A backlog of nearly 1,000 old criminal cases has undergone DNA testing by the Illinois State Police, bringing the number of untested cases to 158–the lowest in five years, Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Sunday.
“This dramatic reduction in untested DNA is a testament to the hard work and the dedication of the Illinois State Police crime lab scientists to speed the wheels of justice and put those who choose a life of crime where they belong, behind bars,” Blagojevich said.
But Chicago police said the state figures do not include more than 1,000 untested DNA samples from rape victims, some of which have been on Chicago police evidence shelves for more than a year.
Sheri Mecklenburg, chief counsel to Chicago police Supt. Philip Cline, said department officials told state police last week about a backlog of 1,269 DNA rape samples sitting in vaults awaiting testing.
The state figures do not include the Chicago DNA rape samples because they are tested by private labs, not the state police crime lab, and therefore are not part of official state backlog statistics, said Sgt. Lincoln Hampton, a state police spokesman.
The state numbers were released as part of a law passed last year that requires state police to report each February to the governor and the legislature on the backlog of DNA tests and the steps it has taken to resolve the problem.
In January 2004 the backlog of cases awaiting DNA analysis was 1,113. That decreased to 158 by the end of December, the latest number available, Blagojevich said.
The report submitted to the governor defines a backlog as a case that has gone untested in the state police crime lab for more than 30 days.
The law was passed after a Tribune story in December 2003 reported that the State Police crime lab had a backlog of more than 1,500 cases that spanned more than three years.
After the story appeared, Blagojevich found $2.6 million last year to hire 13 scientists and pay to have DNA tests performed by other labs, officials said.
Officials also used $1.7 million in grant money to have the tests analyzed.
“The story helped to highlight the degree to which the backlog had grown,” said Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for the governor.
Also as part of their testing requirements, the report indicated that DNA samples from 48,344 convicted felons in prison were taken last year.
All convicted felons in Illinois are required to submit DNA samples, which then get matched with a national database.
In addition to those, 2,055 unknown DNA samples found at crime scenes were entered into a national database. Officials said that last year there were 367 matches found in the national database.
Chicago’s Mecklenburg also heads a group of women, WDNA, which has been raising private funds to pay to have the DNA rape samples analyzed.
So far the group has sent 150 rape kits to be tested, Mecklenburg said. Rape kits hold traces of DNA left by attackers that can lead to a suspect when compared with national DNA databases.
“We are very pleased with the heightened awareness on this issue and that it is leading to joint efforts on the part of government and the private sector to resolve this problem,” Mecklenburg said.
Last year the group’s efforts led police to charge a South Side man with four rapes. He also is a suspect in 19 others.While historically the largest number of DNA tests come from Chicago, Hampton said, state officials have been regularly sending out the rape kits to private labs to be analyzed.
