[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18155-18156]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 18155]]

   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

[[Page 18156]]

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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