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Delays Persist at State Crime Lab

New legislation could help open a satellite crime lab in Billings

By Justin Franz

Delays at the Montana State Crime Laboratory are changing how local law enforcement and prosecutors are doing their jobs, but legislation in Helena could help alleviate the backlog of work at the state lab.

According to officials at the state crime lab, the number of cases their scientists have to study has risen dramatically in recent years, from about 5,300 cases annually in 2010 to about 8,100 cases in 2014.

“It can be as simple as a tube of blood from a DUI case to a homicide investigation with hundreds of pieces of evidence we have to process. We get a wide range of cases,” said Phil Kinsey, forensic science division administrator at the crime lab in Missoula.

Kinsey said the state crime lab has some department backlogs that are bigger than others.  For example, while it may not take long for the state scientists to test a tube of blood from a DUI case, it will take longer for them to test drug evidence, mostly because there is so much more of it these days. The lab receives about 1,800 drug-related cases a year.

“The timeline for analyzing drugs has been extended in recent years because we’re dealing with much more complicated drugs,” Kinsey said.

Because it takes so long to process drug evidence – and charges can’t be filed in a drug case until the crime lab has confirmed that the substance actually is a drug – prosecutors often wait to press charges. Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said law enforcement and prosecutors often delay charging someone because they worry if the drug evidence does not get processed quickly the case could be thrown out because the accused will not get a speedy trial.

“Bad guys are not going free because of these delays, but it does bog down the system,” Curry said. “(The crime lab) does a good job with what they’ve got to work with … This is nothing new. They’ve been understaffed and underfunded for a long time.”

County prosecutors echoed the sentiment that the crime lab is bogged down and said they understand delays.

“It’s not the (television show) CSI,” said Lincoln County Attorney Bernard Cassidy. “We don’t give the lab a piece of evidence and they run it immediately.”

But the delays could be alleviated if a new state crime lab is built in Billings. House District 44 Rep. Dale Mortensen, R-Billings, has introduced legislation in Helena this session that would require the state to construct a crime lab somewhere in Yellowstone County. The bill will be the subject of an Appropriations Committee hearing this week.

Kinsey said establishing a new crime lab in the Billings area makes sense, especially considering skyrocketing crime rates in the eastern part of the state, due to the Bakken oil boom. In Roosevelt County alone, crime is up 855 percent since 2005.