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91–831 PDF 2004

S. HRG. 108–323

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OVERSIGHT: FUNDING

FORENSIC SCIENCES—DNA AND BEYOND

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE OVERSIGHT 

AND THE COURTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JULY 31, 2003

Serial No. J–108–33

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

JON KYL, Arizona 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama 

LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina 

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho 

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts 

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware 

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina 

BRUCE ARTIM, Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

BRUCE A. COHEN, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE OVERSIGHT AND THE COURTS

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama, Chairman 

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho 

JOHN CORNYN, Texas 

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

WILLIAM SMITH, Majority Chief Counsel 

JEFF BERMAN, Democratic Chief Counsel 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS 

Page

Grassley, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa, prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 58

Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont, prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 97

Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama .......................... 1

prepared statement .......................................................................................... 105

WITNESSES 

Baden, Michael M., M.D., Director, Medicolegal Investigations Unit, New 

York State Police, New York, New York ............................................................ 22

Clark, Frank J., District Attorney, Erie County, Buffalo, New York .................. 20

Hart, Sarah V., Director, National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice, 

Washington, D.C. ................................................................................................. 5

Hillman, Randall, Executive Director, Alabama District Attorney’s Association, Montgomery, Alabama ................................................................................ 16

Johns, Susan Hart, President, American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, Springfield, Illinois ...................................................................................... 19

Neufeld, Peter, Co-Director, Innocence Project, Benjamin N. Cardozo School 

of Law, Yeshiva University, New York, New York ........................................... 24

Serra, Rosemary, New Haven, Connecticut ........................................................... 14

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD 

Baden, Michael M., M.D., Director, Medicolegal Investigations Unit, New 

York State Police, New York, New York, prepared statement ......................... 32

Clark, Frank J., District Attorney, Erie County, Buffalo, New York, prepared 

statement .............................................................................................................. 34

College of American Pathologists, Division of Government and Professional 

Affairs, Washington, D.C., statement ................................................................. 38

Downs, J.C. Upshaw, M.D., Forensic Pathologist, Savannah, Georgia, statement ...................................................................................................................... 42

Fisher, Barry A.J., Crime Laboratory Director, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s 

Department, Los Angeles, California, statement .............................................. 50

Hart, Sarah V., Director, National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice, 

Washington, D.C., statement .............................................................................. 62

Hillman, Randall, Executive Director, Alabama District Attorney’s Association, Montgomery, Alabama, statement ............................................................. 85

Johns, Susan Hart, President, American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, Springfield, Illinois, statement ................................................................... 90

Serra, Rosemary, New Haven, Connecticut, statement ........................................ 100

(1)

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OVERSIGHT: 

FUNDING FORENSIC SCIENCES—DNA AND 

BEYOND 

THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2003 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATIVE OVERSIGHT AND THE

COURTS, OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:09 p.m., in room 

SD–226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Sessions, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senator Sessions. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF SESSIONS, A U.S. 

SENATORFROM THE STATE OF ALABAMA 

Chairman SESSIONS. Good afternoon. It is a busy, busy day. The 

floor is in a state of uproar, as is normal. I understand we have 

got a conference or two meeting. Senator Schumer expects to join 

us if he possibly can in a little bit. 

The issue before us today is an important one. Forensic evidence 

evaluation is a critical and fundamental part of the criminal justice 

system today more than ever. Everyday in this country, thousands 

of crimes are solved through the combination of hard work of law 

enforcement and the crime lab scientists and technicians who 

evaluate fingerprints, ballistics, drug samples, DNA, and other forensic evidence. 

Crime labs all across the country play a critical role in criminal 

and civil investigations. These labs face the mounting task of performing an array of forensic services. Over the last several years, 

I have been concerned that our Nation’s forensic labs lack the resources to do their jobs promptly, effectively, and properly. 

I was a Federal prosecutor for 12 years and I know that the job 

of a prosecutor depends heavily on the work of forensic scientists. 

If their jobs are not done properly, society is at risk. In fact, more 

and more prosecutors depend on laboratories. 

As Americans, we have become familiar with television shows 

such as ‘‘CSI’’ and ‘‘Law and Order,’’ and the novels of Patricia 

Cornwell, who helped us promote the Paul Coverdell legislation a 

couple of years ago, in which the forensic scientists have the most 

up-to-date equipment. No expense is spared when it comes to investigations of crime in those television shows and books. 

Unfortunately, that is not the reality in State and local crime 

labs across the country. Instead, the reality is that this country’s 

2

crime labs are severely understaffed and work with equipment that 

for the most part is, at best, mediocre. These labs are suffering 

from severe underfunding, and that underfunding creates a bottleneck in the criminal justice system, stifling the ability of prosecutors to try cases in a timely manner and leaving far too many 

crimes, including murders, rapes, and child molestations, unsolved, 

and leaving people who are entitled to be cleared of crimes 

uncleared of crimes. 

I have spoken with representatives from the American Society of 

Crime Lab Directors, the Consortium of Forensic Science Organizations, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the National Association of Medical Examiners, the College of American Pathologists, the International Association for Identification, State prosecutors, and State and local law enforcement about this lack of 

funding. 

All of these individuals and groups tell me that the lack of personnel, staff, and funding has created a crisis for State laboratories. They all say that drug analysis, ballistics tests, fingerprint 

evaluation, and all of the other forensic science evaluations are 

often backlogged. Let me share with you the following examples of 

the crime lab evidence backlog. 

The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences has a drug chemistry analysis backlog of 11,917 cases, a firearm evaluation backlog 

of 700 cases, and a DNA backlog of over 2,000 cases. 

The Los Angeles Police Department has over 6,000 murder cases 

in which fingerprints have not yet been evaluated because it cannot 

afford to update its fingerprinting analysis equipment. 

The New Hampshire State Forensic Laboratory has a 13-month 

fingerprint analysis backlog. I didn’t even think they had crime in 

New Hampshire. I thought everybody lived on a mountain top and 

listened to Judd Gregg. But they have a 13-month fingerprint backlog, a 3-month drug analysis backlog, and a 7-month firearm analysis backlog. 

The Phoenix, Arizona, crime lab has a drug analysis backlog of 

3,500 cases, a fingerprint backlog of 5,900 cases, a firearm backlog 

of 412 cases, and a 342-case DNA backlog. The Kentucky State Police has a backlog of about 6,000 drug identification cases that will 

take 9 months to process. 

Like I said, forensic evidence evaluation backlog of drug analysis, 

ballistics testing, fingerprinting evaluation, DNA, and others is 

clear and undisputed. Backlogs of this magnitude mean tardy investigations, criminals put back on the streets, and innocent suspects detained too long while awaiting the outcome of forensic evaluations. 

President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft have introduced 

a DNA Initiative which seeks just over $1 billion over a period of 

5 years to reduce and eliminate the DNA evidence backlog and for 

other DNA-related purposes. It is designed to improve the use of 

DNA technology, which is very important in the criminal justice 

system, especially the Federal, State and local crime labs, by providing funds, training, and assistance. 

Some of its fiscal year 2004 provisions include $92 million to assist in clearing backlogs of unanalyzed crime scene DNA samples, 

such as rape kits and offender DNA samples. There is a growing 

3

concern in this Senate and in the Congress that we have got to 

move these rape kits. A backlog is just not acceptable. 

Ninety million dollars will go to increased forensic laboratory capacity for DNA analysis, Federal DNA laboratory programs, and to 

operate and improve the Combined DNA Index System, and $28.4 

million for DNA-related research and development. 

Besides funding, the DNA Initiative includes the Attorney General’s recommendations that we here in Congress passed legislation 

to require that all convicted felons submit a DNA sample when 

they are convicted—they ought to be in the index, just like their 

fingerprint is; expansion of the statute governing the national DNA 

index to allow States which submit DNA profiles, to include all of 

those persons who are lawfully arrested—presently, only convicted 

offenders can be submitted, or are eligible to be submitted to the 

profile; and that the statute of limitations be tolled or stopped 

when DNA evidence identifies the offender that may have occurred 

some time after the statute of limitations has begun to run, the 

time in which a person can be charged. 

This is an admirable and worthwhile initiative, and I would like 

to help the administration work to implement some of these legislative recommendations. These are important concepts for Federal 

prosecutors and law enforcement, but I think that the problem 

with this initiative is that it only funds the backlogs of DNA evidence. 

A 2003 survey by the American Society of Crime Laboratories of 

State and local forensic laboratories found that DNA evidence accounted for only 5 percent of the total backlog in those facilities. 

Fingerprint analysis, drug analysis, questioned documents, and 

other forensic discipline work made up the bulk, the other 95 percent, of the laboratory backlog. 

I know that it is not the responsibility of this Congress—and this 

important—or for the Federal Government to take over State crime 

labs, to pay all the expenses of State crime labs in the 50 States 

when it comes to State-run facilities. That is not a healthy example 

of federalism. We should not do that. However, if we are going to 

fund such programs to some degree, our focus should be on the 

areas which need the funding most, and in this situation the entire 

filed of forensic needs assistance. 

The crime labs would benefit in different ways from funding 

through the DNA Initiative because labs have backlogs in every 

type of evidence, including DNA. For instance, the Georgia Bureau 

of Investigation has a fingerprint analysis backlog of 6,096 cases 

and a DNA backlog of 434 cases. 

The Philadelphia crime lab has a drug analysis backlog of 2,832 

cases and a firearm analysis backlog of 2,072 cases, and yet only 

a 344-case backlog for DNA analysis. The Illinois crime lab has a 

drug analysis backlog of 2,067 cases, a fingerprint analysis backlog 

of 3,132 cases, a firearm analysis backlog of 591 cases, but only a 

309-case backlog of DNA evidence. 

Some crime labs do not even have a backlog in DNA evidence. 

For example, the Columbus, Ohio, crime lab has a 920-case drug 

analysis backlog and no DNA backlog. The Vermont crime lab has 

a drug analysis backlog of 350 cases, a fingerprint backlog of 250 

cases and no DNA analysis backlog. 

