Advances in forensic science during the last 25 years have given law enforcement officers powerful tools to use in hunting down suspected criminals.
That was clear in recent days as police used DNA analysis to connect 38-year-old Diego Olmos Alcalde to the 1997 beating death of a University of Colorado student in Boulder.
However, the Alcalde case also has pointed out how the DNA database system is straining under the weight of its own success.
The Wyoming state crime laboratory, overwhelmed by a backlog of genetic samples to put into a national database, had Alcalde’s DNA sample for three years before entering it.
While his DNA was waiting to go into the Combined Offender DNA System, or CODIS, last summer, Alcalde was released from prison. It wasn’t until mid-January that his DNA made its way into CODIS.
On Jan. 24, a Boulder police detective got the call that would lead to an arrest in the beating death of 23-year-old Susannah Chase. Alcalde’s DNA matched a sample taken from Chase, who had been raped and pummeled with a baseball bat.
Steve Holloway, Wyoming’s lab director, said the cause of the backlog is purely a staffing issue. He doesn’t have the budget to hire enough people to clear the backlog, he said, though he and his staff are chipping away at it.
Stephanie Reilander, president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, said many labs across the country have problems similar to those in Wyoming.
Colorado does not have a backlog in entering known offender samples, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. However, it takes about 60 days for samples in routine criminal cases to be processed, Clem said.
With advances in science, investigators are bringing in a lot more material from crime scenes for analysis, Clem said. It used to be that they’d bring in obvious samples, like blood stains. But now, police are bringing in a wide range of items from crime scenes and asking labs to scan them for any possible DNA clues. And since technology has advanced, DNA profiles now can be obtained from smaller and more degraded samples.
At the same time, police have come to rely on DNA testing for broader investigative purposes instead of using it only to confirm a suspect they had already built a case against.
DNA analysis is a powerful tool that has overloaded laboratories far and wide. The answer is to increase staffing at these laboratories so analysis can go more quickly. But in these difficult budget times, additional staffing will be weighed against other budget requests.
It seems we’ve yet to learn the full detail of Alcalde’s criminal history. But the DNA database system obviously was invaluable in identifying a suspect in Chase’s murder.
It’s a system our country should look to bolster and not allow to become mired in backlogs.
