Barbados is still without a fully up and running forensic lab – more than six months after its promised opening.
Months after former Attorney General Dale Marshall said that by September last year the country would have the lab up and running and promised DNA results in 24 hours, Minister of Legal Affairs and Criminal Justice Michael Lashley says July is now the new opening date.
“No longer will the cases be delayed because police officers have to send samples overseas to labs. Many times even when they are sent overseas, the findings do not come back in a timely manner,” Lashley told Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce and those attending the reopening of Haynesville Police Outpost in St James yesterday.
Until such time authorities will continue to undertake the expense of, among other things, sending police officers overseas with specimens for analyses that add to the system of delay in court cases.
The lack of a proper Forensic Science Centre (FSC) has been a frustration for some Barbadians seeking some form of justice with the help of science.
Last year Marshall conceded that for more than a decade, Barbados had to send forensic samples overseas noting that contributed to the backlog of cases.
Yesterday Lashley said sending the samples overseas was not always a guarantee of a timely return and there was also the possibility of contamination.
A senior police source said the out-of-order centre was a cause for concern for The Barbados Police Service as it had to wait on the overseas forensic lab in order to advance cases. In some instances the country had to join the queue to get their samples analysed.
Attorney and criminologist Verla De Peiza, prior to Lashley’s announcement, questioned the practicality of, with the entire Forensic Sciences Centre out of commission, having to send police officers overseas with evidence that required testing, when “we used to have that capability here”.
“This is not just a problem because of our awful homicide record. It is costly; it causes delay in trials and often the trials proceed without the benefit of the forensic evidence. Sudden deaths also require investigation, and families are kept in limbo and waiting, unable to grieve properly,” she stated.
De Peiza, a defence counsel, reasoned that the reopening of the FSC should be a priority and funding must be found to ensure it remained scientifically relevant.
Meanwhile, Lashley in his address, conceded that the forensic centre was an important aspect of the criminal justice system as a lack of findings could affect a case one way or the other.
Last year clinical forensic and emergency medicine expert Dr La-Tonia Arthur said not having a fully functioning forensics lab could be stifling and prolong criminal investigations.
Such a lab, she said, was vital to processing evidence as a crime scene usually yielded different forms of evidence. These included fingerprints, DNA, trace evidence which would take time to obtain confirmatory results.
(AC)
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