauthorized, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of additional federal assistance to state crime labs.

Still these days, for Smith, who is now a crime victim's advocate, any backlog is too much for those awaiting justice.

"Its very difficult to look at them and say, you just have to wait, just hold on one more day," Smith said.

Hold on ... until DNA is the crime-fighting weapon it's meant to be.

[suecostarn]

I don''t see one word about racial profile in this article, why is it even brought up?? Of course every race and culture has their degenerates but nothing here indicates that is what the tests are based on. Maybe it is just coincidental. My son is black and I am white. I just don''t see the prejudice in this article. Definately it should be fair. I hate to think anyone in this day and age would racially profile the criminals.

[corymac4]

Here is the answer to this problem:

New Method For Processing Rape Evidence Could Eliminate Crime-lab Backlogs

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2008) %u2014 With approximately 250,000 items of sexual assault evidence mired in three- to 12-month backlogs as they await analysis in U.S. forensic laboratories, there is an alarming nationwide need for a time-efficient way to get this work done, according to a University of Virginia forensic researcher.

Jessica Voorhees Norris, a Ph.D. candidate in forensic chemistry at U.Va., has found a better way. She has developed a method for handling rape kit evidence that reduces part of the DNA analysis time from 24 hours to as little as 30 to 45 minutes and improves the sperm cell recovery rate by 100 percent. If her method was to be adopted by forensic labs %u2013 and the results accepted by courts %u2013 the backlog could potentially be reduced within months.

"There is an overwhelming demand for DNA analysis of sexual assault evidence, but laboratories have neither the funding nor the manpower to handle the caseload in a timely manner," Norris said. "Juries have come to expect DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, but forensic labs are not able to perform in a timely and efficient manner due to limitations in the currently used technologies."

[george5781]

My heart goes out to any and all victims of any and all crimes. But it did make me feel uncomfortable for a lack of better words.The two criminals that you just happened to use just happened to both be black males. Are black males the only people in jail and that do these types of crimes?. To many times that i watch programs about victims and it seems that black men are the one''s pictured. Some people already think that is what black people do, is rape and kill. Be fair about what you present to the world. There are hard working black people out there that are being sterotyped because of what they see and hear.