Relating to the retention and preservation of toxicological evidence of certain intoxication offenses.

Contracts

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs): Renegotiate SLAs with defense firms and counties. Remove any clauses promising "immediate destruction upon case closure." Replace them with clauses referencing the statutory 90-day wait period required by Code of Criminal Procedure Art. 38.50.
• Indemnification: Update contracts to limit liability for storage costs incurred while waiting for prosecutor responses to destruction requests.

Hiring/Training

• IT & LIMS Configuration: IT staff must configure Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) to generate batch reports filtered by "County of Offense" and "Date Received."
• Evidence Technicians: Staff responsible for biohazard disposal must be retrained. The "auto-destroy" workflow must be replaced with a manual "check-and-hold" gate to verify if a destruction request has been filed and if the 90-day window has passed.

Reporting & Record-Keeping

• Annual Inventory Report: You must generate and transmit a list of all toxicological evidence held to the specific prosecutor's office where the offense occurred.
• Destruction Request Logs: You must maintain a certified log of *when* a request for destruction was sent. This date stamp is your legal defense; if the prosecutor does not object within 90 days of this date, you are authorized to destroy the sample.
• Certified Mail Receipts: Until a prosecutor designates a specific email address for these notices, use Certified Mail to establish a paper trail of compliance.

Fees & Costs

• Storage Surcharges: The 90-day "silence equals consent" period will increase the average dwell time of samples in your facility. Adjust storage fees to account for this increased capacity requirement.
• Administrative Overhead: Expect increased labor costs associated with tracking down case dispositions, as highlighted by the Legislative Budget Board's analysis of the "information gap" between labs and courts.