Roxanne Werly is the Interactive and Broadcast Managing Editor for TV 7&4 and 29&8
TRAVERSE CITY -- The court proceedings of a murder case in Traverse City are being rescheduled due to a backlog at the Michigan State Police crime lab.
Robert Jensen Schwander, 17, is charged with the murder of Carly Lewis. Carly's body was found June 14 buried in a sand pile on property owned by the Traverse City Department of Public Works. Investigators say Schwander killed her in a vacant building where he was living and moved her body to the sand pile.
Last Thursday the final conference was rescheduled because Schwander's attorney and the Grand Traverse County Prosecutor are still waiting for crime lab reports from the State Police. The hearing originally was set to take place on August 12 and the trial was set to begin on August 31. Now the final conference will take place on August 31 at 8:00 a.m. and the new trial date will be announced soon.
Schwander is being held without bond.
The Michigan State Police Crime Lab prioritizes cases of violent crimes. While DNA lab cases in backlog are down 60-percent in 2011, the lab still faces a large amount of samples waitiing for analysis.
The MSP considers any samples that sit more than 30 days to be in backlog. Here is a rundown of the cases in backlog waiting to be processed at crime labs statewide:
DNA cases: 2,905
Toxicolgoy cases: 1,600
Firearms: 3,701
Fingerprints: 452
Drugs: 1,034
The Michigan State Police Crime Labs do prioritize by type of crime so more violent crimes do get a higher priority, which is why the Schwander case is only pushed back by a couple of weeks.
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