Transcripts of the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs (AGID-LAB) Working Group

March 4, 2002, Meeting

CLOSING REMARKS

MR. SCHMITT: Very good. Well, I'll speak personally since this will be my last chance at the mike. It's been very - it's been a lot of fun for me to see a lot of faces that I have known before and to get to know new folks for today. And I look forward to working with all of you as we go forward.

I'll turn it back over to Sarah for her concluding comments.

MS. HART: Well, I especially want to thank all of you being here today. This was very enlightening for me personally. There are some things that, you know, I felt fairly comfortable with before I came to this meeting and then this is once, again, a reminder to me that there's a lot of things that I don't know.

And I've always said to myself sometimes the greatest wisdom is knowing that you know nothing and accepting of the fact that there a lot of other people you can learn from.

So I really do appreciate the fact that you have all taken the time to enlighten us here today, and I'm sure we're going to continue to call on you to ask you more questions.

I also wanted to let you know that the Attorney General, before he came down here, did have a press conference today to announce, as he said, some of his commitments to the DNA initiatives here.

And I'm just going to pass out for you some of the handouts that were there. Some prepared by the FBI and some prepared by us, which may be helpful to you. He also had remarks, which I don't have a copy of his remarks, but I'm sure they're going to be available on the website if anybody is interested in them. Much of that information is in what you see here. It's a summary of some cases and some stats and some informational things that you also may find helpful to you.

What I wanted to let you know he's also done - what he didn't mention here today is that he's been - he made some directives to various components here at the Department of Justice in what I consider to be a very strong statement about our obligations to try and help you in figuring out how to get the biggest bang for the buck here and how to start helping you to prioritize cases and helping you developing technologies that can help you.

So this is something that there is a very, very strong commitment by the Attorney General on this. And I got to tell you that I'm personally really delighted by that. This is an issue of great importance to NIJ. It's a great - an issue of great personal importance to me. And I'm really delighted that he is also showing this kind of commitment.

And I think that it really is a recognition here by the Attorney General and his staff on just what a potential there is with this kind of evidence. He understands that and really does appreciate that. And so this is something that I'm really looking forward to and giving him some recommendations because this is something I think is really going to go places.

So I think this was - I appreciate the time that you have spent here. I know you've all got very busy jobs and a lot to do back home, but I do think this is something that was well worth your while in the long run to make the investment here to enlighten all of us.

And so I am actually not going to hold you up. I am going to actually let you out early here. I wasn't so sure we were going to make that. And at the same time, you know, we wish you-all a safe trip home. And I look forward to meeting you again next time we get together.

Thank you.

(Whereupon, at 4:37 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)