4

But looking to backlogs may not be sufficient for us. Law enforcement needs very prompt forensic evidence analysis reports. Often, 

the filing of criminal charges or the advancement of an investigation is stopped and put on hold until the scientific analysis is complete. Our goal should be that our crime labs around America are 

able to supply for their police and prosecutors reports of analysis 

in days, not weeks, not months, and not years. This would be a 

huge advancement in criminal justice. 

We need to fund forensic sciences and reduce the backlog of evidence across the board. States need to step up and do more. In 

1996, USA Today reported that 8 out of 10 crime labs experienced 

a growth in their caseload that exceeds the growth in their budget 

and staff. Unfortunately, this statistic from 7 years ago seems still 

to be the norm today. 

I recall the story—and D.A. Robby Owens over there has probably heard me tell it—in Alabama about a man I got to meet who 

ran a dry cleaners. He had heard me speak about the need to move 

cases promptly, and delaying a case going to trial didn’t help anything. He said he really made his success in the business by buying 

dysfunctional laundries and dry cleaners. He would find clothes 

stacked up; they couldn’t find them, they were lost. It was just a 

mess. People would come back and ask for them and they hadn’t 

been cleaned, and he wasn’t able to collect any money. 

He set up a system so when the person brought in the clothes 

for cleaning, the assistant would take and put them right in the 

machine that minute. And there it was back and waiting on the 

rack, waiting for the customer within an hour. 

Well, this whole criminal justice system today to an extraordinary degree—every police officer, every D.A., every court, every 

judge, is dependent on prompt receipt of information from the forensic laboratories. People expect it. 

In the past, you know, you might not have to provide fingerprint 

analysis or drug analysis or DNA analysis, but you have to do it 

today. People have seen these shows on television and they expect 

it, and they have a right to when we can do it. So I would like to 

see us set a goal for America, and it can’t all be done from Washington, but we need to engender a vision of the possibilities for 

criminal justice in America. 

If every drug analysis, every fingerprint, every DNA, and every 

other scientific analysis reasonably possible could be produced for 

the investigative agencies within days, it would change law enforcement more than anything I can imagine, and realistically 

would not be expensive compared to all the other things we are 

spending money on in law enforcement. It would be very inexpensive. 

Ms. Sarah Hart, thank you for coming and listening to my diatribe there. 

Sarah Hart was nominated by President Bush to be the Director 

of the National Institute of Justice and was sworn in as Director 

on August 7, 2001. Before her appointment, Ms. Hart served as 

Chief Counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, a 

challenging job, and as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office. 

5

You had a good boss. You didn’t go back to Senator Specter, 

though, did you? 

Ms. HART. My husband was an intern for him. I was not. 

Chairman SESSIONS. He was a good one, and I know the current 

one there is—what is her name? 

Ms. HART. Lynn Abraham. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Yes, Lynn Abraham. 

Ms. HART. I just met with her last week about DNA. 

Chairman SESSIONS. She is a committed prosecutor and professional. 

You have served as lead counsel in Federal litigation involving 

the prison system of Philadelphia. 

Previously, Ms. Hart has provided substantial assistance to the 

State of Pennsylvania and to the Judiciary Committees of both the 

House and the Senate in developing legislation that addressed prison litigation reform. 

We are delighted to hear from you. You have an important task 

before you and we will be delighted to hear your comments on this 

subject. 

STATEMENT OF SARAH V. HART, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Ms. HART. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am very, very 

pleased to be here today to discuss two very important topics—the 

President’s initiative, Advancing Justice Through DNA Technology, 

and also support for other forensic sciences. 

Everyday, we read about how DNA has solved previously 

unsolvable crime, linked seemingly unrelated crime, and identified 

serial predators. In my hometown of Philadelphia, a serial rapist, 

dubbed the Center City Rapist, murdered a Wharton graduate student and raped several other women. Over a year later, DNA evidence tied these Philadelphia rapes to a series of rapes in Colorado. 

This gave the police a key piece of information. They were looking 

for somebody who was in these two locations at these specific periods of time. 

Armed with this information, they identified a suspect. DNA confirmed his guilt. He pled guilty to all of his crimes and all of the 

rape survivors were spared the trauma of a trial. Without DNA evidence, those crimes would not have been solved. 

Unfortunately, the power of this technology to advance justice 

has been limited due to insufficient funding, insufficient laboratory 

capacity, information systems that are inadequate, overwhelming 

caseloads, and a lack of training. 

Despite a substantial Federal effort to reduce the backlog and 

improve crime labs, there are hundreds of thousands of DNA samples awaiting analysis, many of them, if not most of them, rape 

kits. This is plainly unacceptable and it is wrong. The President’s DNA Initiative is a 5-year, over $1 billion plan 

to eliminate backlogs and prevent them from occurring in the future. I have provided the specifics of the President’s initiative in 

my written testimony, but this comprehensive strategy includes all 

of the elements that you outlined, Senator Sessions. 

6

While the President’s DNA Initiative is a comprehensive approach to building the Nation’s capacity to use DNA evidence, the 

Justice Department continues to dedicate significant resources to 

enhance other areas of forensic science, such as fingerprint identification, the analysis of explosives, drugs, firearms, and arson. 

Many Department of Justice agencies have each invested millions of dollars to help equip and train Federal, State and local law 

enforcement, and to fund research into new forensic technology. A 

stunning example of this is the FBI’s Integrated Automated 

Fingerprinting Identification System. We all know it as IAFIS. 

To illustrate, in just 1 day last week, on July 23, IAFIS processed 

nearly 67,000 sets of fingerprints from Federal, State and local law 

enforcement agencies. This included over 38,000 sets of criminal 

fingerprints, with an average response time of 53 minutes. 

The ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network 

program—we call it NIBIN—helps State and local agencies solve 

firearm-related violent crime. Since fiscal year 2001, ATF has spent 

over $73 million on the NIBIN program. A significant portion of 

this funding directly supplies State and local law enforcement 

agencies with NIBIN equipment. 

The President has also directed the creation of a National Forensic Science Commission, to make recommendations on maximizing 

the use of all forensic sciences in law enforcement. 

The National Institute of Justice has also funded over $15 million in research and development projects involving forensic tools 

and techniques other than DNA. For example, we have funded elemental analysis of glass and paint materials, improved software for 

testing evidence from seized computers, development of three-dimensional bullet profiles, and teleforensic projects, just to name a 

few. 

In the last several years, NIJ has also provided over $94 million 

under its Crime Laboratory Improvement Program. At the same 

time, the Bureau of Justice Assistance has provided more than $30 

million through 234 specific local law enforcement block grants to 

States and localities for crime lab improvement, non-DNA forensic 

technology and equipment, and forensic training. 

Since fiscal year 1995, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has provided nearly $400 million to improve our Nation’s criminal records 

and information databases, and this information is also used by 

crime labs in solving crime. 

We at the Department of Justice recognize that most of the law 

enforcement and prosecution in this Nation occurs at the State and 

local levels. Having been a prosecutor for 16 years in Philadelphia, 

I especially know this. At the same time, we will continue to support State and local crime labs in their non-DNA forensics, as well 

as their forensic DNA work. This joint approach will help bring the 

guilty to justice, eliminate innocent suspects, and ensure public 

safety. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I would be very 

pleased to answer any questions you may have. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you, and well stated. Would you 

have an estimate just for perspective here—and I certainly 

wouldn’t hold you to it, but how many scientific analysis requests 

7

were made by the Philadelphia Police Department and DA’s office 

as compared to the Federal officials in Philadelphia? 

Ms. HART. I remember when I was a prosecutor, I used to mention, Mr. Chairman, that we prosecuted more crimes in Philadelphia than the entire Federal Government did. Now, I realize that 

our DUIs might not have been comparable to some of the more 

complex cases. But, yes, that was the bulk of crime. 

Chairman SESSIONS. But they frequently had drugs involved, so 

you have to have a chemical analysis of the drug. 

Ms. HART. That is correct. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Fingerprints on a robbery, maybe, or blood 

on assaults, and firearms. 

Ms. HART. Well, it is interesting that you should bring up the 

Philadelphia crime lab. I think it is a good example of some of the 

problems that we are facing in this country. 

Even though you mentioned that Philadelphia had a relatively 

low DNA backlog, Philadelphia has done that by simply funding 

half of the analysis for DNA. So although they have half of the 

crime of the State of Pennsylvania, none of their DNA cases are 

going into the CODIS databank. All they are doing is comparing 

it with known suspects and other cases in Philadelphia. 

They are not comparing that DNA to convicted offender profiles. 

They are not comparing it to see whether it is occurring in another 

county or across the State, whether there are related crimes. 

Frankly, that is not the kind of system that you want. You want 

to be able to encourage these labs, especially these major labs that 

are handling large volumes of crime, to be able to make use of this 

Federal database that is such a powerful tool. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Will the President’s proposal allow funding 

for those kinds of things, too? 

Ms. HART. It would allow it for the local laboratories directly, 

yes. One of the problems we found is that by funding it directly to 

the States, most of the money was going to the State labs and the 

big jurisdictions were not getting the money. 

So, for example, in Los Angeles we saw the unfortunate circumstance of thousands of crime scene samples being thrown away 

because they had not been tested for years. I can’t begin to imagine 

what those thousands of rape survivors must be thinking after 

going through all of that to have the evidence taken and have a 

rape kit, only to learn that the system has thrown the evidence 

away and nothing will happen. 

Chairman SESSIONS. That is not acceptable. 

Tell me again what it is—for those laypersons that will be listening, what it is that Philadelphia is doing and what they further 

could and should be doing, and explain why that is important. I 

think I know, but I would like to get it straight. 

Ms. HART. Well, if I may just first say I don’t mean to pick on 

Philadelphia. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Absolutely. We have got problems all over 

America, but it is something you know because you have been 

there. 

