Nova Scotia justice bogged down with long wait for lab results say lawyers

Some lawyers in Nova Scotia say it's taking far too long to get the lab results they need for court.

They say everything from DNA tests to firearm examinations are delayed and those delays could even lead to some cases being dismissed. 

Megan Longley, president of the Nova Scotia Criminal Lawyers Association, says wait times for any kind of lab results are growing.

"My instinct tells me that this issue is going to come to a head and maybe the situation is going to be more and more cases are starting to get dismissed," she said. "Because Crowns, not through the fault of any individual Crown, are not able to go ahead in a reasonable time because of these delays."

Longley, also the managing lawyer of the youth justice office of Nova Scotia Legal Aid, thinks that will cause people to lose faith in the justice system.

"It obviously has an extremely significant impact on people who are presumed innocent, who have not been convicted of anything having to wait in jail because of lab results before they can have a trial date," she said.

"It takes at least six months in most cases to get these results back," said Longley. 

Lab work done out of Ottawa

Stephanie Hillson is a legal aid lawyer who practices both criminal and family law in Amherst.

She sees another kind of problem if the lab delays don't stop. 

"As a defence lawyer I think when we're looking at delays of that type you know I think the bigger concern is that there might be potential evidence that could exonerate a client which gets lost as a result of these delays," she said.

Nova Scotia's public prosecution service would not comment on the delays. 

The bigger concern is that there might be potential evidence that could exonerate a client which gets lost.- Stephanie Hillson 

Much of the lab work involving criminal charges is done by the RCMP Forensic Assessment Centre in Ottawa.

It handles forensic work from across the country.

The RCMP didn't want to do an interview about their lab work, in fact they would not confirm or deny that their lab is having trouble meeting demand. 

They did however, provide a write up that outlined some of the work the lab does. 

50 day wait for routine DNA tests, says RCMP

That write up states that from April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015  the average time to get priority DNA analysis results was 17 days.

There were 150 priority requests in that time and 6,309 routine requests.

Priority requests often involve high risk situations, like tracking down someone who could be a danger to the public. 

The average time to get results for a routine DNA test is 50 days. 

The RCMP lab also has an urgent case process that allows DNA analysis to be done in three days or less, in exceptional cases. 

How often that process is used was not included in the material provided by the RCMP. 

There were 15 priority requests for firearm analysis during the last 13 months,  they took an average of 29 days to complete. 

At the same time there were 1,218 routine firearm requests, they took an average of 86 days to finish. 

Longley can think of several reasons for the delays. 

"Very few results are coming locally anymore, so nationally everything is being sent to one place which creates a back log."

"Some of that has to do with the processing," she said. "My understanding is that many things are not sent away to be analysed until a trial date is set, so they wait and see if there's a not guilty plea before sending off the evidence and that can mean several months have gone by from the incident date before the materials are sent away."

Longley said she knows of no plans to alter the lab system to speed up the processing of evidence.