What Could Clearing the Backlog Mean?
The results of addressing backlogs are dramatic, as the two examples below illustrate:
In September 1993, a married couple was attacked on a jogging trail in Dallas by a man with a gun who sexually assaulted the woman after shooting the man. No suspect was ever positively identified, although police investigated over 200 leads and 40 potential suspects. In August 2000, evidence from the case was analyzed using current DNA technology. Then, in February 2001, the DNA sample was matched to an individual who was already serving a five-year sentence for an unrelated 1997 sexual assault of a child. The man has since been convicted of capital murder and aggravated sexual assault.
In March 1992, an Alexandria, Virginia shop owner was stabbed more than 150 times in her home. There were no witnesses to the crime. For years, detectives had no leads, but they did have traces of someone's blood, apparently from the fierce struggle between the victim and the killer. Meanwhile, in 1996, a man pleaded guilty to robbing a gas station, and his DNA was collected for analysis and inclusion in the Virginia DNA database. Because of the backlog, the man's sample was not immediately analyzed. In the summer of 2000, the sample was analyzed and matched through the database to the evidence from the Alexandria woman's murder. In April 2001, almost nine years after the commission of this brutal crime, the man was sentenced to life in prison.
Several law enforcement agencies, prosecutors' offices, and crime labs across the country have established innovative programs to review old cases. Often called "cold case units," these programs have enabled criminal justice officials to solve cases that have languished for years without suspects. Most frequently, DNA evidence has been the linchpin in solving these cases. For instance, this past July, a California man was found guilty of the 1974 rape-homicide of a 19 year-old pregnant woman - a case that was solved through DNA evidence nearly thirty years after the crime was committed.
