Lea creates DNA testing fund to fight crime
Curtis C. Wynne/News-Sun
LOVINGTON — By voting to create a special fund for DNA testing, Lea County Commissioners on Thursday addressed “crimes involving sexual assaults, including children as victims.”
County Attorney John Caldwell and Undersheriff Michael Walker introduced a resolution intended to local law enforcement to use private testing labs versus relying soley on using state laboratories for DNA tests.
“This resolution, if you approve it, will provide $150,000 for use by the district attorney or by the sheriff’s office or, with the approval of the undersheriff and my office, it can be used by the municipal law enforcement agencies, to process DNA evidence at outside labs,” Caldwell said.
Currently, local law enforcement agencies and the district attorney’s office use the state’s DNA laboratory to process evidence, creating a delay in moving cases forward officials said.
“(The state labs) take 12-18 months to process evidence. They limit the number of articles that can be forwarded for testing,” Caldwell continued. “We can find private labs that can do the testing almost immediately, within probably 30 days. They do not limit the number of items they test because they’re going to charge for them.”
The delay of more than a year, the attorney pointed out, often results in unintended consequence of threatening to deny a victim or a defendant a speedy trial, as well as the concern that an innocent person may be incarcerated while awaiting results.
Undersheriff Walker joined in, “The main issue is we have cases that are pending at the lab for 12-18 months and, of course, New Mexico law requires the courts to proceed faster than what they can provide us.”
When the reports do come back, Walker noted, they often provide insufficient results. Private laboratories are expected to do better.
“Experience with outside laboratories is most of them have better equipment than what the state currently has to operate with and they can give us a more definitive answer as to this is the person or it’s absolutely not the person,” Walker said.
To Commissioner Pat Sims’ question regarding cost of the tests, Walker estimated a minimum of $5,000 per item tested plus an expert’s testimony fee and expenses.
Caldwell added, “The expert witness fees probably average about $6,000 plus expenses, so it could be around $20,000 a case by the time you have the testing and the testimony, if needed.
“But you’ll find that if you have good DNA testing, people who are shown to be positive through DNA testing tend to plead guilty, so you avoid the trial,” Caldwell continued. “So you would save money on the expert.”
The county attorney estimated five or six county cases per year, but, “It could be more depending on the funding requested by municipalities.”
Walker is drafting a procedure for use of the funding.
Caldwell said, “I’ve met with the undersheriff and the district attorney and we will have some kind of approval process for deciding which cases are submitted to these labs. These are not FBI approved labs, but they are labs that follow FBI standards.
“Hopefully, this will lead to successful prosecution or identification of people who are innocent so they’ll be released from the scrutiny of criminal investigation in a more timely manner,” Caldwell added.
The attorney acknowledged a state requirement that law enforcement agencies and district attorneys must obtain state permission to send evidence out of state for testing.
“We’ll go through that process,” Caldwell said.
Commissioner Jonathan Sena, expressing appreciation to the pair for bringing the issue to the board, said, “What we don’t talk about is the sexual abuse of minors in this community. It’s more prevalent than we think. There are a lot of kids that are hurting right now. I think this can help us move forward and defend the kids in the community.”
Commission Chairman Dean Jackson agreed, “I’m 100 percent behind this. If we can save money and get it done quicker and better than the state, I’m all for it.”
Undersheriff Walker concluded, “I think this is a great step for our county. Again, we lead the state to try to combat serious criminal offenses, such as sexual assault, homicide and other cases that may arise that the use of DNA would be beneficial.”
The resolution, citing the responsibility of the county to provide for the safety of residents, passed the commission unanimously.
