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“PAUL COVERDELL NATIONAL FORENSIC SCIENCES IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2000” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S8605-S8606 on Sept. 14, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PAUL COVERDELL NATIONAL FORENSIC SCIENCES IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2000
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, not too long ago our former colleague, Paul Coverdell, introduced the National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act. It was a bill to further Federal support to State forensic laboratories, those places where DNA evidence is evaluated, where drug evidence is evaluated, where fingerprints, ballistics, and all the other scientific data from carpet fibers, and so forth, are evaluated, and then reported out to the prosecutors around the country so cases can be prosecuted on sound science.
Today we have a crisis in our criminal justice system. We clearly have a bottleneck, of major proportions, in the laboratory arena. There is simply an exploding amount of work. More and more tests are available. People are demanding more and more tests on each case that comes down the pike. We are way behind.
In my view, as a person who spent 15 years of my life prosecuting criminal cases, swift, fair justice is critical for any effective criminal justice system. We need not to see our cases delayed. We need to create a circumstance in which they can be tried as promptly as possible, considering all justice relevant to the cases.
I ran for attorney general of Alabama in 1994. I talked in every speech I made, virtually, on the need to improve case processing. The very idea of a robber or a rapist being arrested and released on bail and tried 2 years later is beyond the pale. It cannot be acceptable. It cannot be the rule in America.
Yet I am told by Dr. Downs of the forensic laboratory in the State of Alabama that they now have delays of as much as 20 months on scientific evidence. We know Virginia last year, before making remarkable improvements, had almost a year--and other States. Another police officer today told us his State was at least a year in getting routine reports done. This is a kind of bottleneck, a stopgap procedure that undermines the ability of the police and prosecutors to do their jobs.
I was pleased and honored to be able to pick up the Paul Coverdell forensic bill and to reintroduce it as the Paul Coverdell National Forensic Improvement Act of 2000. We have had marvelous bipartisan support on this legislation. Senator Max Cleland from Georgia, Paul's colleague, was an original cosponsor of it. He was at our press conference this morning. Senator Zell Miller, former Governor of Georgia, who has replaced Paul in the Senate, was also at the press conference today, along with Arlen Specter, a former prosecutor, Paul Wellstone, Dick Durbin, and others who participated in this announcement.
We need to move this bill. It will be one of the most important acts we can do as a Senate to improve justice in America. It is the kind of thing this Nation ought to do. It ought to be helping States, providing them the latest equipment for their laboratories, the latest techniques on how to evaluate hair fiber or carpet fiber or ballistics or DNA. It ought to be helping them do that and ought not to be taking over their law enforcement processes by taking over their police departments, telling them what kind of cases to prosecute, what kind of sentences to impose and that sort of thing.
A good Federal Government is trying to assist the local States. One of the best ways we could ever do that is to support improvements in the forensic laboratories. I believe strongly that this is a good bill in that regard.
The numbers of cases are stunning. I will share a few of the numbers and statistics that I have. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the Department of Justice, as of December of 1997--it has gotten worse since--69 percent of State crime labs reported DNA backlogs of 6,800 cases and 287,000 offender samples were pending. That is human DNA we are talking about. That is not available in every case, but that is not all they have backlogs on. Every time cocaine is seized and a prosecutor wants to try a cocaine case, the defense lawyer is not going to agree to go to trial. He will not agree to plead guilty until he has a report back from the laboratory saying the powder is, in fact, cocaine. It is almost considered malpractice by many defense lawyers to plead guilty until the chemist's report is back.
This is slowing up cases all over America. The labs have lots of problems in how they are falling behind. I think we need to look at it.
One article reports:
As Spokane, Washington authorities closed in on a suspected serial killer they were eager to nail enough evidence to make their case stick. So they skipped over the backlogged Washington State Patrol crime lab and shipped some of the evidence to a private laboratory, paying a premium for quicker results. * * * [A] chronic backlog at the State Patrol's seven crime labs, which analyze criminal evidence from police throughout Washington state, has grown so acute that Spokane investigators have feared their manhunt would be stalled.
