March Start Seen for Sheriff’s DNA Lab : Forensics: Testing of DNA evidence for court use is projected to begin about four months later than some county supervisors expected.

A DNA laboratory approved by the Board of Supervisors last fall should be ready in March to test samples for use as evidence in court, Sheriff’s Department officials said Monday.

That is about four months later than the December start-up date that Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates gave the supervisors when he asked them in October to fund the laboratory.

“I very definitely recall that,” Supervisor Roger R. Stanton said. “We were given an estimated date of completion . . . and now it looks like the original estimate was off.”

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who was furious with other board members when they voted to delay a decision on the laboratory by a month--later shortened to two weeks--took the delay in stride this time.

“We were trying to rush it through, and it turned out not to be possible,” Wieder said. “The important thing is that it’s going to happen . . . and whenever it gets here it’ll be about time.”

When the facility opens, Orange County will have the first crime laboratory in California capable of taking tiny samples of blood, hair or semen and breaking them down into cell fragments that contain deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, which carries the genetic code unique to each individual.

DNA evidence--processed by an outside laboratory--was admitted in an Orange County trial for the first time earlier this month. The rape suspect in the case pleaded guilty three days after the evidence was ruled admissible.

The Sheriff’s Department had been requesting a DNA testing laboratory for at least two years, but its need was seen as acute last fall after a 12-year-old girl was raped in a gated community in Huntington Beach, just blocks from Wieder’s home in the same development. The suspect arrested in that case had been acquitted earlier of another rape charge, after prosecutors were late in receiving DNA evidence from an outside lab.

Gates was unavailable for comment Monday, but Lt. Richard J. Olson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said the laboratory is on schedule and is conducting proficiency tests to ensure that it yields accurate results. The lab is in a building next to the Orange County Jail in Santa Ana.

“The original statements (projecting a December or January start-up) were about testing,” Olson said. “We’re finishing up the first set now.”

Frank Fitzpatrick, Sheriff’s Department forensic science services director, agreed that the lab has moved along as quickly as possible.

“I’m real happy about how quickly it’s been moving,” Fitzpatrick said. “We have to do the testing, and get all our policies, procedures and manuals in place. . . . We have to show we can do the work competently . . . before the evidence is admissible in court.”

Fitzpatrick explained that the four criminalists assigned to the DNA lab must perform several batches of tests on DNA samples purchased from other labs--without incorrectly matching a single set of samples--before they can testify as expert witnesses in court.

“The accuracy rate (that officials want) is 100%,” Fitzpatrick said. “If there is an incorrect result, we shut down the program and go back and look at it from the beginning.”