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Draft Report Explores Need For Crime Lab Expansions

New and better facilities would make evidence processing more timely. (Photo: Tubagus Andri Maulana on Unsplash)

The Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR) found that upgrading current Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) crime lab facilities could help in expediting evidence testing. They also recommend  potentially expanding crime lab services throughout West Tennessee.

Even though TBI has recruited 50 forensic scientists to address the surge in evidence testing, a draft report from TACIR shows that the lack of physical space has limited timely turnarounds. 

Delays in evidence testing in the Eliza Fletcher case caused public outcry, prompting TACIR to work on the report. Cleotha Abston, the man who plead guilty to killing Fletcher, had been investigated in a separate sexual assault, however the Senate Democratic Caucus said that the DNA evidence “sat untested due to backlogs.”

“This type of testing delay was not an isolated occurrence,” TACIR’s report said. 

The report went on to say that in 2022, TBI’s median turnaround time exceeded the national median in almost every category. They stated that turnaround times in sexual assault cases decreased from August 2022 to December 2024, they saw an increase in analyzing evidence in violence forensic biology cases.

State lawmakers attempted to pass legislation that would consider the construction of a new crime lab in Shelby County, yet while Senate Bill 2877 was passed in the Senate, its House companion ( House Bill 2961) was not.

Although the General Assembly did not enact this policy, TACIR said they find that expanding crime lab capabilities in East, Middle, and West Tennessee would be beneficial. They said this would address evidence backlogs, future demands, and “enhance efficiency through process improvements.”

TBI currently has three crime labs, located in Jackson, Knoxville, and Nashville. While the Tennessee Comptroller’s office recommended adding more staff to TBI’s team, they would also have to add more space to accommodate the employees.

The agency said that as of January 2025, they would only be able to add one forensic biology scientist to the Nashville lab, as Jackson and Knoxville were at capacity.

Shelby County’s growing volume of requests to the Jackson lab has only intensified this need, with officials saying a lab in Memphis “might be warranted.” However, this lab would “likely cost between $52 million and $66 million” excluding the cost of personnel, training, and more.

TACIR recommended that the TBI and City of Memphis finalize an agreement to hire a dedicated firearm analyst for Memphis cases. 

While expanding the crime labs would help in processing, TACIR noted that systemic delays need to be addressed as well. The report noted that while Memphis and Shelby county have historically reported higher crime rates and lower clearance rates, these findings are in part a result of the criminal justice system.

“A change in defense counsel was the most common reason observed when cases were delayed in both General Sessions and Criminal Court, while wait time for forensic evidence testing was the reason cited for delays in approximately 17 percent of observed Criminal Court cases,” the report said.

A potential partnership between Memphis , Shelby County and Jackson would help the evidence testing process, but this does not replace the potential need for a crime lab in the area. 

TACIR also noted that building a new facility involves several components such as thorough planning, “robust digital infrastructure and more.” They also noted that crime labs are expensive and “can take years to build.”

While there are several factors to weigh in building a crime lab, it could provide enhancements to the investigative process.

“If properly funded, the proposed lab’s consolidation of forensic services is anticipated to streamline evidence processing, reduce dependence on external resources, and potentially improve turnaround time for some units,” the report said.

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Politics Politics Feature

Punching Down

Brent Taylor (Photo: Senator Brent Taylor | Facebook)

It surely hasn’t gone unnoticed that state government is continuing to flex its muscles vis-à-vis local government in Memphis and Shelby County. 

Officials aligned with the administration in Nashville are threatening outright takeover of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) system at the same time that state Senator Brent Taylor and helpers continue to implement their would-be coup d’état against the county judiciary and the office of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

In the case of MSCS, the sudden out-of-nowhere power struggle between an apparent school board majority and first-year superintendent Marie Feagins has prompted what amounts to an ultimatum from Governor Bill Lee and the presiding officers of the state legislative chambers: Keep Feagins or else!

And Taylor has enlisted the same officials in his campaign to oust Mulroy, involving them in his bill of particulars against the DA at a press conference last Thursday that followed by a day a quickly improvised “summit” called by the senator to consider the case for a new crime lab in Memphis, something Mulroy has put forth as a major need for facilitating effective local law enforcement.

The list of invitees to the crime lab conference, styled as a “roundtable discussion,” included Tennessee Bureau of Investigation director David Rausch and a virtually complete roster of public figures, state and local, who could be considered stakeholders in the matter of law enforcement.

There was one glaring omission, however: DA Mulroy, who was not only not invited; he was not even informed of the meeting, which was held at the City Hall of Germantown and concluded with Taylor suggesting an ultimate consensus that processing of local crime data in sensitive cases could be easily expedited via an existing crime lab in Jackson, obviating the need for a new Memphis lab.

