FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 7, 2026
CONTACT: info@erictoney.com
Top Crime Lab Leaders Collected Over $700,000 Moonlighting in Other States During Crime Lab Back Log
New report details WI staff working in other states while prosecutors wait on evidence
FOND DU LAC, WI – New reporting out today detailed how top crime lab officials in Wisconsin collected over $700,000 working in other states while Wisconsin’s crime lab backlog grew under Attorney General Josh Kaul’s watch. While Wisconsin’s crime labs fell apart under Attorney General Josh Kaul, two of the labs’ top leaders collected big money on an out-of-state contract to help repair another state’s crime lab.
Eric Toney, Fond Du Lac County District Attorney and Republican nominee for Attorney General released the following statement:
“We need transparency – Josh Kaul must immediately release last year’s crime lab data and restore the old reports to the DOJ website that were removed. For years Kaul has passed the buck blaming the forensic testing delays that have grown under his watch on a lack of staffing. We now know that his top staff have been making hundreds of thousands of dollars in other states while prosecutors in Wisconsin face longer wait times for evidence to be tested. That means justice is denied for victims and criminals stay on our streets longer than they should be – while Kaul’s employees rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Josh Kaul ran in 2018 on fixing the forensic testing. In recent years, Kaul’s DOJ moved the reporting of publicly accessible crime lab data from the Spring to Fall – conveniently releasing the data now after election season. On the current website, neither the “Dashboards” tab nor the “Reports” tab under “Data & Statistics” mentions any crime lab report from 2018–2023.
After eight years as Attorney General, Kaul’s Department of Justice reports show the labs are slower in many major categories, including DNA. This is despite more staff, better technology, and 29% fewer cases than when he took office. DNA analysis (the evidence in rape kits, homicides, and crimes against children) took a median of 50 days to process in 2018. In 2024, it took 112 days. Drug testing went from an average of 43 days to 90. Toxicology went from 37 days to 82.
The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau reached the same conclusion in 2024, finding Wisconsin’s labs slower than Michigan’s, Illinois’, and Iowa’s, and that 532 rape kits sent to a private lab took a median of 292 days to come back, nearly all of them beyond the six-month limit now required by state law.
As Attorney General, Eric Toney would fix the fundamental problems leading to delays at Wisconsin’s crime labs. He would immediately move to fill any staff vacancies within the labs, end any work-from-home policies that keep analysts out of the labs, and establish formal performance metrics so transparency can return to the DOJ.
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