Ms. HART. Right. A very, very committed bunch of people are 

working with limited resources. They are not getting direct Federal 

funding. So what they are doing at this point is that you have a 

8

lab that is only doing—instead of doing analysis of the 13 loci that 

are required to go into the database, they are only doing 7; they 

are only doing half of that. 

Now, that is enough to tell you with very, very good precision 

whether that particular person matches somebody else, but it is not 

consistent with the quality assurance requirements of the FBI’s 

CODIS requirement. 

Chairman SESSIONS. The FBI’s CODIS requirement is the national index? 

Ms. HART. Yes. I am glad you are explaining for me and I appreciate the help. We tend to all speak in acronyms and I apologize 

for doing it here. 

Mr. Chairman, as you know, the Combined Offender DNA Index 

System, I think it is called, is comprised of a variety of systems. 

You have what we call LDIS, which is your local DNA system 

where people like Philadelphia can put it into their local databank. 

Usually, those get uploaded into State systems, which are SDIS. 

And then the State can send their stuff—if it meets the requirements of the Federal law and the FBI’s quality assurance guidelines—they can upload that into the national database, the NDIS. 

What happens is you have a lot of DNA profiles out there that 

are not getting into the national database. So, for example, Virginia, which has many arrestees and juveniles—many, many profiles that they have cannot be uploaded into the national database. 

What you have is a lot of jurisdictions who are aware that there 

are all these other databases out there developing a system of 

faxing requests out to each lab. Each lab will input it separately 

and do a search and give that information back, but a very inefficient system that wastes a lot of very valuable law enforcement 

and crime lab time. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Because they don’t do the complete analysis 

of the DNA material and they don’t have a sufficient quality analysis, the FBI will not accept it for their system and it is not in the 

national system. 

Ms. HART. That is correct. 

Chairman SESSIONS. I am going to ask a question. It seems to 

me we need to confront this proliferation of systems. I mean, Pennsylvania has a system, the city of Philadelphia, the FBI has a system. It seems like it is a tremendous cost. We ought to be able to 

use one system that everybody could inquire of, and then you 

wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not it was in some other 

State. 

Ms. HART. With the President’s proposal, I think these issues 

will very much be addressed. I mean, ultimately the collection of 

evidence occurs at the local system, and you need to have that go 

up ultimately to the Federal system. What you want to make sure 

of is that at the local system, when testing is being done, that it 

is being done in a quality way and it is meeting national guidelines. 

At the same time, we need amendments to the Federal law to 

permit States to send in all of their lawfully-collected samples so 

that we don’t have this proliferation of separate databases. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Well, I would agree with that. 

9

What about the States that have basically caught up on DNA? 

Are they able to access any of the money under the bill as it is now 

written? 

Ms. HART. Well, we are working with Congress on the legislation. 

Nothing has been introduced yet, but I think everybody who is involved with this is very mindful of the fact that you would certainly 

not want to penalize the States that have done it right. We want 

to make sure that we eliminate these backlogs. We want to make 

sure that no rape victim feels that their evidence has not been tested. They should know that the system was trying to find the perpetrator. 

But at the same time, every system frankly can use improvement 

and use help. We still have significant backlogs throughout the 

country not only in case work samples and convicted offender samples, but a very, very significant backlog in what we call the owed 

samples. We suspect it to be about a half million to a million samples that the State law requires that they be collected, but, in fact, 

they have not been collected. 

Chairman SESSIONS. I think Federal law has a 5-year statute of 

limitations on almost every crime, except maybe murder. Let’s say 

there was a serious assault and DNA was taken and it did not 

produce a hit. Eight years later, an individual commits another serious assault or murder or rape and their DNA goes in the system 

and, bingo, this is conclusive proof that this was the person that 

committed that crime. Under Federal law, what would happen to 

that defendant on the first charge? 

Ms. HART. At this point, they could not be prosecuted if it was 

too old. You bring up a very good point. There was also a recent 

case in Philadelphia, a 1986 rape and homicide of 10-year old 

Heather Coffin that was just solved a few weeks ago. The defendant was arrested just a few weeks ago and pled guilty right away 

to the crime. 

The reason that case could be prosecuted was it was a homicide 

and there are no statute of limitations for homicide. But if that had 

only been a rape and not a homicide, there is still a very compelling interest in being allowed to prosecute that case. The evidence 

didn’t go stale. The many reasons that you often have a statute of 

limitations bar are to deal with issues that witness’s recollection 

isn’t as good down the road. The evidence may become stale. 

The unique thing with DNA is that evidence does not become 

less reliable or less persuasive. It is equally reliable whether it is 

day 1 or year 50, and for that reason— 

Chairman SESSIONS. So it will remain valid for 50 years? 

Ms. HART. If you do that sample, 50 years down the road you can 

do that. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Yes. 

Ms. HART. In fact, you are seeing some old testing where, for example, the Romanov family was recently identified in Russia 

through mitochondrial DNA testing. Those murders were done, I 

believe, not quite 100 years ago. So it is a very remarkable technology that is able to solve things and give us answers that we 

didn’t anticipate we would get before. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Well, I think we need to deal with the statute of limitations question. For serious crimes of violence, that is 

10

particularly important because, unfortunately, people who commit 

crimes of violence—rape, pedophilia—tend to do it again. 

I don’t know what the numbers would be, but if you go out and 

take a cohort of people who have committed a serious assault and 

a cohort who have not, there would be probably 50 times as many 

second assaults committed by the first group. I believe that is one 

of the reasons we have done some good with crime prevention in 

America through the repeat offender laws. We are identifying those 

repeat offenders and they are serving longer time. It may not be 

perfectly in accord with reality, but basically it works in hammering away at the repeat offenders. The thought that someone 

could get away from a very serious crime because they were 5 

years and 1 day late before it was discovered is not acceptable to, 

I think, most Americans. 

With regard to the funds that are there and how they can be 

used, would you support language that would help laboratories who 

don’t have DNA backlogs or who could show they don’t need it all 

on DNA to use it on something else? 

Ms. HART. Well, the President’s initiative contemplates capacitybuilding for crime labs, and much of the proposals, the things that 

we are looking at, have application across the board to help crime 

labs in a variety of ways with other types of evidence. 

One of the things that we think is very important for crime labs 

to have is laboratory information management systems. We call 

them LIMS. If you think about it, we go to supermarkets and you 

see all of your inventory that is controlled with a bar code and people can know where stuff is and what is happening and who has 

bought what. 

But if you go to most crime labs, you will see people, very highly 

trained scientists, hand-writing out form after form after form. 

Some of the basic technologies for managing that evidence, such as 

using bar codes and computer systems, are missing from some of 

the crime labs. Those kinds of improvements would go across the 

board both to DNA and non-DNA evidence. Also, it would free up 

a significant amount of staff time that can be devoted to other 

things. 

In addition, the President’s proposal also talks about evidence 

storage. The reason that we have such a difficult time getting a 

handle on the DNA backlog is because it appears that almost all 

of it is sitting on police shelves and not at the crime labs. That is 

because the crime labs lack the kind of storage capacity for the evidence. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Director Hart, is there a definition of what 

a backlog is? 

Ms. HART. I don’t think any formal one. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Is it a month, a week, or 6 months? 

Ms. HART. I think at this point people are counting what is sitting on the shelves. And you are right. I think your point is a very 

good one. If it is sitting there for a day, it is a little hard to say 

that is really a backlog because in the best of all circumstances, 

there is going to be a certain amount that sits there. 

So it is not so much the amount, but how long it has been there. 

In other words, if you are able to process 10,000 cases a week and 

you have 10,000 cases sitting there, it would be a little misleading 

11

to say there is a backlog of 10,000 cases. So it is difficult to put 

a handle on it, especially because so much of this is not actually 

in the crime lab. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Director Hart, you note either in this testimony or in the House testimony that you gave that you have 

hopes, or we have the capacity to develop new systems that would 

allow the processing of DNA in minutes rather than hours, with 

less people and more accuracy. What can you tell us about that? 

And I would just add parenthetically that I am a very strong believer that a person in your position that is supporting, in a way, 

law enforcement throughout America—that research to help bring 

online rapidly something that would help every laboratory in America reduce their costs would be a wonderful thing to promote. 

Ms. HART. When I talk about this, Mr. Chairman, I often give 

the example about when I was a child and somebody told me that 

there would be a computer in every house. And at the time, the 

computer was about the size of a garage, and I just laughed. I 

thought that was ridiculous, that nobody would ever be able to afford it, and why would you have something of that size. 

If somebody had told me then that we would have actually more 

than one computer in my house, I wouldn’t have believed it. But 

the reason we got there was because we made them smaller, we 

made them faster, we made them cheaper, and we made them easy 

to use. That is what we need to be doing in law enforcement for 

DNA. 

We have a kind of mantra, which is ‘‘faster, better, cheaper.’’ 

What you want is for DNA to be able to be used as a routine law 

enforcement tool, and that means it has to be cost-effective and it 

has to be relatively inexpensive. Portability is the ideal that we 

would like to have, something very small and very precise. 

So our research funding is directed that way. We are developing 

DNA on a chip which uses nano technology to reduce the amount 

of time to do a DNA test. That was the funding we provided to 

MIT’s Whitehead Institute to develop that, and we are working 

with NIST, also, to try and bring that up to speed so that we can 

start using it. So that is one of our goals here. If we want to make 

this a routine law enforcement tool, which is what the President’s 

vision is, we need to make it very accessible, easy to use, and inexpensive. 

Chairman SESSIONS. How close are we to significantly improved 

processing equipment? 

Ms. HART. We are a ways out on this particular chip. We are 

making advances all the time with DNA. One of the major advances that we had, for example, within just the last year followed 

out of the September 11 tragedy and the World Trade Center. 

We were faced with that with a very unprecedented DNA question, which was how do you identify so many human remains? 

With so many potential victims, how do you sort everybody out? 

And here you had families who were desperate to have their loved 

ones identified. We had the Nation’s experts from all around the 

country come in; many volunteered their time. As a result of that 

tragedy, we have had major advances in the science of how to analyze degraded remains from that. 

