Governor M. Jodi Rell today announced that the Department of Public Safety’s forensics laboratory – which Governor Rell recently bolstered using money from the federal stimulus – has made significant progress in eliminating a backlog of DNA samples waiting to be processed, a move that has helped identify suspects in several sexual assault “cold cases” dating back as far as the 1990s.
Governor Rell announced last August that she was using a $170,000 grant to speed up the collection of DNA samples from inmates in state prisons who have been convicted of felonies and certain serious misdemeanors and using a $1.8 million stimulus grant to continue funding more than 10 positions at the forensics laboratory.
Since then the samples have been processed at a faster rate than originally anticipated. The target each month is to process 1,000 more samples than are received and in January the lab exceeded the target, entering 1,900 samples from the backlog into the database. Recently the lab identified suspects in six “cold case” sexual assaults where victims had been unable to make visual identification of their attackers or the assaults occurred before DNA testing was a commonplace crime-fighting technique.
Details of the cases cannot yet be released because warrants are still being sought or other investigative activity remains to be completed.
“This is exactly what we want to happen – these DNA ‘hits’ will lead to cases getting solved and criminals put away,” Governor Rell said. “The science of DNA has advanced tremendously in the last few years. Crimes that were committed years ago – some before DNA testing was even a realistic possibility – can be cleared and victims can get the justice they deserve. Our goal is to completely eliminate the backlog of samples as soon as possible and ensure that new samples are added to the database as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
“With the smaller grant we were able to add four temporary positions, which meets the stimulus goal of creating new jobs while enabling us to gather samples from the current prisoner population and newly incarcerated inmates rather than waiting until they are being prepared for release, as was the practice in the past,” said Department of Public Safety Commissioner John A. Danaher III. “The larger grant is being used for 11 laboratory technologist positions in the Meriden laboratory, where the DNA samples are processed and analyzed.”
The 11 positions include eight that were previously paid for with federal grants that have expired and were assigned to duties other than DNA sample processing. These jobs have been retained and shifted to work on the backlog. The three other positions – which had been designated as temporary durational jobs – were also retained.
The goal is to eliminate the backlog by December 31, 2010.
Connecticut’s DNA database was established in 1993, under a law mandating the collection of a sample from persons convicted of any of seven felony sexual assault crimes. In 1998, the number of crimes requiring DNA collection was increased to 31. In 2003, the database was expanded to include samples from all convicted felons.
