Lautenschlager, not Van Hollen, is most responsible for speedier DNA testing

Steven Elbow  —  6/26/2008 6:59 pm

On the 2006 campaign trail during her failed bid for re-election as state attorney general, Peg Lautenschlager made a prediction: The winner would see a dramatic reduction in the DNA backlog at the state Crime Lab.

She was right. In recent months the Crime Lab has begun to process cases faster than it is taking them in for the first time in years.

That's good news for police, prosecutors and crime victims who in recent years have endured long waits for evidence that could potentially solve crimes.

It's also good news for J.B. Van Hollen, who made elimination of the backlog his signature campaign issue.

Last year, in one of his first acts in office, he convinced the state Legislature to hire 31 new DNA analysts, doubling the ranks.

"I believe the numbers say that in my first full year as attorney general, the efficiencies in the DNA section increased by 57 percent over the prior year before I was in office," Van Hollen told WisconsinEye Public Affairs Network on May 29. "And I believe that the numbers in 2008 will bear out that we are processing over 200 cases a month versus less than 100 per month, which we were processing prior to me taking over."

All this, even before the new analysts were on the job. So how did he do it?

The answer: He didn't. Lautenschlager did.

What Van Hollen, a Republican, neglects to mention is that the elimination of the backlog was engineered by his Democratic predecessor, who sought out funding for new technology for the Crime Lab.

In 2006, using federal grants, Lautenschlager authorized the installation of three robots. One feeds the Crime Lab's databank of DNA samples submitted by convicted felons and sex offenders. The other two process DNA.

A lot of DNA -- up to 80 DNA samples at a time.

By May, after months of calibrations and fine tuning, the devices were working glitch-free, said Gary Hamblin, who oversees the lab as Van Hollen's administrator for the Division of Law Enforcement Services. The Crime Lab turned out an unprecedented 321 cases, cutting a backlog that topped out at 1,924 cases in October to 1,637 at the end of May.

A report by Van Hollen, issued less than two months after he took office in February 2007, said the robotic machines were expected to boost DNA testing productivity by 25 percent in 2008, 37.5 percent in 2009, and 50 percent by 2010. And since that report, DOJ has purchased two more robots, which have yet to be integrated into the system.

Hamblin said a variety of factors are increasing the Crime Lab's efficiency, including the restructuring of staff and more selective testing of DNA samples, "but one of the big ones clearly is the installation of the robots."

The robots will be on display Wednesday at the Crime Lab in Madison when Van Hollen and other Justice officials host a media open house, which will also showcase office renovations, scheduled for completion on July 1, that will provide work space for 22 new analysts. Other new analysts have already been placed at the lab's Milwaukee facility.

During the 2006 attorney general race, Lautenschlager took a lot of hits. She lost the Democratic primary to Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, in part because of her 2004 drunken driving arrest after she drove a state-owned car into a Dodge County ditch.

But she was also hammered by Falk, Van Hollen and former Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher -- another Republican contender -- on the issue of the DNA backlog.

In an interview this week, Lautenschlager, who is now an attorney with Lawton & Cates, said she made several gains in dealing with the backlog, and Van Hollen is enjoying the fruits of her efforts.

And she did it, she said, as a Republican Legislature continually sought to divert funds from the department to balance the state budget, at one point raiding an accrued fund of surplus money specifically held in reserve for meeting unforeseen needs.

"They essentially wiped out our accrued money," said Lautenschlager, which impeded "our ability to move to robots and do a few other things that would have allowed us to test faster."

When Lautenschlager took office in 2003 she inherited a total backlog of 2,500 cases, including about 500 DNA cases, but also including fingerprint, handwriting, blood type analysis, firearms testing and other non-DNA cases. She was able to eliminate backlogs in every category except DNA.

In 2005 the DNA backlog had jumped to nearly 1,400, and in December 2006, her last month on the job, it stood at 1,785.

The backlog was the result of a flood of DNA samples awaiting testing, in part due to legislation that expanded the pool of offenders who were ordered to submit samples to be logged in the state DNA databank.