12

The science of DNA is moving so rapidly. Some of it is being developed in the private sector, some in the public sector. We try and 

leverage funds wherever we can, but there are major advances 

going on in this. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Well, you know, if it is pretty clear that a 

new technique could reduce time and cost of DNA or cocaine analysis or anything else, I think we really ought to put the money into 

getting that down, helping the users get it as soon as possible, because it will just save the system money and make it work better. 

Thank you for your testimony and for your leadership. I guess 

with regard to research and improvement of the system, do you believe we need to be doing that for the other areas of forensic analysis, other than just DNA? 

Ms. HART. Absolutely, and we continue to support it and we will. 

Chairman SESSIONS. One of the things you are going to need to 

wrestle with and all of us need to wrestle with is all these different 

databases. The ATF has got theirs. They used to have a fight with 

the FBI, you know, over guns analysis. I think they have settled 

that, and a waste of taxpayers’ money to an unnecessary degree. 

DEA has a drug database, Customs has a database, the Philadelphia Police Department has a database. Everybody has got them, 

and one of the things I would like to spend some time on in the 

months to come is analyzing how we can make that better, make 

the whole system that needs to be national be available nationally. 

For example, it is a secret who are here illegally. At least that 

is my little way of saying it. We have found that INS does not put 

their fugitive warrants in the NCIC, and no police officer that stops 

somebody on the road is going to think to call the local INS office 

before they let somebody go. They should be in there if they have 

got a warrant for their arrest or they are a fugitive. I think we 

have got a lot of work to do on making that system be as powerful 

as it could be. 

As a person who spent a lot of years in law enforcement, I am 

well aware, as you noted in your opening comments, that these hits 

on older cases help solve more crimes than most people ever know. 

It really has helped us identify repeat, dangerous offenders and get 

them off the streets, and has been a reason for the declining crime 

rate, I think. 

Do you have anything else? 

Ms. HART. No. Thank you very much for inviting us. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you for your leadership. 

Ms. HART. We appreciate it. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hart follows:] 

Chairman SESSIONS. We will bring up the next group. The next 

group will include Susan Hart Johns who is the Bureau Chief of 

the Illinois State Police Division of Forensics and currently serves 

as President of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors 

and Administrators. She has worked as a laboratory analyst and 

a laboratory director, and has been active in the field of forensics 

for 25 years. 

Come on and you can be seated. If there are name cards, we will 

put them out. 

Dr. Michael Baden is a board-certified forensic pathologist and 

former chief medical examiner for New York City. 

13

How many books have you written, Dr. Baden? 

Dr. BADEN. A few, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. He is the author of Dead Reckoning: The 

New Science of Catching Killers. 

You could probably write some individual case stories. 

In addition to maintaining a private practice, he is the Co-Director of the New York State Police Medicolegal Investigative Unit 

and has served as President of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence and Vice President of the American Academy of Forensic 

Sciences. 

As an expert in forensic pathology, Dr. Baden has been involved 

as an expert in numerous cases of interest, including the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the death of John Belushi, and the 

examination of the remains of Czar Nicholas, of Russia, and family. 

Peter Neufeld is a co-founder and Director of the Innocence 

Project at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. An expert on DNA evidence, Mr. Neufeld is Co-Chair of the 

National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ DNA Task 

Force. In 1995, he was appointed by the New York State Governor’s Office to the Commission on Forensic Science, which regulates all State and local crime laboratories. Mr. Neufeld obtained 

his law degree from the New York University School of Law in 

1975. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Mr. Randy Hillman was the chief assistant 

district attorney in Shelby County, Alabama. 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. And currently serves as Executive Director 

of the Alabama District Attorney’s Association. He graduated from 

Cumberland School of Law and entered the private practice of law 

in Mobile, Alabama. From there, Mr. Hillman practiced as an assistant district attorney in Shelby and Jefferson County, Alabama, 

before leaving the DA’s office in Shelby, Bessemer Division. Now, 

he is the Executive Director of the State Association. So he brings 

the perspective of the district attorneys themselves and as a handson prosecutor who dealt with cases personally. 

Mr. Frank Clark is the District Attorney in Erie County, New 

York, and has been in that position since 1997. Prior to that, he 

was Deputy District Attorney in Erie County and served as the 

Chief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force in 

western New York for 5 years and as the chief of the Violent Felony Bureau in the Erie County District Attorney’s Office. Mr. Clark 

is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, where he earned the 

rank of captain. 

Ms. Rosemary Serra is currently a stay-at-home mom, retired 

after 20 years from Federal Express as an operations manager. She 

is one of millions of people in this country who have been victims 

of crime. Her victimization was due to the murder of her sister, 

Penny, and today she will tell us about her experiences. 

Ms. Serra, you will start off and give us a perspective from the 

world where people lose loved ones as a result of crime and how 

that, in your opinion, impacts forensic science analysis. 

14

STATEMENT OF ROSEMARY SERRA, NEW HAVEN, 

CONNECTICUT 

Ms. SERRA. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, I was a 

victim for 28 years. On July 16, 1973, my only sibling, 21-year-old 

Penny Serra, was stabbed to death on a sunny afternoon in a parking garage not more than 2 miles from her home. Penny was not 

only my sister and best friend, but also my surrogate mother, since 

our own mom had died when I was 6 and she was 11. 

Although the murderer left behind a calling card of evidence, he 

was not apprehended until June 1999, 29 years after the murder, 

almost to the day of Penny’s death. During those days, I graduated 

from high school, attended college, dealt with the false arrest of a 

person who the police suspected murdered my sister, an acquittal, 

four primary suspects, my father’s death, and my becoming an 

adult. 

Although at the time of the murder DNA was not more than letters of the alphabet, the crime scene investigators took meticulous 

care in collecting, preserving, and logging the evidence found at the 

scene. Throughout the next 26 years, the key pieces of evidence—

a tissue box with a thumb print, a hanky with fluid, paint chips, 

and a bloody parking ticket—were hauled from the police department to the chief State’s attorney’s office, from one forensic lab to 

the next. 

From 1973, and for close to three decades, this evidence went 

through every technological advance of testing that was available. 

Literally thousands of manpower hours were spent in laboratories 

from coast to coast. The fingerprint on the tissue box seemed to always split the investigation into two schools of thought. One was 

that the print was that of the assailant; the other was the murder 

was a crime of passion. Hence, the fingerprint was not a key factor. 

Both theories were pursued vigorously. 

As years went by, my father’s perseverance on keeping the case 

active was heart-wrenching but successful. I, however, had lost 

faith of ever finding my sister’s murderer. My life as I knew it was 

over and the hope of closure seemed to diminish as years passed. 

However, unknown to me as I was trying to build a new life, 

strangers were working furiously to find my sister’s murderer. 

Christopher Grice, a forensic lab technician in Connecticut, is just 

one of those individuals. 

On July 30, 1994, Mr. Edward R. Grant was fighting with his 

girlfriend. After a heated exchange that took place at her home in 

a nearby town in Connecticut, Grant beat his girlfriend enough 

that she filed charges with the local police department. Grant was 

taken into custody and booked on an assault charge. His fingerprints were taken as part of routine police procedure and entered 

into the FBI regional fingerprint database. 

Christopher Grice, working from the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory in Meriden, had been involved with our 

case since the early days of the investigation. Then a print specialist in the detective bureau of the New Haven Police Department, Grice had memorized the whirls and ridges of the thumb 

print found on my sister’s Kleenex box. 

As he sifted through literally thousands of prints for a match, of 

course, at the time no computer database for criminal fingerprints 

15

existed. There were just dedicated individuals hovering over black 

and white cards, tracing an individual’s unique markings. 

Mr. Grice, who now administers the Automated Fingerprint 

Identification System, routinely runs checks for all of the unidentified prints associated with unsolved cases in the State. This was 

the process he undertook in July of 1997, 3 years after Grant’s arrest. Several possible matches were found in respect to my sister’s 

murder case, and by process of elimination Edward R. Grant’s print 

appeared on the screen with a match of at least 12 points. 

After 3 years of tireless effort, the State prosecutor and his team 

built a strong forensic case against Grant and we entered superior 

court armed with everything but a motive. The print on the tissue 

box was unquestionably Grant’s. The DNA in the blood on the 

parking ticket matched Grant’s DNA by a ratio of greater than 1 

in 1 billion. The paint chip, which we did not realize at the time 

was a paint chip, which was found at the scene matched the paint 

used at the auto body shop which Grant owned. 

Edward R. Grant was prosecuted and convicted in May 2002 

solely on forensic science. He is now serving a 25-year sentence for 

the murder of my sister, and hopefully will never see another day 

of freedom. On the day of Grant’s sentencing, my long-awaited ache 

for closure was achieved and my days of being a victim were over. 

In the past year, I have adopted a beautiful daughter, Jessica 

Anne, and look forward to new beginnings. 

This story could have died along with my sister if it were not for 

the qualified and dedicated personnel who worked on this case, or 

the wide spectrum of forensic science analysis available in this 

country. Edward Grant would still be walking the streets a free 

man and I would still be looking over my shoulder for the person 

who stole my youth and my beloved sister. 

I am not a scientist and would be lying if I said I understood the 

mechanics of forensic science. I am just one of many who depend 

on forensic science professionals for justice. To spend government 

money solely on DNA would be a travesty and an injustice to all 

the victims and families with unsolved cases in this country. Please 

think of Penny Serra when you think of forensic science, and be 

aware that this case, along with 50 percent of all other homicides, 

cannot be prosecuted on DNA alone. 

I would like to submit my written statement for the record, and 

I thank you for your time. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you for that impressive story. It 

brings a human face to what these people do, so many do everyday, 

and it saves lives and brings justice and closure for a lot of victims 

of crime. We thank you for sharing that with us very, very much. 

Just one question. It was the fingerprint that got the original hit 

confirmed by the DNA and the paint. Would that be correct? 

