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

March 4, 2002, Meeting

INTRODUCTION OF WORKING GROUP MEMBERS AND NIJ STAFF

MS. FORMAN: Thank you very much, Sarah.

Well, I, of course, want to add my welcome as well and tell you how much we appreciate the fact that all of you have come to be part of this process and how much your involvement means to us in this effort.

We know that your being here represents not just an investment by you but an investment by your entire organization, and we know that your day job doesn't stop because you're here considering these issues, the phones still ring, and the cases still need to be analyzed and the court schedules continue and the research needs to go on.

And so I wanted to extend our very sincere gratitude to the rest of your organizations, not just for the fact that they're home shouldering the extra work while you're here considering these issues, but also for the incredible intellectual contributions they make to this process through your daily, normal workday interactions with them discussing these issues and considering these issues in a very real and practical sense coming up with the solutions that we know you'll be talking about here today.

The forensic backlog has been the formative issue, the issues that lead up to it. The resources that are needed for it have been the formative areas of discussion in the forensic community for quite sometime now. And I'm very grateful that this group has come together to provide the foundation upon which informed policy decisions can be made in the future.

So we've had the good fortune of working with many of you in many different arenas over the past several years from forensic DNA testing to research and development and other forensic issues.

And what I'd like to do now, if it's all right with everyone, is ask each person at the table, who's a part of this working group, to please introduce yourselves. Tell us a little bit about your current position and the organization that you're representing.

Can I start with you, Chief?

CHIEF MARY ANN VIVERETTE: Good morning. My name is Mary Ann Viverette, and I'm the Chief of Police in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is just about 12 miles north of here. And I'm representing the International Association of Chiefs of Police as the fourth vice president. We're an organization of 19,000 members in 109 countries.

MR. GEDE: I'm Tom Gede the executive director of the Western Attorney's General Association. And I'm not an expert at anything, but I'm here to hopefully provide some fresh ideas and perspective. I came out of the California Department of Justice and served as a prosecutor there.

MR. KREBSBACH: I'm John Krebsbach with the Albuquerque Police Department's Crime Laboratory. I run our DNA unit for that city and coincidentally in my spare time I run the State of New Mexico's DNA database program. And how that worked out, I'm not sure. Then I've also been a recipient to about four different types of Federal grants all involving DNA or research in one sort or another.

MR. GIALAMAS: Good morning. My name is Dean Gialamas. I'm an Assistant Director at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and I happen to manage the major crime units of the crime lab which includes DNA testing.

MR. SELAVKA: I'm Carl Selavka from the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory. It's a pleasure to be here to join this initiative more so because we're talking about something other than fingerprints, which lately is all we've been talking about. Thank you for having me.

MR. FERRARA: I'm Paul Ferrara. I'm Director of Virginia's Division of Forensic Science.

MS. HERD: Good morning. I'm Kim Herd. I'm the criminal law and technology counsel for the National Association of Attorney's General, and I work on legislative policy and training issues for all the different attorneys' general offices around the country.

MR. COFFMAN: My name is David Coffman. I work for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and I supervise their statewide DNA database. And we're honored that we were asked here because our database has run on Federal money the last seven years. So we couldn't have come where we are now if we hadn't had the Federal resources so.

MS. SAMPLES: Good morning. I'm Marie Samples. I'm Assistant Director of the Department of Forensic Biology which is part of the New York City's office of Chief Medical Examiner where the DNA testing laboratory is for New York City.

MR. DIZINNO: I'm Joe DiZinno from the FBI laboratory across the street. I'm currently the Section Chief of the Scientific Analysis Section. I supervise nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA units, along with a Forensic Science and Research Unit and the Forensic Science Systems Unit which run the CODIS system.

MS. WEST: Good morning. My name is Mary West. I'm here representing the Chicago Police Department where I'm the Commander of the Forensic Services Unit.

MR. DILLINGHAM: I'm Steve Dillingham with the American Prosecutors Research Institute and also the National District Attorney's Association. We have in the back, back there, our program manager for DNA training and technical assistance, Lisa Kreeger. We're very pleased to be here. Local prosecutors prosecute 99 percent of the violent crimes, and it's an important priority for us.

