IT IS INCREASINGLY difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is not up to the task of prosecuting murderers. The office has admitted to five wrongful homicide convictions in the past five years, and has had six others overturned. It brings an ever-smaller number of cases to trial each year, and wins those cases at a rate far below national standards. Meanwhile, more than 200 people charged with murder are backlogged awaiting trial, some for as long as five years.

However you look at it, this is no way to handle matters of life and death. To victims’-rights advocates, families of the dead wait far too long for closure. For civil libertarians, the accused suffer years of incarceration before getting their day in court. And perhaps most important of all, public safety faces a clear threat from guilty killers who escape punishment. Of the 37 Boston homicides in 2000, only 13 have resulted in convictions or guilty pleas four years later. (And at least two of those are highly questionable; see "Blind Spots," News and Features, April 23.) Suspects are under arrest and awaiting trial in another six.

The delays are so bad that Suffolk Superior Court just began a special homicide session this month. Its goal is to plow through a fraction of these old cases by holding as many as two dozen trials through January. It’s an admirable effort, but it won’t change the underlying problems that thwart DA Dan Conley’s prosecutors. Just seven dedicated attorneys make up the homicide unit, including two who joined the team only six months ago. Each rookie already has 10 cases pending. The veterans have as many as 22 each. And the unit’s leader, David Meier, has recently devoted much of his time to re-investigating old cases like those of Shawn Drumgold, who spent 15 years in prison for the murder of Tiffany Moore, and Donnell Johnson, who served five years for the murder of Jermaine Goffigan. Ultimately, Meier concluded that these and other wrongfully convicted people had not received a fair trial.

How could they? The investigative offices upon which Meier and his crew must rely seem plagued by ills ranging from sloth to incompetence. Boston Police Department homicide detectives have lied and withheld information; BPD lab technicians have made flagrant mistakes; DNA- and drug-testing labs are hopelessly understaffed and underfunded; and the state medical-examiner’s office often appears to be under the management of Messy Marvin.

Close inspection of the cases inching toward trial suggests that many of these same problems are also contributing to the judicial standstill. Defense attorneys wait months, even years, for investigation materials, even after getting a judge’s order. Defendants receive police reports, autopsy documents, ballistics tests, DNA results, and transcripts only after prolonged battles — if at all. Discovery delays have already caused the further postponement of two trials scheduled for this special session, and will probably hold up at least a few others.

But the court is, understandably, making every effort to speed these rusting cases to completion. By doing so, it may well expose the county for the toothless giant it has become. Of the six murder trials that have taken place so far this year, Conley’s office has won just three. If that trend continues, the two dozen trials scheduled for the special session could result in a dozen acquittals over the next four months, an average that underscores Suffolk’s inability to find and convict murderers.

HOW BAD is the Suffolk County logjam? Consider two high-profile trials that began last week. Middlesex County is trying Alexander Pring-Wilson, accused of killing Michael Colono on April 12, 2003. Suffolk, meanwhile, is just getting around to trying Lord Hampton for the murder of Chauntae Jones on September 28, 1999. Indeed, in at least 14 of the cases slated for the special homicide session, the defendants were arrested or indicted in 2001 or earlier. Nationally, meanwhile, almost half of all murder cases are adjudicated within 12 months of the suspect’s arraignment, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

For the past five years, Suffolk has averaged just 20 murder trials a year. At that rate, it would take at least six years just to get through the 130 pending cases, many with multiple defendants. "Suffolk County is just falling apart," says Christopher Skinner, a public defender with the state’s Committee for Public Counsel Services. "It’s just backing up and backing up."

Years of delay not only harm the incarcerated defendant. They also usually make the case harder to win, as memories fade and evidence deteriorates. Not that any of this motivated the special session. The impetus came from Suffolk County sheriff Andrea Cabral, who was looking for ways to trim costs in her fiscally challenged department. Defendants awaiting trial were clogging up her jails. In particular, Cabral was tired of paying for their medical care out of her budget, says Superior Court chief justice Suzanne DelVecchio. Cabral wanted them tried and convicted, so they could be moved to a state correctional institution and onto someone else’s budget. DelVecchio agreed to take action.

But speeding up trials without fixing the underlying problems causing the backlog could lead to worse, not better, justice. The legal process of "discovery" — the release of relevant investigation material from the DA to the defendant — must be done early, so that defense attorneys can conduct a meaningful investigation of their own. Yet, "discovery isn’t even complete" in the case of Alexander Droz, whose trial is scheduled for October 25, says his attorney, Stephen Weymouth. "I filed 25 motions in May, and no action has been taken."

In another case, for defendant Andre Green, Weymouth finally received some 1500 pages of grand-jury material last Tuesday — nine months after the date of the last of those transcripts. This is a common occurrence. The court files for one special-session case show a judge’s second order to the court reporter to prepare a transcript — a year after the first order.

Attorney Jonathon Shapiro has a trial coming up on October 14 for his client Ryan Samuels. "I still am waiting for the Commonwealth to provide me with even the most basic discovery material," including witness statements, autopsy reports, and ballistics tests, Shapiro says. Samuels actually is facing a retrial — his conviction in June of 1997 was overturned on appeal because information was withheld too long. Near the end of Samuels’s original trial, after the key identifying witness had already testified and been cross-examined, the defense was given a tape-recorded statement she had made — and learned she initially had picked someone else from a photo array, according to court documents.

Shapiro is also awaiting autopsy reports, crime-scene videotapes, chain-of-custody documents, and other evidence for another client, John Powell, whose trial is scheduled for December 14 — despite four judicial orders compelling the release of those materials. "Those issues unfortunately have still not been resolved," says Shapiro. Information about witnesses was withheld so long in Powell’s case that by the time it was provided this summer, many of them no longer lived at the addresses provided, and could not be found. The prosecutor told Shapiro earlier this year that police were retesting the ballistics in the case, and yet months have gone by without any results or answers about whether the retests have even taken place.

Then there is James Tribbett, accused of murdering Jason Mines back in August of 2000. Tribbett will have been incarcerated for 52 months when — if — his trial begins as scheduled on December 6. It took months of hassling for the defense to gain access to the crime scene. An autopsy report wasn’t delivered for 13 months after the judge first ordered it turned over. The judge ultimately threatened to let Tribbett out on bail if prosecutor Mark Lee didn’t produce the report, according to Frank Mondano, Tribbett’s attorney. The BPD’s crime lab did not test blood at the crime scene against the DNA of a key witness in the case, even though Lee had agreed to ask the lab do so — and when Lee went back to ask again, the BPD technicians refused to run the tests. Mondano has still, four years later, not been given any access to the crucial eyewitness.

The BPD cannot comment on these ongoing cases, says spokeswoman Beverly Ford, who adds, "As an organization, we recognize the importance and value of discovery, and will continue to work with the District Attorney’s Office and the courts to comply with discovery requirements." Suffolk DA spokesman David Procopio asserts the DA’s confidence in the BPD detectives and forensic specialists, and denies there is any widespread failure to produce discovery material.