Ms. SERRA. Exactly. If it was not for the fingerprint, it was a 

needle in a haystack. He would have never been arrested. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Serra appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SESSIONS. All right, let’s see. I guess we will just start 

at the left with Randy Hillman. It is good to see you again and we 

are glad that you are here and glad that Robbie was able to come, 

too. 

16

Share your thoughts with us, and I think you have a story to 

share, too, about how this can save lives. 

STATEMENT OF RANDALL HILLMAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

ALABAMA DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S ASSOCIATION, MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. First, Senator, let me thank you for asking us to be here and represent the perspective of the prosecutors. 

One of my brothers is down here from New York and I am sure 

he can tell you a lot of what prosecutors face with forensics as well. 

First, let me very quickly clarify my background. I spent 3 years 

between Jefferson and Shelby Counties as an assistant DA, and 

then I spent 9 years as the chief assistant for Mr. Robbie Owens, 

behind me. Eighteen months ago, I assumed this job, which is the 

Director of the Alabama District Attorney’s Association. Now, it is 

my responsibility to represent all 42 DAs throughout the State of 

Alabama. 

I have been in the trenches. I have tried, I can’t tell you how 

many felony cases, misdemeanors. I have spanned the whole gamut 

of prosecution. I can’t tell you how important it is that we fund all 

areas of forensics. DNA is a good thing. I applaud the President 

and the other people for what they are trying to do, but DNA 

makes up a very small part of what we deal with everyday. 

The majority of our cases in forensic sciences deal with the other 

disciplines. Fingerprints, questioned documents, and drugs are a 

major part of what we deal with everyday. Without forensics, I 

don’t think there would be any question amongst here that the 

criminal justice system would absolutely shut down. 

Let me talk very quickly about Alabama. The Administrative Office of Courts in Alabama, their numbers show that between 1990 

and 2000, just in Alabama, our caseload felonies went up by 54 

percent over the previous 10-year period of time. 

Taylor Nogel, who is the Director of the Alabama Department of 

Forensic Sciences, says we have more work than we can possibly 

do; we are just swamped. All of his disciplines—toxicology, fingerprints, drug chemistry, ballistics, firearms, trace evidence—all of 

those disciplines are severely underfunded and overworked. 

In Alabama, I did kind of an informal survey of all of our prosecutors. We estimate that somewhere around 40 percent of our 

caseload, of our dockets, are directly drug cases. Those are the possessions, the trafficking, the manufacturers. Methamphetamine is 

a huge problem for us now. We get clandestine labs out there in 

the rural parts of our counties. Forensic workers have to go out and 

process these labs because they are so dangerous. 

We have currently—and I think you said it in your statement 

earlier, Mr. Chairman—we have somewhere around 12,000 cases 

that are backlogged for just our drug chemistry section in the State 

of Alabama. 

One other point. Ms. Serra was talking about the fingerprint 

analysis. In Alabama, we have one fingerprint analyst in the whole 

State. We just cannot continue to do our business when they are 

at that level, when forensics is at that level. 

What happens—and it is a trickle-down effect—when forensics 

gets behind, then it clogs our dockets; it puts us way far behind. 

17

For example, Robbie, sitting behind me—Shelby County has somewhere between 165 and 170,000 people. We process roughly 2,000 

to 2,200 felonies a year. Right now, we have a pending backlog of 

1,000 felonies sitting there waiting on trial. Most of them are waiting on forensic reports. 

Not only does it stymie the criminal justice system, not only does 

it slow it way down, but is also causes other problems for us. During that wait, during that period of time between—let’s say there 

is an initial arrest and the time that the samples come back from 

the Department of Forensic Sciences. We are running more and 

more into problems with the defendant being out there on the 

street causing or committing other crimes. 

Two examples, and I will be very brief with these. Crenshaw 

County, Alabama. Last August, a defendant was out on bond from 

a distribution of cocaine charge, had been out on bond almost a 

year. It was 11 months before the toxicology report came back on 

his particular case. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Not indicted, but released after arrest? 

Mr. HILLMAN. I am not sure if he was indicted or not, Senator. 

Most of the time, we do not indict cases. There is an arrest and 

we sit back, or oftentimes cases are brought to grand jury first. 

Chairman SESSIONS. But the question is, without the chemical 

analysis, some district attorneys will not indict. Some will make 

the indictment, but they can’t go to trial until they have scientific 

confirmation that the substance is a drug. 

Mr. HILLMAN. Right. 

Chairman SESSIONS. So, somehow, the analysis hasn’t come back 

on this case 11 months later? 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. It was still with the Department of Forensic Sciences. 

In that interim, this defendant went to his girlfriend’s house and 

spent the entire day, started at seven o’clock that morning and 

went until nine o’clock that evening, systematically murdering six 

members of her family. As each would come home, he would murder that person—six people over the course of 1 day. Had we gotten 

that tox report back a little bit sooner, maybe we could have done 

something to prevent that. 

Chairman SESSIONS. I would note I think that is the largest 

mass, serial murder in 1 day in Alabama history. And I think it 

is possible that had the report been readily available, and there 

had not been a backlog, he might have been serving time for distributing cocaine rather than being out there murdering people. 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. I thank you for sharing that story. 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. And that happens to a much less dramatic 

degree all over America everyday when cases sit for long periods 

of time. 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Go ahead. 

Mr. HILLMAN. One other very quick example. Covington County, 

Alabama. A defendant is arrested in January. The drug that he is 

charged with possessing and trafficking in, a large quantity of 

methamphetamine, is submitted to the Department of Forensic 

18

Sciences for analysis. Seven months later, he takes a plastic garbage bag and puts it over his 7-year-old daughter’s head and suffocates her to death. Ultimately, that sample took us 16 months to 

get back. Mind you, I am not disparaging the people who are doing 

this work. They are just swamped and don’t have the ability to do 

what they are asked to do. 

The unseen aspect of all this—you hear about the violent crimes 

that are occurring while people are out on bond. What society does 

not understand about what we see everyday is the drug offenders. 

That is the big problem. You will arrest a drug offender for selling 

cocaine. He makes bond, he gets back out on the street. He can go 

and do this again and again and again, and if he is caught, he will 

go back through the same process while we are waiting on the tox 

reports to come back. You have multiple, multiple victims, often 

young, often children, from that set of circumstances, and people 

don’t often see that and I would very much like for this Committee 

to know that. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Mr. Hillman, you will wrap up fairly quickly and we will— 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, sir. I am sorry. 

Chairman SESSIONS. This has been fascinating, but we have got 

a good panel here. 

Mr. HILLMAN. I apologize. 

Chairman SESSIONS. That is all right. 

Mr. HILLMAN. One final thing is investigations. We are stymied 

oftentimes with investigations; for example, DUI murder, DUI 

homicide, those types of cases. The intoxication, whether it be on 

alcohol or controlled substances—that is the main element of the 

offense. It is taking us anywhere from 9 months to 12 months to 

get a toxicology report back from the Department of Forensic 

Sciences. 

Meanwhile, the victim’s family and the defendant are out there. 

Oftentimes, the defendant is on bond. The victim’s family is just 

lost until we can establish if this defendant was intoxicated, and 

that is a tragedy that we shouldn’t have to go through. 

One last statement, if I may, please, sir. This Committee and 

this body has a chance to do something that prosecutors rarely get 

the chance to do. You have a chance to make a difference up front. 

You have a chance to help us be proactive and prevent some of 

these things from happening. Ninety-nine percent of the time as 

prosecutors we react and we don’t get a chance to prevent things 

from happening. You all have the chance to do that and I would 

respectfully ask that you do. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you very much. It is just important 

to know that steps in investigation are not going to be taken until 

the toxicology reports or the reports come back. Indictments can’t 

be returned, people can’t be arrested, trials can’t be held. The 

whole system is dependent on getting these reports in, and for 

every one dramatic case there may be thousands of others which, 

if not dealt with promptly, could become another dramatic case. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hillman appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

19

Chairman SESSIONS. Ms. Johns, you are the President of the 

American Society of Crime Lab Directors. We are delighted that 

you can be with us. Give us your thoughts, please. 

STATEMENT OF SUSAN HART JOHNS, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN 

SOCIETY OF CRIME LABORATORY DIRECTORS (ASCLD), 

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS 

Ms. JOHNS. Thank you very much for the honor and privilege of 

testifying today. Like you said, I have been in the crime laboratory 

for 25 years. I have analyzed evidence, I have presented my findings in court. I have also been a laboratory director, managing resources, and currently I am responsible for our Westchester and 

Chicago laboratories. 

Today, I am here speaking as the ASCLD president, but I am 

also speaking as a lab director and a member of the forensic community, and I am speaking in support of providing funding for all 

forensic disciplines in the crime laboratory. 

Many of the examples or remarks I was going to make you have 

already covered in your opening remarks, so I might skip over 

them. But I do want to make the point that our crime laboratories 

analyze evidence, and that is a critical element of the criminal justice system. 

I once heard forensic laboratories referred to as the B team in 

criminal justice. While more visible front-liners are seen as essential, the crime laboratory is relegated to a support position, expendable when times are rough. And we are in rough times when it 

comes to State and local funding for forensic resources. 

Like you said, the majority of the cases worked in this country 

are worked in State and local crime laboratories. You gave the 

same examples I was going to use, in that these rough times have 

resulted in crime laboratory closings and in layoffs in talented and 

trained personnel. 

Mr. Chairman, resources have an impact on the quality of the 

work being done in our laboratory. ASCLD supports accreditation, 

but not all of our members are accredited, and the reasons given 

for not being accredited are related to resources both in the personnel needed and in the costs of the program itself. I personally 

believe the cost of not being accredited far exceeds the cost of accreditation. As you have mentioned and given numerous examples, 

the lack of resources causes a bottleneck and significant delays. 