Suspects have been held in jail for months before trial, waiting for forensic evidence to be completed. Thus potentially innocent persons stay in jail, potentially guilty persons stay out of jail, and victims get no closure while waiting on laboratory reports to be completed.
A newspaper in Alabama, the Decatur Daily, said:
[The] backlog of cases is so bad that final autopsy results and other forensic testing sometimes take up to a year to complete.
Now they are saying it takes even longer than that in Alabama.
It's a frustrating wait for police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and even suspects. It means delayed justice for families of crime victims.
Another article:
To solve the slaying of Jon Benet Ramsey, Boulder police must rely to a great extent on the results of forensic tests being conducted in crime laboratories. [T]he looming problem for police and prosecutors, according to forensic experts, is whether the evidence is in good condition. Or whether lax procedures * * * resulted in key evidence being hopelessly contaminated.
We need to improve our ability to deal with these issues. This legislation would provide $768 million over 6 years directly to our 50 State crime labs to allow them to improve what they are doing.
At the press conference today, we were joined by a nonpolitician and a nonlaw enforcement officer, but perhaps without doubt the person in this country and in the world who has done more than any other to explain what goes on in forensic labs. We had Patricia Cornwell, a best-selling author of so many forensic laboratory cases--a best selling author, perhaps the best selling author in America. She worked for a number of years in a laboratory, actually measuring and describing, as they wrote down the description of the knife cuts and bullet wounds in bodies. She worked in data processing.
She has traveled around this country, and she has visited laboratories all over the country. She said at our press conference they are in a deplorable state. She said the backlog around the country is unprecedented. She lives in Richmond, VA. She personally has put
$1.5 million of her own money, matched by the State of Virginia, Governor Gilmore, to create a laboratory in Virginia that meets the standard she believes is required. It is a remarkable thing that she would do that, be that deeply involved.
She is involved and chairman of the board of the foundation that helped create that. She told us how police, defense attorneys, prosecutors, are asking for DNA evidence on cigarettes, on hat bands. They want hair DNA done, hundreds and hundreds of new uses, a Kleenex, perhaps, take the DNA off of that, in addition to the normal objects from which you might expect DNA to be taken. Her view was--and she is quite passionate about this; she has put her own money in it; she understands it deeply--that nothing more could be done to help improve justice in America than to help our laboratories around the country.
We have people on death row who are being charged with capital crimes. We have people who have been charged with rape who are out awaiting trial because they haven't gotten the DNA tests back on semen specimens or blood specimens, and they may well be committing other rapes and other robberies while they are out, if they are guilty. Also, there is evidence to prove they are not guilty if that is the case.
I believe we had a good day today. I believe this Senate and this Congress will listen to the facts about the need for improvement of our forensic laboratories which will respond to the crush of cases that are piling up all over the country and will recognize the leadership that our magnificent and wonderful colleague, Paul Coverdell, gave to this effort and will be proud to vote for the bill named for him, the Paul Coverdell National Forensic Sciences Improvement Act of 2000, and that we can, on a bipartisan basis, move this bill and strike a major blow for justice in America.
I talked with the Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno, yesterday. She told me this was very consistent with her views. She supports our efforts to improve forensic science capabilities, and she said it is consistent with the Department of Justice's approach to helping State and local law enforcement. I believe the Department of Justice will be supporting this legislation, and we intend to work with everybody who is interested to improve it. At this point, the legislation speaks for itself. It is receiving broad bipartisan support, and I believe we can move it on to passage this year. Nothing we could do would help fight crime more and produce a better quality of justice in our courts over America than passage of this bill.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Harkin, McConnell, Bunning, and Grams be added as original cosponsors of S. 3045, which I introduced earlier today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. I also want to express my appreciation for legal counsel on the Judiciary Committee, Sean Costello, who is with me today, and my chief counsel, Ed Haden, for their support and the extraordinary work they have done in helping to prepare this bill for filing.
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