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

March 4, 2002, Meeting

WELCOMING, OPENING REMARKS, AND GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF AGID-LAB

MS. HART: I am Sarah Hart. I've had the opportunity to meet some of you, and I look forward to meeting the rest of you this morning.

I'm the director of the National Institute of Justice, and I'd like to welcome you-all here today to the Great Hall here at the Department of Justice in our first meeting of our working group called AGID-LAB. For those of you who are wondering what that stands for, that's the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs, and we wanted an acronym we could pronounce, so that's what we got.

I'd like to welcome you-all here this morning. Just a little bit of background about the National Institute of Justice. The National Institute of Justice is the research and development arm of the Department of Justice. We oversee a large portfolio of social science research and technology development with the goal of helping state and local law enforcement agencies and corrections. And as part of that research and technology we have been greatly involved in forensics with DNA evidence issues and helping states and local governments increase their crime lab apathy.

This year, for example, NIJ will be providing over $60 million in DNA backlog grants and grants for DNA casework analyses. And, in addition, we're providing $24 million in crime lab improvements and $5 million for DNA research.

And as I'm sure you've realized that is a very, very substantial portion of NIJ's budget and it is a huge commitment of our staff and our energy at NIJ. And this is very much a reflection of Attorney General Ashcroft's commitment to the use of DNA evidence to solve crimes. And because of that commitment he's specifically ask that NIJ work to develop some recommendations for him on addressing some of the pressing issues on DNA evidence that our facing state and local law enforcement agencies. And we were also asked to convene this working group.

As you may have noticed as you looked through your listing of the people who are here today, we have quite an amazing group of people here today. We've got experts on forensics. We have experts in DNA. We've got experts of crime lab administrators and policymakers.

And we wanted to try and get a wide spectrum of views so that we could help provide some recommendations to the Attorney General. The Attorney General has specifically requested that NIJ carry on a comprehensive assessment of the delays that exist in completing DNA analysis and crime scene evidence and develop recommendations to eliminate those delays.

And, in addition, we've asked that you consider some of the following issues. I was asked that we look into the questions of resource requirements for labs and personnel. He's asked that we look at the innovative technologies that could help speed analysis.

And, in addition, he's asked us to look into the training and education of DNA analysts. So what you've seen here is quite a wide range of issues here, but it reflects the Attorney General's commitment, I think, to not simply looking at this in a very narrow way. It reflects his commitment that we try to develop a comprehensive way of approaching the use of DNA evidence in this country and try to provide assistance to state and local governments so that they can get the greatest benefit from use of this evidence.

And I will tell you just on my personal experience - and I was also having this discussion earlier with Barry Scheck. Barry comes from kind of a criminal defense point of view. And I will tell you I was a prosecutor for 16 years, and this is something that we find a lot of agreement and this is something where around this room I bet we can find a lot of agreement. Trying to encourage the use of DNA evidence is really a win-win proposition for the criminal justice field.

As I see it, this is something to solve crimes. You provide solace to victims, because they know that the perpetrator has been locked up. They're more likely to get guilty pleas and spare fragile victims and cost, the emotional cost to try and save the taxpayers's financial costs of a trial. And most importantly, we're locking up the people who are actually - who are doing the crimes. We're ensuring reliable verdicts and we're ensuring the incapacitation of some of our most serious repeat offenders.

So this is something I know that I'm preaching to a choir here that this is an initiative that many of you have devoted a large portion of your professional careers to these issues. And I really look forward to hearing what all you have here to say. And I really appreciate the fact that you've all taken the time out of your very busy schedules to come here.

We have an remarkable commitment of people agreeing to come here at our request, and we are very delighted that so many of you agreed to come here. I know it's not easy. And we're going to have a variety of speakers here today to update you on some of the newest issues that may be old hat for some of you, but I think it's something that we'll make sure that we all get the ability to look at a broad range of issues and ask questions.