Crime laboratories analyze all types of evidence. As of July of 

this year, there were 237 laboratories accredited by the American 

Society of Crime Laboratory Director’s Laboratory Accreditation 

Board. Eighty-three percent of those laboratories have accredited 

sections which analyze for controlled substances. Sixty-one percent 

of those laboratories have firearm sections, 59 percent have sections which analyze trace evidence, 58 percent have forensic biology/DNA sections, and 49 have latent fingerprint sections. My submitted report has a full list of all of those areas accredited. 

Problems in laboratories are not unique to evidence type. Backlogs—and it is interesting you did ask what a backlog was, and it 

can be defined, but backlogs are created when evidence is submitted to the laboratory faster than it can be analyzed. Not all eviVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:04 Feb 25, 2004 Jkt 091831 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\91831.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
20

dence, though, has the same requirements for training, equipment, 

personnel, and facilities. 

I would like to emphasize one thing, also. Workload is different 

than backlog. We don’t get to choose the type of analysis that we 

perform. It works the other way around. The evidence that is presented to us determines or dictates what types of analyses are performed. 

In Illinois this year, our workload has been more than 55,000 

cases. Seventy-two percent of those cases—now, this is the workload, the cases coming into the laboratory—required drug analysis. 

Eight percent need latent fingerprint analysis, 5 percent need toxicology analysis, 4 percent need firearms, and 3.8 need what I will 

call forensic biology. 

Let me clarify what forensic biology is. Forensic biology is you 

have to examine the material presented for body fluid type or what 

type it is. After you do that, approximately half of those samples 

or half of those cases yield a sample which is suitable for DNA 

analysis. So only approximately half of the 3.8 percent of the cases 

coming to the laboratory even have samples suitable for DNA analysis. I think that is an important point for you to note. I have 

polled our crime laboratories and, like you, have found similar 

numbers on the cases that are backlogged. 

I think assistance has been provided to the crime laboratory community through a variety of programs, to include the forensic resource network and grant programs from the National Institute of 

Justice. These programs have invaluable in assisting the community as a whole to address issues ranging from quality systems, 

training models, and accreditation and certification. 

But additional resources are needed, and the lack of resources is 

the common denominator for crime laboratories. There is no onesize-fits-all approach that will address our problems. There are differences in the types of evidence used in criminal justice and each 

of those evidence types have different needs. 

Controlled substances, latent fingerprints, firearms, toxicology, 

trace evidence, and forensic biology DNA are all part of the crime 

laboratory. We need assistance that is flexible and can be used to 

address the full range of issues that we deal with in the laboratory. 

I would like to thank you on behalf of ASCLD and if you have 

any questions, I would be happy to try to answer them for you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johns appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you, and we will have some. Thank 

you for that good presentation. 

DA Clark? 

STATEMENT OF FRANK J. CLARK, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, ERIE 

COUNTY, NEW YORK, BUFFALO, NEW YORK 

Mr. CLARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Although it is sad, it is 

somewhat comforting for me to find out I am not standing alone 

in this problem. 

I would like, if I could, Mr. Chairman, to kind of focus in on what 

one urban area faces in this. We are a community of about 1 million people. I would say we probably have about 2,000 police offiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 15:04 Feb 25, 2004 Jkt 091831 PO 00000 Frm 00024 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 S:\GPO\HEARINGS\91831.TXT SJUD4 PsN: CMORC
21

cers, we have 100 prosecutors, and right now we have 16 technicians in our lab. It has got a $1.8 million-a-year budget. 

Chairman SESSIONS. You are not counting prison guards, probation officers, judges and their law clerks, and everybody else that 

deals with crime? 

Mr. CLARK. No, sir. I am just talking about policemen on the 

street. 

Sixty percent of our $1.8 million budget comes from State and 

Federal grants, which means that our county only finances 40 percent of the lab. It gets requests from more than 50 agencies in our 

county, and we also handle requests from six neighboring counties 

which are much smaller and not able to afford those types of things 

themselves. 

I am going to kind of limit my comments in two areas; firearms, 

number one. In the city of Buffalo this year, for the first 6 months 

we have had over 1,000 shootings, which is up 30 percent from the 

average of the past 5 years. So we plainly have a problem. 

In every case that we have, operability obviously is something 

which has to be established when we are talking about possession 

of a firearm. So the lab has to do that test initially on every single 

firearm case we have. We have got a 72-hour time limit for a preliminary hearing. So all those tests have to be done within 72 

hours, and the testimony. If you don’t have it, we can’t prove it. 

The preliminary hearing is denied and the person is released without bail—is exonerated and the person is released. 

If we are talking about more serious cases, felony cases—shootings, robbery, assaults, even homicides—and we are trying to 

match a bullet or a casing to a weapon, that is only done on a priority basis. We have to establish the immediate priority of that 

particular request so the lab can get to it. Many such tests are 

never, ever performed simply because the backlog becomes too 

great. 

Let’s talk about a weapon, a shooting. How about tying that 

weapon into other unsolved shootings? Simply not done. We have 

neither the time nor the resources to go back and do that. So but 

for the real profile case, tying that weapon into other unsolved 

shootings simply isn’t done. 

I heard NIBIN mentioned before, which is a wonderful system. 

It is like a DNA database, except it is for weapons. We don’t have 

time to do the tests and submit the information to NIBIN. We are 

too busy working on the cases that are pending. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Do you agree with that, Mr. Hillman? 

Mr. HILLMAN. Absolutely. 

Mr. CLARK. So here we are. There are two of us facing the same 

problem. A databank which would serve all of our people so well 

isn’t getting all the information it needs because we don’t have the 

resources to do that. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Is that done by the laboratory or the DA’s 

office? 

Mr. CLARK. No, sir. That is done by the laboratory. all of that 

work is done by the laboratory. 

If we are talking about gun powder residue, if we want to test 

clothing to find out whether an individual fired a weapon, if we 

want to find out perhaps the distance between shooter and victim, 

22

we have no capability of doing that at all. That has to be farmed 

out to private laboratories, with greater expense—we have to pay 

for that—and then the time frame that follows. 

Drugs. Twenty-five percent of all of our cases are drugs. I am listening and it is like I am hearing myself. The New York State 

penal statutes and regulatory codes require that a certain formula 

be followed. So a procedure may taken an individual chemist hours, 

and you have to follow that for evidentiary purposes and accreditation purposes. You can’t short-cut the system. So we try to do that 

and we can’t do it. 

We don’t test misdemeanors. If we had to test misdemeanor 

amounts, the backlog would be measured in years rather than days 

or months. So we simply don’t do it. We have to test not only for 

the type of drug, but the degree of purity, the weight, et cetera. All 

is essential for us to establish elements of our narcotics statutes. 

Oftentimes, we need that for a preliminary hearing if the person 

is being held. 

Seventy-two hours from the arrest, we have to hold a preliminary 

hearing. The result is we are simply not prepared to do that. So 

those defendants are released and the bail is exonerated. We can 

present it directly to a grand jury, but that could be weeks or 

months. We don’t even have the capability— 

Chairman SESSIONS. And the defendant could be gone by that 

time. 

Mr. CLARK. Oh, sure, gone, or as we heard here, sadly, committing other offenses while he is out. 

We don’t even have the capability of testing for date rape 

drugs—Ecstasy, GHB, and things like that. We have to go to State 

or Federal facilities in order to do that, with all of the problems 

that attend it. 

I have given you some idea of the problems that we face everyday, day in and day out. Obviously, these things impact not only 

on the quality of proof that we are able to introduce during the 

course of a prosecution, but on the people’s perception of what we 

should be doing. 

You mentioned earlier in your remarks that they see all these 

shows on television. It creates an expectation in them that the 

things we see in DNA exist across the board, and they simply don’t. 

Often, sadly, the perception is that we are not doing all that we 

can do, when we have dedicated men and women that are working 

around the clock to do the very best job they can. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Clark appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SESSIONS. Well said. 

Dr. Baden? 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL M. BADEN, M.D., DIRECTOR, 

MEDICOLEGAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT, NEW YORK STATE 

POLICE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 

Dr. BADEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for 

honoring me with having me testify before you. 

There will be 45 murders today in this country; more than a 

third will not be solved. Most of the autopsies will be performed by 

23

hospital pathologists who are well-trained in the examination of 

natural disease—heart disease, cancer—and not by forensic pathologists who have the additional training to specifically investigate trauma, homicide, and unnatural death. 

The hospital pathologist who performed the autopsy on John 

Kennedy made serious mistakes that linger with us 40 years later. 

I was the chief forensic pathologist for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970’s 

that reexamined President Kennedy’s death. In its final report in 

1979, the Select Committee urged that medicolegal investigation offices and crime labs be improved nationally, because it was recognized then that many mistakes were made nationally, and even 

with the autopsy of the President of the United States. 

Nothing was done to that end until Coverdell brought hope to 

improving medical examiner offices and the forensic science community. Today, in the United States, there are more than 800,000 

physicians. Less than 400 are full-time forensic pathologists. Some 

States have no forensic pathologists in the entire State. 

Mr. Chairman, I agree fully with your opening comments that 

crime labs around this country are in great trouble, and with in, 

the criminal justice system. Today, medical examiner offices and 

crime labs have the additional responsibilities that we didn’t have 

in 1979 that we are the early-warning agencies for any death from 

acts of terrorism, from chemical or biological weapons. It is the 

medical examiner and the forensic scientist who must determine if 

a death is from anthrax, smallpox, SARS, cyanide, sarin gas. It is 

they who must recover the identifying bomb fragments or bullets 

from the body. 

We must develop, I believe, new forensic disciplines to meet 

these new threats, such as forensic infectious disease experts who 

are internists. Infectious agents with high contagion can spread 

globally very quickly and must be identified as quickly as possible 

for effective containment. The delay in identifying SARS in China 

resulted in global consequences. 

During the past 15 years, the development of DNA technology 

has been a wondrous addition to the medical community and to the 

ability of forensic scientists and police to investigate sex crimes and 

to identify the unknown death. 

