As the expanding backlog of cases revolving around forensic evidence continues to further frustrate victims of violent crime, some relief has been created with Gqeberha’s new forensic lab set to be completed by February 2023.
The news has been welcomed by those in the legal industry, who have had to sit back for years as cases are struck off the roll or withdrawn completely due to DNA testing not being completed in time.
While Gqeberha has always had a forensics laboratory, it has only done preliminary testing to determine if samples are that of blood, saliva or semen.
From there, they are sent to Cape Town for further analysis — and this is where the bottleneck has been created.
Reports of SA’s DNA backlog stretch back almost two decades, according to the Institute for Security Studies, and the situation has become excessively worse.
During a parliamentary debate in the National Assembly in May, police minister Bheki Cele was quoted as saying that the backlog experienced at the police forensic laboratory was giving him sleepless nights.
But in a written response to questions raised by DA Eastern Cape chair Andrew Whitfield, Cele said the police forensic science lab in Gqeberha was on track to be completed by February 2 2023.
He said the vision for the new laboratory included further facilities to conduct full DNA analysis to alleviate the pressure on the Cape Town lab.
“The project is on par regarding the development of a fully-fledged DNA processing laboratory in the Eastern Cape,” Cele said.
Bay defence attorney Ryno Scholtz welcomed the news.
Scholtz said the new laboratory would definitely have a positive impact as cases could be dealt with much quicker.
According to Scholtz, test results from Cape Town usually took between six and seven months to be made available, and with the court sometimes not allowing further postponements in cases, some matters were struck off the roll or withdrawn completely.
Once the results are received, the matter may be placed back on the court roll but implications of an accused not being aware of it, and warrants of arrest being issued, were a concern, Scholtz said.
He said with the new facilities in Gqeberha, workloads for the state and Legal Aid SA would be much lighter.
Criminal attorney Danie Gouws said DNA worked to the advantage of either the state, or an accused person or suspect.
“Let’s, for example, say a man is falsely accused of raping a woman and the DNA evidence that could exonerate him does not come back in time, then basically that innocence lies in a lab.”
Gouws said while the news of a local lab was good news, he hoped it would be of an international standard.
According to Cele, statutory requirements were met and the city council approved the building plans on October 8 2021.
The building, in Hancock Street, North End, was handed over for construction on October 13 and phase one of the project was completed a month later, he said.
The first phase entailed the construction of the temporary evidence recovery and submission area.
According to Cele, the second phase, which was the demolition process, was under way.
The process involved high noise and dust levels and arrangements were made to ensure that most of the noisy work was done at a time that would cause the least disturbance.
National Prosecuting Authority regional spokesperson Anelisa Ngcakani said a lack of facilities in the Eastern Cape had been a major concern for many years.
“It does affect our cases but once the lab is up and running things will be better,” she said.
Some cases rely heavily on DNA evidence.
One such example is the Henri van Breda murder trial.
Van Breda was ultimately convicted of killing his father Martin‚ mother Teresa and brother Rudi with an axe in their luxury Cape Town home.
The DNA of Teresa and Rudi were found on nail scrapings taken from Van Breda, as well as from the blood stains on his shorts.
The SAPS admitted in April that there was a nationwide backlog of 210,000 cases.
It was predicted, at the time, that the backlog would only be cleared by January 2023.
There were also reports about the disappearance of millions of forensic exhibits at the national forensic DNA database due to the property control and exhibit management system being shut down by the service provider in June 2020.
TimesLIVE also reported at the time that the SAPS management had reassured the nation that priority was being given to DNA samples required for gender-based violence cases, and DNA samples needed for the identification of people for burials.
HeraldLIVE
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