A cynic could be pardoned for assuming that the entire thrust of the meeting in Germantown was to undermine the absent DA’s call for such a lab.

There was no doubt about the senator’s minimizing motive in his press conference the next day at the Memphis Police Association headquarters. It was overtly to “reveal the causes to be considered for the removal of District Attorney Steve Mulroy.”

Taylor’s bill of particulars against Mulroy was a duke’s mixture of complaints, ranging from prerogatives asserted by the DA that could be, and in several cases were, countered by ad hoc state legislation to innovative procedures pursued by Mulroy, some of them reflecting purposes that Taylor acknowledged sharing himself.

A case of the latter was an agreement reached by the DA with Juvenile Court Judge Tarik Sugarmon to allow trial court judges access to Juvenile Court records. Taylor had sponsored a bill to do just that in last year’s session of the General Assembly.

A similar instance was Taylor’s inclusion in his list of Mulroy’s declared support of gun safety referenda placed by the Memphis City Council on the 2024 general election ballot and overwhelmingly passed.

“Many of us” could sympathize with the referenda points, Taylor said, but his point was that the referenda — calling for local ordinances on behalf of gun permits, an assault rifle ban, and judicial confiscation of firearms in at-risk instances — ran counter to state law.

Sponsors of the referenda had made it clear that they called for “trigger” laws that could be enforced only if and when state law might be amended to allow them.

And there’s a further anomaly here, given Taylor’s stated goal to “Make Memphis Mattter” and safeguard the city from crime.

One has to wonder why he isn’t pursuing an altogether different strategy, one calling for a legislative “carve-out” of Shelby County from current state law prohibiting the immediate implementation of the ordinances called for by the referenda.

Such a course would be consistent with the principle of home rule; it would also be supportive of a position taken by Mulroy’s Republican opponent in the 2022 DA’s race, then-incumbent Amy Weirich, who inveighed against the iniquitous consequences of the state’s increasingly permissive stripping away of gun safety regulations. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Snapshots of the Moment

Photo: Representative John Gillespie | Facebook John Gillespie

John Gillespie, the Republican incumbent in state House District 97, has kept a relatively moderate profile in the two terms he’s served since winning his seat over Democrat Gabby Salinas in 2020, focusing on non-ideological matters like drag-racing bans and deviating from GOP orthodoxy on gun legislation.

But all that may be changing. Gillespie is now following the lead of the House Republican leadership and another Shelby County GOPer, state Senator Brent Taylor, in sponsoring hard-line crime legislation destined to strip away local law-enforcement prerogatives.

A controversy arose last week after a cell phone video was circulated of a conversation in Nashville in which Gillespie appeared to be assuring the visiting parents of the late Tyre Nichols that he would hold up on seeking an immediate vote on his bill to nullify city council restrictions on the kind of preemptive traffic stops that would end in the savage beating death of young Nichols by MPD officers who are now facing trial for murder.

Instead, Gillespie put the bill on the floor for a relatively quick party-line passage.

The incident may loom large in this year’s legislative elections, in which Gillespie will be opposed by businessman Jesse Huseth, a Democrat who has already released a statement deploring Gillespie’s conduct of the matter.

• Tami Sawyer, recent winner of the Democratic nomination for General Sessions Court clerk, is keeping her activist’s hand in, blogging her discontent with both a pending appearance at the University of Memphis by Kyle Rittenhouse, the youth acquitted of killing two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest event, and Rep. Gillespie’s short-circuiting whatever commitment he may have given on rolling his bill.

• A hat tip to my daughter Julia Baker of The Daily Memphian for noting that the aforementioned Brent Taylor, notorious for his constant verbal and legislative targeting of local DA Steve Mulroy, is on the same page as Mulroy regarding the need for a new crime lab in Memphis.

• Veteran watchers of presidential State of the Union addresses over the years are used to seeing 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen ready on or near the aisle for banter or conversation as the president — of whatever year or whatever party, for that matter — is either headed to the podium or finishing up afterward and headed out.

Those aisle seats have to be staked out well in advance, and Cohen, using staffers early on to help hold down a place, is something of a master of the art.

Sometimes he shares local artifacts with the passing chief executive. In 2008, he was seen on national television handing George W. Bush a University of Memphis booster’s cap to be autographed. Watching at home, then Tiger basketball coach John Calipari saw it all and later got in touch with Cohen, putting in a bid for the cap and pledging to get it into the U of M Sports Hall of Fame. Cohen turned it over, but the cap never made it to its intended destination. Not long afterward, Coach Cal — cap presumably in tow — decamped to the University of Kentucky.

Always Cohen manages to have something to say. Last Thursday night, he caught Biden going in and took the time to encourage the president to pitch his remarks to the Democratic side of the assembled audience of lawmakers and to give the Republicans hell. Presumably Biden already had that strategy in mind. In any case, that’s what happened.