The shuttered state crime lab in Augusta has caused delays for years, and Richmond County Coroner Mark Bowen says that if the lab in Macon closes down, then the delays will become even worse.
Augusta’s state crime lab, located on Phinizy Road, became largely inactive after the retirement of Dr. Dan Brown in 2013. No replacement for Brown was sought, so autopsies cannot be performed at the facility.
Because the nearly-empty facility employs a skeleton staff, only limited amounts of toxicology tests can be performed at the site.
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“It’s really a shame because our crime lab is a state of the art facility, but I have been told it will likely never reopen, or at least it won’t anytime soon,” Bowen said.
When the crime lab was active in Augusta, Bowen says that murder investigations were aided greatly because the medical examiner, coroner and sheriff’s investigators could all be in the same room, gathering and analyzing evidence.
Now, all Augusta deaths that require an autopsy have to be outsourced, meaning the body must be transported to Atlanta for the procedure.
The backlog that has resulted from the closing of the Augusta crime lab has not only impacted murder cases but also deaths that are eventually ruled to be accidental or natural.
In cases where only simple toxicology needs to be performed on the deceased, the wait for results can last 60 to 90 days and beyond.
“Right now, I have 48 pending cases that go back to August of 2020,” Bowen said.
The coroner’s office cannot release a death certificate until the tests are complete, which can cause not only an agonizing wait for grieving families, but that also can create a massive financial burden in the case of a sudden death.
“I feel so sorry for the families when they call me almost daily asking if I have the information, and I have to tell them that we’re still waiting,” Bowen said.
According to Thomas Poteet and Sons Funeral Director Luke Teague, it takes mere days for a body to be released from autopsy, but sometimes families have to wait four to six months to get a death certificate which slows down the estate settlement process as well as obtaining payouts from the deceased person’s life insurance.
Some life insurance policies will have an extra and sometimes double benefit if the death is ruled accidental.
Other insurance policies have a provision where benefits are denied if the death occurred by suicide within a two year window of the policy being purchased.
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In all cases, though, the death certificate must be issued for families to collect life insurance benefits or even to access legally the deceased person’s bank accounts.
“It certainly can be a major hindrance to the family, especially if they have to wait months for the results of a toxicology report,” Teague says.
If the testing backlog for subjects from Augusta is not already bad enough, there has been discussion of possibly closing the crime lab in Macon. According to Bowen, if that does occur, then 37 more counties will be dependent on the already-overburdened Atlanta crime lab.
It is also important to note that crime labs do not only administer tests on the deceased but the living as well. Rape kits are also analyzed in those facilities. An investigation by WTOC television in Savannah revealed that victims of rape in that city sometimes have to wait over a year to receive test results.
Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said that counties all over the state have dodged a bullet as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) has stepped back from pulling the plug totally on the Macon lab, but it remains seriously understaffed and sometimes requires his office to route bodies to Atlanta.
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“People don’t realize how expensive it is to transport bodies across the state for an autopsy and, of course, that expense is passed onto the taxpayers,” Jones said. “Macon has a large homeless population, and so it is tax dollars that are spent to give them a proper autopsy and cremate their remains. Keeping our crime lab open saves money in the long run.”
According to Jones, the Macon lab was slated to close in January, but an emergency meeting of coroners, officials from the GBI and some state legislators may have staved off the Macon closing for now.
Jones says that budget issues are part of the problem, but he agrees with Bowen that finding qualified personnel is an issue as well.
“We are told by the GBI that it isn’t necessarily a budget issue, but that they are finding it hard to recruit the medical professionals needed to staff the labs,” Bowen said.
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Bowen also noted the irony that Augusta is home to the largest medical college in the state, but the crime lab in Augusta cannot find staff with the specialized training to get the lab back up and running.
Teague, whose job is not only to prepare the dead for burial but also to comfort the families and loved ones of the deceased, says of the 504 funerals completed by Thomas Poteet and Sons last year, 25 of those families faced delays due to the backlog at the crime lab in Atlanta.
“The number 25 may seem small, but for me, it is 25 too many,” Teague said.
Scott Hudson is the Editorial Page Manager of The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
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