Also, the Wisconsin Crime Lab, as well as Crime Laboratories nationwide, saw a dramatic spike in DNA submissions as law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and juries began to see DNA evidence as ironclad. Police evidence collectors not only submitted more cases, but the number of samples per case increased as investigators sought to miss no opportunity to solve a crime, submitting each cigarette butt, blood splatter or other possible DNA-containing substance to the lab.

Between 2003 and 2006, submissions from police agencies increased 91 percent, Lautenschlager estimated at the time.

Meanwhile, the backlog doubled.

But while the Crime Lab often couches the backlog in terms of cases, the real workload would be better measured in the total numbers of DNA samples.

For instance, Steven Avery's well-publicized Halloween murder of Theresa Halbach in 2005 resulted in 190 samples, according to a Department of Justice report.

Lautenschlager sought to deal with the burgeoning number of samples by launching a training program for evidence collectors in conjunction with Fox Valley Technical College, hoping that the training would help detectives narrow their submissions to samples that were most likely to yield evidence.

The Department of Justice does not track the number of DNA samples processed by the lab. But according to Van Hollen's 2007 report, which the attorney general used to make a case for the 31 new analysts, "DOJ's experience indicates that the state Crime Laboratory receives an average of eight items per case."

Recent estimates put that number at four, although Crime Lab staffers attribute the lower number to the fact that the new analysts are being given easier cases as they acclimate themselves to the job.

Lautenschlager also sought to boost staff, which was a tough sell to a financially strapped Legislature until the 2006 campaign generated publicity about the Crime Lab backlog.

In 2004, Lautenschlager asked for and got four new analysts from the Legislature, but in 2005 her gains were outstripped by a renewed spike of DNA submissions. She also asked for a dozen new analysts in 2006.

And in 2005, Lautenschlager commissioned a study by the Spring Park, Minn., firm Quality Forensics to re-engineer the entire lab to meet future needs.

The study proposed numerous efficiencies, including expansion of the lab to include a new DNA analysis unit in Wausau to handle the northern 40 counties. Van Hollen, however, chose to expand the lab's Milwaukee and Madison facilities.

In his 2007 report, Van Hollen states that analyst productivity was well above national averages, which was likely due in part to the implementation of the recommendations made in the study.

"The recent independent analysis and the favorable per-analyst efficiencies indicate that the backlog is not the result of mismanagement or poor performance, but of limited resources."

Van Hollen is astute enough as a politician to take credit for progress that happens under his watch.

During the WisconsinEye interview, he attributed his progress with the Crime Lab to administrative initiatives he implemented, citing "efficiencies we've created, changes in the way we do things, some addition of technological advances."

Then he delivered an indictment of Lautenschlager's administration.

"I was shocked when I got in as attorney general and asked what the exact status of the backlog was to realize that the office didn't know," he said. "And in discussions of solutions to the backlog, our budget people and our Crime Lab people hadn't even been included in the past. So what I wanted to do was to sit down and determine the scope of the problem first and foremost, and where we were going under various scenarios."

Dan Bach, Lautenschlager's former deputy attorney general, called the statement "absolutely ridiculous."

Bach -- now a lawyer at Lawton and Cates who represents former state Fire Marshal Carolyn Kelly, whom Van Hollen demoted -- pointed out that the backlog was an issue in debates and was widely reported in the media.

"I don't know how he could say he didn't know, or someone else didn't know, what the problem was," he said. "For him to criticize the past administration for mismanaging things really comes from a standpoint of ignorance."

Lautenschlager also called the statement "absolutely untrue."

Van Hollen didn't respond to a request for an interview, but instead offered up Hamblin.

Hamblin declined comment on Van Hollen's remarks, but added a note of diplomacy.

"In fairness to everybody, the first two robots were purchased by the previous administration," he said. (Of the three robots purchased during Lautenschlager's reign, two robots actually process DNA samples.)

And he conceded that Lautenschlager's administration was hamstrung by budget circumstances.

"The state government operates on a two-year budget cycle," he said. "You can fall way behind on anything in two years if all of the sudden there's an explosion in need."

Steven Elbow  —  6/26/2008 6:59 pm