Lab 'backlog' disputed in Annie Le case
Lab 'backlog' disputed in Annie Le case
Thursday, December 24, 2009
At the New Haven Superior Court on Monday, the state prosecutor handling the murder of Annie Le GRD ’13 said one of the reasons the case needed a continuance was because of a backlog at the state forensics laboratory.
But Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. Paul Vance said the Le case is top priority and that all of the DNA evidence needed for the case to proceed has been examined.
“All the materials for the hearings to go forward have been made available,” Vance said.
Vance said the prosecutor, John Waddock, may be waiting for additional reports but that those reports would be on evidence for “elimination purposes,” meaning additional evidence to be checked for DNA matches. Vance said he does not know how long it will take to complete those reports.
Waddock declined to comment on Vance's remarks but said the state lab has been “terrific in trying to expedite” the examination of materials in the Le case.
Waddock said there is a backlog in the state lab because of the “sheer volume” of materials the lab receives.
“They simply don’t have the resources and manpower,” Waddock said.
Vance acknowledged there is a backlog “to a certain extent.”
Waddock declined to comment further on why he cited the backlog in asking to postpone the hearing. The accused, Raymond Clark III, is due back in court Jan. 26.
Comments
None 2 years, 5 months ago
This is a confusing story.
The headline says " 'backlog' disputed," implying there's not a backlog as previously reported.
The source for disputing the backlog then says there's enough evidence for the case to move on but with the qualification that the prosecutor, according to the story, "may be waiting for additional reports."
Later the source (the state cops spokesman) acknowledges there may be a slight backlog.
So, which is it? I guess the primary fault is the headline.
Also, though, the discussion of the "additional reports" possibly being awaited is very confusing. It doesn't help that the prosecutor wouldn't talk about that, but someone else would.
I guess, all in all, the story should have had confusing and second-hand discussions pared away, and have been played under a more conservative headline.
I mention this because of minor but ongoing glitches with News stories. A story about cops seeking Clark's fiancee's DNA has now run for three weeks without an update, never mind that it's garnered a veritable saga of comments.
After the arrest, New Haven cops, I think it was, noted that they were secretly watching Clark every minute. So, if "no news is not necessarily no news" in the long-range scheme of things, then what about a follow-up on the fiancee's DNA? Her Lawyer seemingly was readily forthcoming with one earlier.
The missing 47-year-old "lab technician's" identity has never been corrected to "sanitation worker." (Sleuths with a particularly high imagination might wonder if a sanitation person might have more flexible hours (late-night hours) than the presumably "work-day" hours that Clark was limited to.
For that matter, the map of the suspected crime scene in 10 Amistad was never presented in a fully correct version.
I don't intend to keep the nitpicking up, but I hope there News won't feel the need to keep the comments stacking while not giving full effort to news.
For example, I was glad to see that a story from about a week ago was quickly changed from describing Clark as a "former" employee to some other wording. That was immediately after I made a comment about the problem sentence.
The problem was that the statement was not only incorrect but careless and obviously lacking an editor's adequate oversight.
I think maybe the current story in question may suffer from staff feeling the need to get every bit of verbiage out to the public -- very admirable -- but without boiling down and clarifying the message.
By the way, I can no longer find pdf's of the warrants on the News or the Courant's sites. I can image there may well be a reason these different formats can't readily be archived.
Or login with:
OpenID