But in my examination of the literature and DOJ statistics, less 

than 1 percent of all murders in this country involve sexual assault. They get a lot of publicity in the papers, but are small in 

number, fortunately. In my calculations, in less than 10 percent of 

murders does the perpetrator leave DNA evidence behind. Most 

murders are by gunshots from a distance. About 5 percent of crime 

labs’ workload involves DNA analysis. 

Medical examiner offices and crime labs require properly trained 

forensic pathologists, crime scene investigators, criminalists, toxicologists, ballistics experts, fingerprint experts, odontologists, entomologists, anthropologists, as well as expertise in DNA analysis. 

The criminal justice system requires teamwork among all the forensic sciences to function properly. 

It is of interest the example Susan Hart Johns gave of the young 

University of Pennsylvania graduate student who was murdered in 

Philadelphia, whom they caught miraculously by DNA comparisons 

24

from rapes he did in another State. In that instance, the family has 

brought lawsuits against the Philadelphia police because they felt 

that they did not respond properly to her cries for help. They came, 

they wouldn’t go in the door, they left. She was found dead. Training of police in how to respond to dangerous situations, domestic 

situations, how to collect evidence at the scene, is all part of what 

the forensic scientist initiative should include. 

The criminal justice system requires a national team of properly 

trained medical examiners and forensic scientists. Please consider 

all of the members of the team in your deliberations. To paraphrase Voltaire, we owe truth to all of the dead. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Baden appears as a submission 

for the record.] 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you, Dr. Baden. 

Peter Neufeld. 

STATEMENT OF PETER NEUFELD, CO-DIRECTOR, INNOCENCE 

PROJECT, BENJAMIN N. CARDOZO SCHOOL OF LAW, YESHIVA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 

Mr. NEUFELD. Good afternoon, Senator Sessions. Thank you very 

much for permitting me to be here today. You might be surprised 

to know that I, too, agreed with everything you had to say at the 

beginning of these proceedings. I think your points were extremely 

well taken. 

Certainly, you know about the Innocence Project, and we will be 

the first to sing the praises of DNA technology and what it has 

done to bring truth to the criminal justice system, both in the pursuit of the guilty and also the clearing of the innocent. But we 

know firsthand that DNA plays a very small role in solving violent 

crime in this country. 

Even as much as we care about DNA technology and we want 

it to be used most effectively by law enforcement, we realize that 

even if we educated everybody about DNA and we had them using 

it in property crimes, as well as rapes and homicides, that nonetheless in at least 80 or 90 percent of the violent crimes there would 

be no biological evidence to test. If that is the reality, then the reality is that law enforcement has to rely on other forensic sciences 

to solve crime. It is as simple as that. 

I know that the sexiness of DNA has generated funds and generated all this concern nationwide, and we have been part of that 

as well. Obviously, whenever the public reads in a tabloid that a 

person who committed eight murders in Louisiana has been identified and apprehended through DNA, that is a big story. Or when 

somebody walks off of death after spending 20 years there for a 

crime he didn’t commit, that is a big story. 

But it is all these other forensic disciplines that actually solve 

the overwhelming majority of crimes, and it just doesn’t make any 

sense to give all the funding to DNA and not also give additional 

funding to these other forensic science disciplines. It is that simple. 

One of the things that we have learned from the wrongful conviction cases, Mr. Chairman, is that in over a third of those cases, the 

misapplication of forensic science played a critical role in sending 

an innocent person to prison or death row. 

25

What that means is this was not DNA testing; it was the other 

forensic science disciplines. These are cases that involve toxicology, 

involve ballistics, involve medical examiners’ opinions, involve trace 

evidence, all those other disciplines. Some of the most famous involved hair. Twenty-one of our cases alone involved forensic scientists working in government laboratories stating that hairs 

matched when it turned out that they didn’t match. 

We know and you know that every time they convict an innocent 

man, it is not just sending an innocent man to prison that is the 

problem. It is that the real bad guy is out there committing more 

crimes. So good forensic science makes sense from everybody’s 

standpoint. 

We have seen so many cases where criminalists or crime lab personnel have wrongly excluded somebody. They have wrongly excluded a bad guy, and so a guy who committed a murder walks 

away from a crime even though he is guilty. If the laboratories had 

better funding, had better training, had better personnel, that 

would not have happened. So the bottom line is that bad forensic 

science is bad law enforcement. 

One of the things that we have been thinking about was a little 

bit different than what the other speakers have brought to you 

today: how to not only be concerned with providing additional 

funds to these different forensic disciplines, because God knows 

they need it and we certainly support that completely, but along 

with additional funding must go the responsibility of oversight, 

something that you are obviously very much educated about. 

Sure, Congress has to give these additional funds, but we are 

worried about the integrity of the results, as well, not just us, but 

obviously the public at large. A victim needs to know that when 

you have excluded somebody through toxicology or through trace 

evidence that you have excluded them professionally and you are 

not letting a guilty guy go. We all have to know that. 

One of the things that you have in the Federal Government that 

most States lack is you have oversight through the Office of the Inspector General. We all know about how the Inspector General has 

oversight over the FBI Crime Laboratory, and they can decide 

when it is appropriate to commence a forensic audit of something 

that went on there. 

We know how important forensic audits are in everything in life. 

When the space shuttle crashed, you didn’t want it to be an inhouse investigation by NASA. You folks in Congress demanded 

that it be an independent external audit. When the Enron scandal 

happened, people said, no, it can’t be Enron or Arthur Andersen 

that looks into this; it has got to be an independent external audit. 

Well, the same things applies when there is some major mishap at 

a crime laboratory. You have it in the Federal Government, but 

these folks don’t have it at the State level. 

Our suggestion is very simple and very inexpensive, and it goes 

like this: Allow the IG here at the DOJ which has expertise in this 

area to simply set up some guidelines, some parameters, and then 

allow each State on its own, because we do agree with you and the 

position that you have taken before as a matter of federalism that 

the running of the criminal justice system should be left to the 

26

States themselves to experiment with—so let the States come up 

with their own type of IG. 

It could be a different agency in each State, but there has to be 

some external, independent auditing mechanism in place, which 

means certain minimum Federal criteria, chosen by the States so 

that when there is a scandal—and my God, in the last year there 

have been more crime lab scandals in America, and you read about 

them in the newspapers, than in the preceding 5 years. 

In those scandals, it wasn’t just about innocent people being 

wrongly prosecuted or convicted. More often than not, it was about 

guilty people going free because of laboratory sloppiness. So we 

need to have somebody who can look into it when it happens, not 

to point the finger, but to make recommendations so this kind of 

thing doesn’t happen in the future. 

So we are going to suggest that one of things you might do, 

which is very inexpensive, would be to set up this kind of local auditing system. Let the States do it their own way, but have it certified by the Federal Government in exchange for the generous contributions and support that hopefully you will be a part of. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you. I think that has some potential. 

You know that labs get complained of and most of the time the 

complaints are not true. They are doing a good job, but have to defend themselves. Perhaps you would like to have a national group 

that could be called in, known to be independent. If Alabama wanted to verify that its laboratory is operating according to the highest 

level, they could be called on to do an independent audit. 

What do you think of that, Ms. Johns? 

Ms. JOHNS. Well, actually, in my opinion, there are resources 

that— 

Chairman SESSIONS. That is your accreditation process. 

Ms. JOHNS. Yes. That allows us to call in people external to our 

agency to come in and have outside eyes look at our processes and 

what we are doing in the laboratory. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Where do they come from? 

Ms. JOHNS. The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors’ 

accreditation is a not-for-profit organization that is comprised of—

it has some full-time staff inspectors, but many of its inspectors are 

volunteer inspectors. I am an inspector for the ASCLD/LAB program, as well as a team captain, and I think it is an excellent, excellent program. 

I think that external audits can also be done contractually with 

some organizations such as the National Forensic Science Technology Center. So if you want to go hire someone to come in and 

audit your laboratory, you can contract with that agency to do that. 

I think this goes to my comments that I alluded to on accreditation. I really do feel that accreditation is something that our laboratories need, and that is what my colleague at the end of the 

table was speaking to, then I agree with that. I think that it is 

very, very important that we urge our laboratories to do that. 

Some of the problems in not getting evidence or DNA analyses 

into the database relate to laboratories not having external audits 

or reviews of the work they have done. That is one of the requirements of NDIS, and it could be one of the reasons that some laboratories are not getting their information into the database. 

27

Chairman SESSIONS. Thank you. 

Mr. Clark, you and Mr. Hillman are users of the—you are the 

customers, I guess, at one level. 

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir. 

Chairman SESSIONS. So are the police and sheriffs and deputies. 

I will start with you, Mr. Clark. Would you respond to the idea 

that if somebody were looking at this criminal justice system afresh 

and they realized that we had a shortage consistently of funding 

in the laboratory, which is critical to almost all of our cases moving 

forward, that even if they didn’t have additional money, they would 

find some way to rearrange money to get it to the laboratories because it represents a bottleneck that undermines police departments and DAs’ offices and court systems? 

Mr. CLARK. WE have been for years robbing Peter to pay Paul 

to try and help them do that, Senator. I do feel that some of the 

Federal money that has been available recently has been a godsend 

to us. 

I think part of the problem is that we have to make people in 

local areas understand—those legislatures that control the purse 

strings have to understand the need. You have taken the time to 

do this today. I wish somebody in my area, and I wish somebody 

in Mr. Hillman’s area would take the time to do this to realize how 

critical our need is. The county is only paying for 40 percent; you 

are paying for 60 percent. You are paying more for me than my 

own locality is, and that is not right. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Let’s go back to the numbers you gave. 

About how many police and sheriffs and DAs? 

Mr. CLARK. We have lots of policemen, we have lots of prosecutors, but we don’t have many technicians to handle all that. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Their work is undermined, their work is effectively stymied as a result of a small lack in one part of this system. Would you agree? 

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir, that is true, and in many cases I am told 

that the COPS grant and things like that which put more policemen on the street don’t consider laboratory technicians as law enforcement, so that they don’t qualify under those grants of money. 