MS. GUIDO: I'm Syndi Guido. I'm from the Pennsylvania Governor's Office and the governor's legal advisor in all criminal justice issues, and I'm his liaison with all of our state criminal justice agencies.

MR. CLINE: Good morning. I'm Phil Cline. I'm the Chief of Detectives for the Chicago Police Department.

MR. TILSTONE: Good morning. I'm Bill Tilstone. I'm the Executive Director of the National Forensic Science Technology Center. NFSTC is a not-for-profit corporation that was established about six years ago with a mission of support to quality and forensic science services.

MS. CROUSE: I'm Cecelia Crouse, and I'm from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office where we specialize in butterfly ballots.

(Laughter.)

MS. CROUSE: And I'm very delighted to be here, because our laboratory predominantly was built on NIJ funds, and I'm the supervisor of the serology DNA section.

MS. CASEY: My name is Maureen Casey, and I'm the former Deputy Commissioner with the New York City Police Department and have been working on DNA issues in a variety of capacities in New York State for the last ten years. So I'm very honored to be a part of this panel.

MR. CLARKE: I'm Woody Clarke. I'm a Deputy District Attorney in San Diego County. And in that capacity coordinate all of our DNA cases at the local prosecutors level and occasionally in other counties as well.

MR. SIGEL: I'm Steve Sigel. I'm the Chair of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. There's a laboratory accreditation board this year. You know, we are a voluntary accreditation program with over 200 accredited labs accredited now by our program. And my paying job, I'm the Director of the Western Laboratory of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science.

MR. SCHECK: I'm Barry Scheck. I'm here as, I guess, the first Vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and it's probably a fraudulent title by which to be here. Since, I guess, more meaningfully I'm a Commissioner of Forensic Science in the State of New York that helps regulate our crime labs and DNA units, and co-director of the Innocence Project, an organization that I'm sure you're all familiar with since, I don't know, I dealt with virtually everyone at the table. And I guess we're up to 104 post-conviction DNA exonerations.

You can read all about them at our website innocence project.org.

CHIEF SANDERS: Good morning. My name is Darrell Sanders and I'm Barry's bodyguard.

(Laughter.)

CHIEF SANDERS: Actually I'm the Police Chief in the Village of Frankford, Illinois, and I'm a past president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

MS. NARVESON: Good morning. My name is Susan Narveson. And I'm the Direct of the Phoenix Police Department Crime Laboratory, and I'm also current President of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors who claim approximately 460 members from throughout the United States and also internationally.

MR. BUTLER: I'm John Butler from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and NIJ funds as to develop new technologies for DNA testing. And we also develop the standards that are used and ensure the quality in laboratories around the country.

MS. FORMAN: Thank you very much.

Well, now, we have, for the record - and by the way we are transcribing this event. We have for the record identified that this room is absolutely chalk-full of experts from a broad representation of the criminal justice system, each area having its own unique needs for rapid and timely DNA analysis that ultimately leads to the appropriate and just resolution of cases.

So, again, thank you so much all for being here. I'd also like to take a little moment to introduce the rest of the NIJ staff that is supporting this initiative.

To my left, is a woman who probably needs very little introduction to many of you, but I'm going to do it anyway. Mrs. Robin Jones, who has been responsible for drafting a number of the preliminary drafts of this initiative of the kinds of development that we expected from this initiative, who's been responsible for organizing just phenomenal areas of the kinds of work that has to be done before we can get you-all here and then forget to send a bus to bring you over to the main Justice. That wasn't her job.

Next to Mrs. Jones is Mr. Jones. And it might be just a coincidence that they have the same Jones last name. But in point of fact they are Mr. and Mrs. Jones. So NIJ is very fortunate in that we get them to discuss these issues pretty much 24 hours a day.

(Laughter.)

MS. FORMAN: Mr. Jones is a contractor to NIJ responsible for overseeing the maintenance growth and development of our DNA backlog reduction programs. And he has been doing that now for the last - I'm going to say two and a half, almost three years now.

And we'll be sharing with you later this morning some very exciting information about how those programs have been developing and growing and fostering under his guidance and under many of your activities. It's your hard work that's doing this.

