By WILSON RING
Associated Press Writer
MONTPELIER, Vt. - It took five years to get Howard Godfrey’s DNA entered into a database at the state crime lab - and just five days after that for police to conclude he had committed a murder that gone unsolved since 1991.
The episode illustrated not only the remarkable power of DNA but also the huge laboratory backlogs across the country that are undercutting its crime-solving value.
“This a public safety issue,” said Lisa Hurst, a consultant for Smith Alling Lane, a Washington state law firm that specializes in forensic DNA issues and represents a company that makes DNA testing equipment. “It is a problem across the United States.”
A December 2003 report by Smith Alling Lane estimated there were almost 550,000 DNA samples from crimes scenes and from convicted criminals across the country awaiting processing, in which genetic material is extracted and a DNA profile created.
The backlog is blamed on a shortage of money and staff. Samples taken from convicted felons to be added to the database cost about $50 each to process. Samples taken from crime scenes could be processed and even matched in a matter of days, but instead can take several months because of the heavy workload.
A February report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that 1,900 additional full-time lab workers at a cost of $70 million would be needed across the country to reduce the backlog in forensic laboratories to 30 days for both DNA samples and other crime lab work, which includes fingerprint and fiber analysis and ballistics.
The Bush administration and the states are working to reduce the backlog and are making some progress. Two years ago the Justice Department launched a five-year $1 billion initiative to clear the backlog.
The backlog was in Massachusetts was illustrated earlier this month when a DNA sample was used to link a garbage man to the 2002 slaying of fashion writer Christa Worthington on Cape Cod.
The DNA was taken from Christopher McCowen more than a year ago by swabbing the inside of his cheek. It took months for the sample to make its way to the State Police Crime Laboratory, and nine more months before chemists produced a match. McCowen has pleaded not guilty.
In Massachusetts, the crime lab is so swamped that district attorneys are generally allowed to submit only four samples for DNA testing from any one case.
“We understand that every case that (police) are working on is the most important case in the commonwealth at the moment,” said Massachusetts State Police Maj. Mark Delaney, commander of the lab’s forensic services. “There is a sense of frustration that we can’t help them in the time frame that we’d like to.”
In Ohio earlier this year, Robert N. Patton Jr. admitted raping at least 37 women _ 13 of them in the 2 1/2 years that a DNA sample that could have identified him sat in storage, waiting to be entered into a crime database. Federal funding to test felons’ blood samples had run out five weeks before Patton’s sample was taken.
In South Carolina earlier this month, police said a man who killed four people could have been stopped after his first murder in 2002 if law enforcement had been able to get DNA results faster.
In Vermont, which has just two DNA lab examiners and about 650 samples awaiting processing, the backlog was seen in the case of 28-year-old Patricia Scoville, who was sexually assaulted and strangled after she had gone biking to take in the fall foliage. Her parents lobbied the Vermont Legislature for years to establish a DNA database in hopes it would lead to their daughter’s killer.
In 2000, Godfrey gave a DNA sample as required under Vermont law after he was convicted of attacking a woman. But the sample was not loaded into the national database until Feb. 23. An FBI technician matched it to evidence gathered in the Scoville case on Feb. 28.
Godfrey, 58, was arrested on murder charges and pleaded not guilty.