DeKalb County, Ala., Sheriff Jimmy HarrisSCOTTSBORO, Ala. – A state budget battle that has Alabama lawmakers eyeing the closure of the forensics lab in Huntsville triggered backlash from some North Alabama sheriffs who say almost two dozen counties are getting shuffled to the back of the line.
If the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences lab and morgue in Madison County is closed, autopsies in death investigations could take much longer. That would leave grieving families’ questions unanswered for weeks or months longer than before, DeKalb County Sheriff Jimmy Harris and Jackson County Sheriff Chuck Phillips said this week.
The costs also would increase if investigators and coroners were forced to travel to labs in Montgomery or even more distant Mobile, Harris and Phillips said. Several labs already have been closed over recent years.
“If they shut Huntsville down, that affects 22 counties in North Alabama,” Harris said. “We’re going to have to take a body all the way to Montgomery.”
The DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office is about 180 miles from the Montgomery lab, and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office is more than 200 miles away. Compare that to 43 miles for Jackson and 70 miles for DeKalb if the trip is to Huntsville.
Harris said coroners have had their funding cut, sheriffs’ departments have trimmed staff and no county can afford to go greater distances and pay more overtime just to make it easier for lawmakers to balance the state budget.
Families also pay in more stress.
“Anytime anyone loses a family member it is a hard time, and a prolonged wait would put unnecessary hardship and stress on family members,” Harris said.
In Jackson County, Phillips said, forensics labs are a “necessity” in law enforcement and reductions in staff, services and facilities already have slowed down cases dramatically.
“They are so short-handed it’s causing us issues getting drug cases,” he said. “We’re looking at over a year and sometimes two years to get drug cases back to present them to the grand jury.”
“They used to come to our crime scenes. They stopped doing that a long time ago and that’s bad for law enforcement,” Phillips said. Investigators across the state miss the expertise of forensics officials.
“When you’re working a murder case and you need to know how someone was killed, you need to know that immediately to know which direction the investigation should take,” he said. “In Huntsville, most of the time, the day they get the body we’ll find out something.”
Support for financing law enforcement has slipped over the years, but “it’s just something we have to do in our society,” Phillips said. “Forensics has been cut back already. If they cut back any more it’s going to hurt law enforcement tremendously.”
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com, twitter.com/BenBenton, www.facebook.com/ben.benton1 or 423-757-6569.