Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks joins state forensic council

Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks now has a seat on the state panel that helps decide how fast forensic evidence moves from the lab to the courtroom, a role that can shape the pace of cases in Oak Harbor, Coupeville and across Whidbey.

Gov. Bob Ferguson appointed Banks on April 24 to the Washington State Forensic Investigations Council, with his term running through Aug. 10, 2029. Banks fills the council’s only county prosecutor seat, even as the separate county prosecutor and ex-officio county coroner position remains vacant. For Island County, that means one of the people responsible for deciding local felony cases and appeals will also help steer the state system that handles the science behind them.

The council is a 12-member body created by statute. It oversees the Washington State Patrol Bureau of Forensic Laboratory Services, helps control its operation and policies with the state patrol chief or designee, and recommends cost-efficient improvements to Washington’s death-investigation system. It also plays a formal role in the bureau’s budget, which it must approve before submission, and it can submit up to three names for director of the bureau. That gives the panel more than advisory weight: it can influence funding, leadership and the flow of evidence through the state’s forensic system.

That matters in Island County because the prosecutor’s office is the local gateway for serious criminal cases. The office says it performs statutory and constitutional duties by prosecuting crimes, advising county officials and improving the justice system, with eight deputy prosecutors and 11 legal support staff. When lab results stall, so do cases that depend on toxicology, DNA or other forensic testing.

Washington has already seen how much delay can matter. The state cleared its sexual-assault kit backlog after years of work and legislative action, with 10,134 kits in inventory tested or sent to private labs by October 2023 and the last backlog kit tested in January 2025. That effort has led to at least 22 solved cases and thousands of CODIS uploads. On the other side of the ledger, impaired-driving testing remains under strain: roughly 16,700 DUI-related cases were still awaiting toxicology testing at the end of 2025, and Seattle’s average turnaround time was cited at 22 months in March 2026 reporting.

The state has started to respond. Gov. Ferguson signed a 2026 law allowing accredited private labs to perform impaired-driving toxicology tests, and the Washington State Patrol opened a toxicology lab in Federal Way on Dec. 7, 2023. The Legislature also provided one-time funding for the 2025-2027 biennium to hire staff, buy equipment and build a temporary high-throughput blood alcohol section.

For Island County, Banks’ appointment means local criminal cases will have a voice in those statewide choices. The result could reach far beyond Olympia, all the way to the evidence room, the courtroom and the long wait between arrest and resolution.