Many people living in the CSRA, ones who have not lost a loved one suddenly in the past decade, might have been shocked to learn that there is a state-of-the-art crime lab in Augusta that has gathered dust for over a decade.
Having the Augusta lab sidelined has led to significant delays for families attempting to settle the estate of their loved one. Generally, this delay is caused by having to wait on a simple toxicology screening, an exam that should take hours, not months.
When an employee is given a routine drug screening, those results are generally available that day, or in 72 hours at the most, otherwise a company may be liable for having an employee continue to operate a company vehicle or other machinery that could place others at harm while the company waits on drug screening results.
Instead, families are issued a “cause pending” death certificate while they wait six to eight months for the test to be completed. This means that life insurance payouts are withheld for the same length of time causing, in many cases, financial hardships.
The blame for this rests squarely with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
The GBI has an annual budget of $4.9 million, yet it refuses to pay medical examiners a salary that is commensurate with that being earned by those in the private sector. At the going rate of $150,000 per year, prospective autopsy specialists would make barely enough to make a dent in nearly a decade’s worth of student loans needed to receive full certification.
It is doubly disheartening to know that some of the finest Medical examiners in the country are trained at Augusta University, mere miles from the shuttered Augusta Crime Lab.
The dignified handling of the dead in an autopsy setting is one of the more somber and important tasks of the government, one that should not be entrusted to the private sector. Important questions such as verification of suicide or elimination of foul play are entrusted to an elected official in the role of coroner.
Coroners are not medical examiners, but they should not be relegated to being couriers, tasked with transporting bodies to Atlanta and back for a funeral and burial when a perfectly usable crime lab is right in our backyard.
It is time for the local legislation delegation to lead the charge in the capital and vote to mandate that the GBI make this end of life task a priority.
