By Lora Hines
lohines@clarionledger.com

 

Phillips

BILOXI — The commissioner of the Department of Public Safety said he will ask federal officials to help replace millions of dollars worth of equipment at the state's regional crime laboratory here that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

"The crime lab lost about $1.3 million in equipment and assets," said Warren Strain, DPS spokesman. "The evidence vault did take on water. (The evidence) all has been recovered."

On Friday, DPS Commissioner George Phillips would not say whether any evidence had been damaged. He said he is hopeful he can get the money he needs to replace everything that was lost.

Strain didn't immediately know how many pieces of evidence had been stored at the lab, which investigated crime scenes and analyzed drugs, fingerprints, firearms and blood-alcohol tests. Water submerged the lab, which was on the ground floor of the Bolton office building across the street from Back Bay.

Biloxi's was one of three regional crime labs located across the state. The others are in Batesville and Meridian. The headquarters for the State Crime Lab is in Jackson.

Anthony Lawrence, district attorney for Jackson, George and Greene counties, said evidence preservation is among several problems he will contend with in Katrina's aftermath. His Jackson County Courthouse office in Pascagoula was damaged, and he is working at a temporary office at the Jackson County fairgrounds. Portable courtrooms also are being set up there, he said.

Lawrence said this month he was prepared to try 15 murder cases, which all had to be rescheduled. He said it could be at least two years before his court schedule returns to normal.

It could be January before any grand juries are called, he said. The hurricane displaced many potential jurors.

Jackson County usually holds four grand juries a year. Each grand jury hears about 500 cases.

"We'll have to assess things on a case-by-case basis," he said. "I don't foresee any cases being dismissed."

Anthony said he expects defense attorneys will ask judges to dismiss cases, though. His court docket will resume Monday in George County. Greene County's docket will begin in three weeks.

Matt Steffey, a professor at Mississippi College's School of Law, said he thinks defense attorneys will use the opportunity to question whether evidence brought to trial really belongs to their cases. It is the prosecutor's burden to maintain what is legally known as the chain of custody, during which meticulous records document where evidence is kept at all times before trial.

"You want to make sure evidence introduced in court in fact is evidence that was found at the scene of a crime," Steffey said.

He thinks employees at the crime lab probably inventoried and documented all evidence before the storm. But attorneys probably will use the storm as a way to get charges against their clients dismissed.

"Defense attorneys will be all over this issue," Steffey said. "As a lawyer for a client, they are bound to investigate these issues."

Phillips, who also is a lawyer, said he's not worried about any chain-of-custody issues.

"I don't foresee it as a problem," he said.

District Attorney Cono Carrana, who prosecutes cases in Harrison and Hancock counties, couldn't be reached.

It's unclear whether one of his cases, the trial of a Slidell, La., woman accused of causing a September 2004 crash on I-10 that killed three Mississippi College students and seriously injured a fourth, could be affected by the Biloxi crime lab's destruction.

Krystal Teston, 22, faces eight counts of felony DUI in the deaths of Lindsay Miller, 19, of Pascagoula, her boyfriend and classmate, Maksim Sisoev, a 20-year-old exchange student from Uzbekistan, and Elizabeth Finch, 19, of Clinton. Miller's twin brother, Josh Miller, was seriously injured. Another student, Nicole Thurman, 19, of Picayune also was hurt but not seriously.

Teston had been scheduled for trial this month. If convicted, she faces a maximum 25 years on each count.

Neither Teston nor her attorney, Tim Holleman of Gulfport could be reached.

The Miller family lost their home in the storm. Finch's parents, David and Emily Finch, couldn't be reached.

The Rev. Frank Thomas, pastor of Alta Woods Baptist Church in Jackson, hosted Sisoev while he studied at Mississippi College. He said he hasn't heard anything about Teston's trial or anything about the case. Thomas said he wouldn't be surprised if the storm postponed Teston's trial.

Since the storm, some of the Biloxi lab's nine employees have been helping to identify people who died as a result of the storm, Phillips said. Others are working at the state's other labs, where there routinely have been openings, which he attributed to low pay, he said.

Employees usually only stay a year before they move on to higher-paying jobs at private laboratories. Phillips said he recently had appointed a statewide team of prosecutors and law enforcement officials before the storm to assess the work of the crime labs to determine how they could best be used. He said

"We were in the middle of it when the storm hit," Phillips said. "We're trying to make sure the right person is doing the right job."

He said he selected district attorneys and police to assess the labs because they are the people who most rely on lab services.

"We need to determine whether to get into the crime business or get out," said Phillips, even though he knows law enforcement agencies couldn't afford to pay private labs for evidence analysis.

He said he expects to reopen a lab in Biloxi, but not in the same place. He's working with coastal officials to find a new location.

"There's no question in my mind it will reopen," Phillips said. "We need out regional labs."