I'd also like to introduce Ms. Anjalir Swienton, Ms. Lisa Kaas, Dr. Lois Tully, Mr. Christopher Turner, and two of our members who aren't here right now, Mr. Thurston Bryant and Mr. Ray Kimble, who are the IFSD staff, the Investigative in Forensic Sciences Staff who, like the rest of your members, conduct our other business while we're focusing on things like this initiative.

All of them are working in program areas that are concerned with forensic science and DNA backlog reduction in other areas of reduction and developing improvement programs to help smooth away for state and local laboratories to do their work more effectively and more timely.

I'd also like to introduce, or at least mention, Dr. Sharla Rausch, Ms. Rhonda Jones, and Mr. Lee Mockensturm, who are all involved in making sure that the kinds of programs that we're running have the kinds of coordination throughout the department so that everyone in the department can know what we're doing at any given moment. So those are all the people that make all of this work as smoothly as we can make it work.

Now, the person who has put all of this together was identified by Director Hart, but I do want to just mention, again, Dr. David Boyd, who is the Director of the Office of Science and Technology. And we're all sitting here at this meeting on March 4, 2002, but the seeds for this meeting actually started about ten years under David's very careful direction.

With his mighty team of four, he reached out to the community and said, What do you need? What are your needs? What's going on for you guys? What kinds of programs do you need?

And by reaching out to this community, he was able to define and actually promote technology and improvement programs that have been very beneficial to this community and continue to be so today. His mighty team of four, which has grown over the years to become a mighty team of about forty right now on-site, have been involved in preparing the kinds of massive documentation that's needed to be put forth in order to obtain funding for the kinds of programs that we want to be able to give back to the community. And he's also been involved in fully supporting these programs and funding them so that they could, in fact, foster and grow.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that it's David's visionary and pragmatist attitudes that's encouraged this environment that we're all sharing today that lets programs to mature to self-sustenance. And as he tells us every day, he's a great boss. We only have to work half-time. He never makes us work the other 12 hours of the day, almost never.

(Laughter.)

MS. FORMAN: You've already been addressed by Director Hart, so you already know how fully she supports this initiative as well. What you may not know is that she's no newcomer to these ideas. Even though she's very modest about her participation in them now, she has been deeply interested in the application of DNA to appropriate cases to issues of public safety.

And she's early on realized the importance of DNA databasing and its utility early on in her career as a prosecutor. So we're very fortunate that Sarah Hart has been chosen to lead NIJ at this particular juncture.

Another reason that we're particularly blessed to have Sarah here with us now is because she has a very strong background in corrections. I sort of wrestled with ways of saying that, and I had it on my paper as a member of the corrections community, but that didn't sound like it was going to come out right so I changed that. Not as an inmate.

But she does have personal experience and insight in the critical concerns about convicted offender sample collections and the compelling need to effectively prioritize cases to make this a better program and in the interest of public safety.

And, again, I'd also like to take this opportunity to expand a little bit on the group's new - to the group on our new deputy director, Mr. Glen Schmitt, who has been asked by Director Hart to formerly oversee this group.

Now, several of you have already asked, and for those of you who are too shy, and I don't know who that would characterize in this room, but perhaps some of you, two have asked. Yes, this is the same Mr. Schmitt who authored The Backlog Elimination Bill while he worked on The Hill in Congressman McCollum's office.

So obviously Mr. Schmitt's comes to us with a very strong background in this particular area, and I think that his experience on The Hill side will be a very helpful perspective to those of us who have been practitioners for so long and don't know how the other half works.

And, finally, I'd just like to echo Sarah's introduction of Dr. Morgan, whom she identified as coming to us from The Johns Hopkins University. I promised I would never leave off the "The." And just echo what Sarah said that his background in applied physics and his experience in the Maryland State Legislator are certainly going to be extremely beneficial to us in this environment and across the board at NIJ.

So those are the introductions of the staff. And, again, I welcome you and hope that the presentations that we've got prepared for you today will be stimulating and we look forward to your discussions.

Thank you very much.

MS. HART: I think we're going to turn this over now to Tim Schellberg.