So what you are doing is helping in one sense. Policemen are going 

out on the street and making more arrests. It is just creating a bigger backlog in the labs. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Is that true, Ms. Johns, that lab technicians 

are not considered law enforcement for the purposes of COPS 

grants? 

Ms. JOHNS. I put it gracefully when I referred to us as the B 

team, but that is true. We are considered support personnel and 

most of these grants that he refers to do not address the crime laboratory problems. 

Chairman SESSIONS. That is something to think about, Mr. 

Clark. 

Mr. Hillman, you have been a user, also. Do you think in terms 

of priorities—let me just put it bluntly. In terms of priorities, do 

you think that improving the whole system could be effected better 

by working on the labs than almost any other part of it? 

Mr. HILLMAN. Yes, without question. It is probably the biggest 

cause of every delay that we have, and again not because these 

28

people aren’t doing what they are supposed to do. They are just 

swamped. They don’t have the time or the manpower to keep up 

with the system. 

Alabama grew 54 percent in 10 years. I can’t tell you what their 

budget is, but it wasn’t that much that it grew over that same 10-

year period of time. And that stopped 3 1/2 years ago. Imagine 

where they are now. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Mr. Hillman, do you find that perhaps 

based on these television programs and that sort of thing that 

when you try a case, if there are five drops of blood on the scene 

and you test three of them, Mr. Neufeld would come in and say the 

real murderer was in those other two, why didn’t you test those? 

Mr. HILLMAN. The general public now thinks that murderers—

their investigation, their processing at the lab, their arrest, the 

prosecution, and their incarceration occurs in 60 minutes. It just 

does not happen. It takes years sometimes. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Well, I was just kidding because people deserve vigorous defense and maybe the drops were somebody else’s. 

But I think you have gotten to the point where we are testing—

would you say, Mr. Clark, crime scenes are requiring more tests 

per crime scene than ever before? 

Mr. CLARK. Absolutely, positively, and the sad part is we would 

love our laboratory technicians to be able to come to the crime 

scene. They could add a tremendous amount to that, but, of course, 

that is a pipe dream. They are still working 18 hours a day trying 

to do the drug tests. 

One problem leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. 

But, yes, the expectations are so much greater, the time required 

is so much longer, and the problem isn’t getting any better. The 

only thing that is growing is the backlogs. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Dr. Baden, are police and investigators sufficiently trained to preserve evidence when it gets to you or to Ms. 

Johns? Does that cause a problem sometimes? 

Dr. BADEN. It often causes problems. Now, they have a trial 

going on down in South Carolina, the Peterson/East trial, the novelist who is accused of killing his wife and throwing her down a 

staircase. The defense on Court TV—they have cameras in the 

courtroom—is having a field day in showing all of the things that 

were done wrong by the technicians, the police tramping through 

the area improperly. 

We thought that had been explored sufficiently at the O.J. Simpson trial and that police agencies learned about it. There are many 

good agencies, but most of this country still—the crime scene analysis, the training for police officers, has not been effective enough 

or there hasn’t been enough training. 

I might suggest that Dr. Jamie Downs advises me that nationally 

there is one lab person for every hundred police officers, and the 

lab persons can’t manage that kind of workload. A better ratio 

would be 1 out of 40. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Dr. Downs used to be our director and he 

moved up to South Carolina. 

Dr. BADEN. He is now in Georgia. 

29

Chairman SESSIONS. That is right, Georgia. He had an interest 

in recovering the remains of the Hunley submarine as one of his 

extra projects. He did good work on that. 

Dr. BADEN. Yes. He is my guru; he is my rabbi right now. 

If I may, on a discussion about national concerns, it struck me 

as a physician that we have a Surgeon General who has been a 

bully pulpit over the years for doing research and for improving 

natural diseases—heart disease, cancer—and it has been a very effective bully pulpit. 

Maybe the time has come to have some kind of a national bully 

pulpit, like a forensic sciences general, who can have authorization 

to be a bully pulpit and to help set up the kind of programs, training programs. The most important link in the chain at a crime 

scene is the least experienced police officer, who is the first responder who is supposed to protect the scene. 

When we train the New York State Police and they say, well, we 

are here, we are trying to protect the scene and the bosses and the 

higher-ups come down, how do we keep them out—and the example 

I have used is you have a book; everybody that goes on the scene 

has to be signed in. You have the mayor or whoever it is there, because it is often a photo opportunity for certain kinds of people, 

sign in and tell them, look, if you go on that scene, you are the first 

witness that Peter Neufeld is going to call for the defense as possibly mucking up the scene or potentially having evidence destroyed. 

I would also like to make one point, too, about the World Trade 

Center. Of the 1,500 bodies that have been identified, out of the 

2,800, the great majority have been done by traditional means—

fingerprints, dental, x-rays, visual. Most of them have been identified that way. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Mr. Neufeld, do you want to comment on 

that? 

Dr. BADEN. Point of personal privilege. 

Mr. NEUFELD. No, no, no. I mean, actually, it is interesting. In 

New York State, we have a forensic science review board. We are 

the only State in the country that does have that. and what we 

have done for people like Mr. Clark is, in a sense, we have created 

certain standards and mandates, and therefore we have had to put 

our money where our mouths are and we have had to provide them 

and their laboratory with additional funding. 

So sometimes by requiring higher standards of laboratories, you 

create a mandate and then there has to be the money flowing so 

they can satisfy that. So it is not always a bad thing. It actually 

sometimes acts as a very good carrot device. 

The one little comment I did want to make, though, is a response 

to Ms. Johns. ASCLD accreditation is not enough. I am not even 

addressing that issue. Obviously, the internal audit that goes on 

through an ASCLD accreditation is very, very important. I am talking about a different situation. 

The FBI crime laboratory is ASCLD-accredited, but nevertheless 

there was a small scandal in that laboratory recently when it 

turned out that one of the scientists was consistently not utilizing 

a certain control which was essential in all the forensic DNA tests. 

30

So the IG of the DOJ commenced an audit, and they commenced 

that audit for a lot of reasons. They wanted to see what was the 

scope of the problem, where did the traditional controls fail, what 

changes should we make in their protocol which would make it 

more likely that that won’t happen again. So it can even happen 

with accredited laboratories. I am talking about the forensic audit. 

Accounting firms ordinarily have wonderful means of doing internal audits, but if something serious goes wrong—I am not talking 

about two drops that weren’t picked up. I am talking about the serious mishap, and we have seen them in Oklahoma, we have seen 

them in Indiana recently, and in Montana. The first three cases we 

have looked at involving a hair expert—all three of them were exonerated. He used testimony in a court of law which all of his peers 

at the FBI and the British Home Office said is nonsense and not 

scientific. 

So sometimes something does go wrong and needs to be investigated. You folks are experts at that, okay? All we are saying is 

that in those situations, there should be an independent external 

entity that does it. It can’t be the folks doing it themselves. 

Chairman SESSIONS. There need to be reviews for specific allegations of wrongdoing. 

Mr. NEUFELD. That is exactly right. 

Chairman SESSIONS. Some good thoughts. I think we ought to 

think about that as we go forward. 

I think back on my career and what the Innocence Project brings 

to mind, and when I have had a series of things like Ms. Serra 

talked about—a fingerprint, a DNA, and a paint—I have never had 

it come back that that person wasn’t guilty. But I have seen two 

in my career that really were innocent and in danger of being convicted. One was convicted on eyewitness testimony. I don’t know if 

others have seen that, too. 

We have got to be alert to the possibility of the innocent being 

convicted. I certainly believe that, but good circumstantial evidence, good scientific evidence has proven to me over the years 

from my personal experience to consistently lead us toward truth. 

I don’t think you would dispute that, Mr. Neufeld. 

Mr. NEUFELD. Dispute it? I wholeheartedly agree. I will take 

good toxicology and ballistics over a lone eyewitness 7 days of the 

week, and I think you would, also. 

Chairman SESSIONS. All right. Do any of you have anything you 

want to add to this agenda at this point that is on your brain and 

heart before we go forward? 

Senators Grassley and Leahy have statements for the record, and 

we will leave the record open for one week for a additional statements and follow-up questions for all witnesses. 

I think we are getting to this, and this is what I would say to 

you. I don’t believe that this Congress is going to fund the State 

laboratories to any significant degree ultimately. I think helping in 

critical areas, providing the best equipment, best training, and additional funds when laboratories are in crisis is very helpful. But 

I doubt and don’t expect, and am not sure I can support a whole 

lot more money. 

31

I did fight for and help pass the Paul Coverdell forensic sciences 

bill, which has not been adequately funded, but provides for the 

kind of utilization of the money I think I hear you saying you favor. 

Would that be fair, Ms. Johns? 

Ms. JOHNS. Yes, I agree. 

Chairman SESSIONS. And so we can get some more money there, 

I hope. We are spending money on things that make the news and 

get people excited, and sometimes that is what Congress does. But 

in the long run, we have got to figure out a way to strengthen forensic sciences throughout America, and maybe a forensics czar 

wouldn’t be a bad thing, to be able to go into a State and call all 

the newspaper editors together and say, look, you are spending all 

this on police and jails and prosecutors and judges and just this little bit on research. And you have got this backlog and something 

could be done. 

I believe once the information is out there, the American people 

would respond. There is so much on television, so much in novels 

and things, that people are more attuned to the capabilities of it. 

So that is where I am coming from. 

I will be supporting additional funding. I am going to be supporting that because we are funding a lot of aspects of criminal justice that need it less than this aspect. I intend to do all I can to 

create a circumstance in which States will be more successful in 

going to their counties to get them to contribute more. I know in 

Alabama, I think the Governor is convinced that forensics need 

more money in Alabama and somehow he is going to find it. I am 

proud to hear that, but we have been talking about it for a number 

of years. 

Anything else before we finish? 

Thank you for coming. This was a very valuable panel. We will 

look to utilize this to promote public policy that will help forensic 

sciences in America, and I think that will help criminal justice. 

Thank you very much. We are adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Submissions for the record follow.]

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