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Farmington • A month after a Utah judge said he would put a state crime lab employee behind bars if they didn't produce DNA results in a year-old rape case, the issue was resolved Thursday with little fanfare.
Second District Judge Thomas Kay expressed frustration during a court hearing last month, when a defense attorney asked that a rape and attempted kidnapping trial be postponed because she had still not received the DNA results of a rape kit that was completed last year.
Kay told attorneys that he would sign an order demanding that someone from the state crime lab come to a hearing Thursday to explain what has happened and where the results are.
"I've set this trial months and months and months [ago] and the defendant is in custody," the judge said, according to a recording of the November hearing. "This is ridiculous."
Despite telling attorneys that he "want[s] a human being here who is going to take some responsibility," no one from the crime lab was in court Thursday. Instead, defense attorney Mary Corporon simply told the judge that she received the DNA results last week, and that there were no other issues she knew of that needed to be addressed before an April trial for Christopher Lee Monson, who is facing charges of rape, forcible sodomy and attempted aggravated kidnapping.
Monson, who had been in the Davis County jail since Oct. 3, 2015, remains there in lieu of $100,000 cash bail.
Jay Henry, the state crime lab director, said last month that the lab's average turn-around time for rape kit results is at more than a year right now. It "isn't the best," Henry said, adding that he hopes to make improvements with new training and a new crime lab building. He said he hopes they can reduce that time to between 60 and 90 days.
Henry said his staffers also are dealing with an "exceptional caseload" right now as more and more evidence floods in for all types of crime cases with possible DNA evidence that needs testing. That is in addition, he said, to a backlog of thousands of previously untested, unsubmitted sex-assault kits that the crime lab has yet to sort through.
Of the 2,700 untested kits identified in 2015, about 1,300 have been completed, Henry said at a Tuesday town hall meeting.
Despite millions of dollars allotted to clear the backlog, Henry said the crime lab still needs more resources.
"How much is it going to take to really fund the laboratory?" Henry said. "It could be several million dollars to really do it correctly. We could be looking at something that high."
Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said this week that she plans to present a bill this legislative session that will mandate the testing of every sex-assault kit. She did not say how much funding she would request, saying the legislation was still being drafted.
Corporon told The Tribune last month that she finds the proposed legislation "troubling," because the state has not yet put aside enough money to deal with current cases.
"We are not able to test the kits we now have sitting at the crime lab, in over a year, in active filed criminal cases, with defendants in custody awaiting trial and with complaining witnesses awaiting trial," she wrote in an email. "Exactly how are we ever going to test all 'rape kits' if we do not allocate substantially more funding to address the issue?"