Mississippi To Extend DNA Testing Of Offenders
DNA testing will be done on 5,500 inmates coming into the state prison system each year and the more than 10,000 convicts on probation, Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Thursday.
Epps made the recommendation at the first meeting of Attorney General Jim Hood’s Crime Lab/Medical Examiner task force. “We will train our 284 probation officers in the state to take (DNA) swabs,” said Epps, one of 15 members of the task force of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and other officials. DNA samples already are collected from inmates when they enter the prison system, Epps said. State Crime Lab Director Sam Howell said his agency would train probation officers but couldn’t say how soon the change would come or how much it would cost. “I expect we will meet with MDOC to talk about this very soon,” Howell said.
Because of a lack of funding, the Crime Lab hasn’t been able to hire as many DNA analysts as it needs, Hood said. “The more DNA analysts we have, the more crooks we catch.”
The state’s handling of investigations involving DNA came under scrutiny earlier this year after two Noxubee County men who had spent several years in prison on murder charges were freed, in part, because of DNA evidence. One, Kennedy Brewer, had been on death row. Many officials say the lab has been underfunded for years and it has been without a state medical examiner for more than a decade. Efforts to make changes have picked up momentum in recent months. The 2008 Legislature provided money to hire an examiner and created a task force to make recommendations about uniform procedures for collecting and testing prisoners’ DNA. Hood, whose group also is examining DNA procedures, said expanding the scope of collections could be useful in solving cases.
More on this story at the Clarion-Ledger.