Someone’s not shooting straight about the backlog of autopsies at the Mississippi Crime Lab.
A couple of months ago, Sean Tindell, the state public safety commissioner under whose supervision the Crime Lab ultimately falls, bragged that his office had completed a “decade-old autopsy backlog in record time.”
Prosecutors such as Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens say you couldn’t tell this by them. Owens said autopsy reports are nowhere near to being completed in the 60-to-90-day window recommended by the National Association of Medical Examiners. “We have autopsies that have still been pending, sometimes for years,” Owens told The Associated Press.
We’d guess that Owens’ version of the situation is a lot closer to reality.
The backlog at the state Crime Lab has been an issue for decades, long predating Tindell, a former judge and legislator who has been serving as public safety commissioner since 2020. How much progress he has made in reducing it is unclear. His office did not respond to inquiries The AP made recently to see how closely the Crime Lab has come to fulfilling Tindell’s directive to complete autopsy reports within 90 days.
The backlog is a serious issue. It leaves criminal cases unresolved, as prosecutors can’t proceed to trial or even strike plea deals until they have the evidence in a homicide. It potentially leaves innocent people locked up for crimes they didn’t commit. And it can be a real nuisance and financial hardship for survivors of the deceased, who can’t collect on insurance or settle the dead person’s affairs without a death certificate.
In 2022, the Legislature attempted to address the backlog by allocating an extra $4 million, mostly to pay out-of-state pathologists to complete the autopsy reports on a contract basis. It appears the allocation wasn’t close to enough.
The fundamental problem is one of supply and demand. There is a greater demand nationwide for the services of pathologists and forensic scientists than there are candidates to fill them. The states that pay the higher salaries these specialists can command are going to have less staffing problems than those that don’t. Mississippi is one of the don’ts.
It’s tempting to dismiss those who seem to always say the solution to a problem is to throw more money at it. This is one of those situations, though, where that is clearly the answer.
If Mississippi wants the guilty and the innocent to receive speedy justice when violent crimes occur, it starts with getting a Crime Lab to the point where it can complete its work on time.
