Law enforcement officials from across Minnesota met in St. Paul on Tuesday to ask for legislative help in clearing a massive backlog of DNA cases awaiting testing amid increasing violent crime.
Citing backlog of 3,800 DNA cases, law enforcement officials push for legislative support
Normally it takes 30 days to process evidence, but the backlog has pushed it to more than three months.
February 28, 2023 at 9:48PM
At a news conference Tuesday, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said that the backlog has become "a real issue" in how long it takes to get justice in the criminal justice system. Evidence should be processed within a month. However a backlog of around 3,800 cases has clogged the system and pushed the average time to process evidence to 142 days. Some evidence isn't processed for as long as a year.
Without support, officials say that the average time to clear evidence could balloon to 240 days by 2025.
"Why it's so important here for law enforcement is the investigations. Oftentimes we can't even get the case presented to our office because we're still waiting for laboratory tests," Choi said. "We're experiencing things in our community that we haven't experienced for quite some time, and the path out of all of that is really working together."
Choi's office has paid the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) $110,000 for a forensic scientist focused on Ramsey County gun cases. That scientist has already started work for the office, but BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said more should be done to support the growing need for DNA analysis across the state.
A boom in crime has contributed to that need. Officials said Tuesday that between 2019 and 2022, Minnesota saw a 30% increase in violent crime and a 109% increase in gun-related crime. Victims and witnesses are cooperating less often with prosecutors. Evans said with more funding, forensic analysis could fill the gaps in unsolved cases.
"As the state's crime lab, our Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's forensic laboratory is where most of the evidence in these crimes comes for testing. Right now the demand for testing far outpaces the BCA's capacity," Evans said. "The governor's funding proposal will help us get there, and examine key evidence more quickly — bringing justice for victims of crime."
Gov. Tim Walz's proposal would pay the BCA $6.1 million next fiscal year and guarantee $5.1 million in ongoing funding starting in fiscal year 2025. That funding could secure forensic equipment and supplies, more than three dozen staff members, and a new BCA facility in southern Minnesota that could process 12,000 pieces of evidence a year.
Evans said that support could reduce the average turnaround time for evidence to a month by 2025.
Backlogs in cases needing testing have occurred in recent years. The city of Minneapolis budgeted $200,000 in 2020 to pay for help in reducing a backlog of rape kits. Some were decades old.
Clearing the backlog in DNA cases would quicken how long it takes to process other cases, but Roseville Police Chief Erika Scheider said it's also important for maintaining healthy relationships with the community.
"These delays can frustrate and anger crime victims. And if they persist, can erode the community's faith in our criminal justice system," Scheider said. "We need to address this challenge statewide."
Walz has said that he plans to propose spending part of the state's $17.5 billion surplus on public safety efforts. Walz and the Legislature are working on a new two-year budget this session, which ends in May.
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