State crime lab overwhelmed with drug case evidence

State crime lab overwhelmed with drug case evidence

WM police captain explains complications caused by 9month backlog

news@theeveningtimes.com

The Arkansas State Crime Lab is backed up and criminal defense lawyers know it. The crime lab recently reduced its drug testing array in hopes to improve on its nine-month backlog on narcotics evidence. Coincidentally, prosecutors face a nine-month limit and the defense lawyers play for the potential for drug charges to fall through the cracks with such a limited window.

The state has a single crime lab that is overwhelmed. Governor Asa Hutchinson recently announced a new crime lab to serve northwest Arkansas in Lowell, and pointed to a satellite facility at Hope that he anticipates being able to alleviate some of the backlog.

“My hope for this crime lab is that it will ultimately allow the state to provide better services for our courts, law enforcement, and our citizens,” said Hutchinson.

West Memphis police presented its evidence handling procedures and relayed the State Crime Lab’s wait time report.

Capt. Robert Langston said recent changes in the state’s narcotics testing aimed at reducing backlog but forced the WMPD to begin using a federal crime lab in certain cases.

The turn around time for conclusive results from the crime lab varies by category. The Captain emphasized having a good working relationship with the crime lab and some flexibility on certain high profile cases, but read the status report to the citizens academy that highlighted the lagging time-frame for various charges.

Firearm comparison: 16 months National Integrated Ballistics Information: 30 plus days Latent finger prints: 63 days DNA/Homicides: 63 days DNA/Sexual Assault: Six months Drug analysis: Nine months The time for illegal drug conclusions puts police and prosecutors in a pickle.

“When we arrest someone and they stay in jail — can’t make bond — we have to try them in nine months,” said Langston, “The crime lab sent a letter this week saying it would be nine months. “

The reason for the backlog is demand. The opioid crisis has overwhelmed testing capacity. “Since the opioid epidemic, the drug submissions are up 22 percent in the last two years,” said Langston. “In 2013, the turnaround was 14 days. The last two years they’ve gone from a few month backlog to a nine-month backlog.”

Another frustrating aspect of the process: Despite the extra capacity a new lab brings to the state, the ability to do all the needed testing remains beyond the current capabilities of the at the lab. The state crime lab stopped doing some testing required in certain courts in order to expedite the evidence on hold, but the reduced services ignore one standard for federal prosecution.

“They’ve discontinued some of the services too,” said Langston. “They do the quantity, because our state requires to know how much it was. They identify if it is cocaine or not and they are still testing for that. But, we need qualitative testing for our federal prosecutors on drug cases.

It tells what percentage the methamphetamine is — is it 50 percent or 80 percent pure? That is important. “

The new policies moved the WMPD to begin sending some drug evidence to federal labs for testing.

“We received a letter last week that they are no longer doing that portion of the testing,” said Langston.

“We are going to have to send that to a federal lab to take care of our federal prosecution. It’s because of this backlog. It isn’t acceptable because if someone stays in jail we are pushing the deadlines.”

Drug tests aren’t the only issue. Relationships between investigators and the crime lab have gotten testy too. There remains some reluctant cooperation to prioritize results.

“We had a case a couple of weeks ago, I called them to have it tested in time for trial,” said Langston. “They don’t like to do it. They did not like that call. They can’t do it all the time. It causes a real issue for us.

They cut services to try and get some things back to us in time to prosecute.”

While drug results were running slow, Langston was satisfied with the return time of two months for murder investigations.

“The DNA for Homicides, they do pretty good across the whole state of Arkansas,” said Langston.

The mountainous numbers of evidence the police department catalogs, tests and stores fills two vaults and two big storage rooms in it’s station, an old bank.

The WMPD maintains chain of custody integrity and stores evidence for all kinds of cases. The evidence files currently contained 17,000 items. Each one is checked in, sealed and bar-coded to maintain chain of custody. Police keep found property for ninety days. After which it is tossed into the garbage, destroyed or incinerated.

Evidence for crimes is kept for certain period depending on the severity of the case. Much of the evidence required crime lab testing.

“And that’s just West Memphis,” he noted. “You can imagine what the multiplying effect across the entire state has on the crime lab.”

By John Rech