And I'm really looking forward to being enlightened by a number of issues that I still need to learn a lot. But during the course of the day, I'd like you to - in addition to thinking about the issues, the Attorney General has asked us to look at, I would like you to kind of look at things from what I'll call "two perspectives."

First is what I call a "long-term perspective." Looking at how we would be envisioned in the future. This nation would use DNA evidence routinely in the law enforcement. We want to make sure that law enforcement officials have the fullest ability to use it in the appropriate cases to obtain crime scene samples, to get them analyzed, to get them matched to the appropriate offender database, and have that evidence to be used at trial.

And so I want people to be thinking in the long-term where do you think we ought to be as a nation on these sorts of issues. And at the same time I think we also need to be quite realistic about the fact that we cannot get there tomorrow even if we put all of the financial resources available on the issue. We simply don't have the capacity to start to be exactly where we want to be.

And so I'd like you to also look at things from what I call the "short-term goal perspective." Looking at what kinds of things we could do immediately to try and get the biggest public safety benefits that we can, given the limited limitations that we have.

And I'd like to give one example, which my staff has heard me talk about a lot. This is the one that I come from. When I worked in Pennsylvania at the Department of Corrections, we had the DNA statute that required that we test convicted offenders and there was quite a range of convicted offenders, as they were coming into the prisons.

So we would have, let's say, a murderer come in and might have consecutive life sentences, and we would be talking that DNA sample and that would be getting sent off to the state police labs over to be tested.

And it would be part of the backlog, but it would, you know, hopefully be tested in a fairly short amount of time. At the same time our DNA statute did not permit the testing of persons convicted prior to the effective date of the act.

So at the same time we were releasing 300 or 400 convicted sex offenders each month out of the Department of Corrections who were so bad that they couldn't get paroled, and we were not taking any DNA tests on those convicted offenders.

Now, personally, from my point of view, those were the people that I wanted in that data bank, first and foremost, even before the convicted murderer was going to spend his life in prison. I obviously wanted the people who were going to be out on the street and likely to be committing more crimes to be in that database.

At the same time, we, like many other jurisdictions, have no systematic way of testing crime scene evidence. It's pretty much depended on whether a particular jurisdiction wanted to invest in that.

So I think these are issues that a number of jurisdictions deal with. How do you deal with these various competing needs? And I think this is something that this group can provide a lot of enlightenment and some good suggestions. And I'm sure at the same time that many of you have personal experiences and the things that you have seen and are aware of potential issues that frankly we here at NIJ are not aware of.

And so we would like to be hearing from you about the things that are affecting the ability to use DNA evidence to its full potential right now, given some of the limitations that we do have.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing the collective wisdom that we have here today. This is really a remarkable group of people. And I am delighted. I mean, "delighted" that you are here today to do this.

Before we begin, I'm going to turn this over to Lisa Forman in a second. But I just want to introduce a few people before I turn it over to her to introduce some of the people who are involved in this all the time.

The gentleman, who is walking out the door, and he waved, Glenn Schmitt is the deputy director for the National Institute of Justice. Glenn comes to us from serving on The Hill for many years for the crime subcommittee.

I also have John Morgan here, who is the science advisor for the National Institute of Justice. John comes to us from Johns Hopkins's Applied Physics Lab and has done a lot of work on counter-terrorism issues and also has the remarkable background of having served in the Maryland State legislature for eight years. So he not only knows the science, but he also understands the practical policy matters.

Next to him we have David Boyd, who is the Director of the Office of Science and Technology, that oversees all of the technology development and a remarkable range of projects, including the forensics at the department at the National Institute of Justice.

And David, by the way, we frequently sport. If he goes, and has the like, he would tell attorney jokes. And I try to come up with some good scientist jokes, but I must confess they're not quite as good as the lawyer jokes. But we do give David some grief about the fact that he speaks "geek" all the time to us. But David is also here today.

And I'm going to turn this over to Lisa Forman who is going to introduce the rest of the NIJ staff and around the table. So let me turn it over to Lisa. And thank you-all for coming here today.

(Applause.)