Bill to assist with Colorado rape kit backlog clears Senate committee
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A bill that would add additional transparency in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's progress working through a backlog of rape kits passed unanimously in its first legislative committee Wednesday, following months of concern over the lengthy wait time to have a kit processed.
Senate Bill 25-304 now heads to the Senate Appropriation Committee for consideration.
'What our criminal legal system needs — and what, more importantly, our survivors need — is for things to get done quickly,' said bill sponsor Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat. 'The reason that we should care about quickly turning around sex assault evidence kits, to use that bloodless term, is because we owe one survivor justice, and maybe if we do that quickly enough, we can catch somebody and the next one or two or 10 survivors don't have to become survivors in the first place.'
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The bill is partially modeled on legislation from the Colorado Legislature's Joint Budget Committee that was never introduced.
It would create a coordinator position at CBI to oversee the agency's process and progress of completing the sexual assault kits, which include DNA samples and other evidence from survivors to aid in a criminal investigation. Colorado's forensic services are facing a historic backlog of the kits due to reduced staff capacity and ballooning fallout from the discovery that former CBI forensic scientist Yvonne 'Missy' Woods manipulated more than a thousand DNA test results over her career.
As of March, there were 1,424 kits in the backlog with an average turnaround time of 558 days, according to a recently implemented data dashboard. The backlog means delayed justice for survivors, as DNA evidence can often be critical for a criminal conviction.
'The impact of this growing delay in turnaround time for sexual assault evidence kits to be processed and analyzed is devastating for individual survivors, as so many of you have heard this spring, but it's also destructive to public trust in our institutions and systems,' said Elizabeth Newman, the policy director for the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
The coordinator considered under Weissman's bill would report annually to the Legislature on data including the number of kits completed, the number of cases in the backlog, the capacity of state crime laboratories and the amount of additional DNA collected from crime scenes not captured in a kit. The coordinator would also assess and make recommendations on the efficiency of the testing process. That would ultimately bring a 'cross-silo awareness' of what is happening at the state level lab and various local labs, Weissman said.
He said the coordinator position's roles and responsibilities will likely change through the amendment process as he speaks with stakeholders.
The coordinator position would be paid for with a $150,000 grant using state general fund money.
The bill would also create a new notification requirement under the Victim Rights Act that would require a law enforcement agency to update a survivor on the status of their kit every 90 days.
It also sets a turnaround goal of 60 days. The agency's current goal is 90 days, which it expects to achieve in 2027.
'To be real clear, I don't think that we're going to get there next month, but I do believe that we can build up our system to where we can get here, and I believe that we should make that promise to the impacted people in our state and to our future selves by putting it in statute,' Weissman said.
Lance Allen, CBI's deputy director of forensic services, told lawmakers that he does not think the bill as written would reduce turnaround time for rape kits. He outlined recent actions from the agency, including using $3 million of repurposed funds to outsource processing for about 1,000 kits and hiring a third-party contractor to assess best practices.
'We have a plan to get rid of the backlog and fortunately have received funding to address a good portion of that, and then with the training that we are doing at the state level, we will be increasing our resources and be able to handle that capacity at the state level,' he said. 'I wholeheartedly acknowledge that CBI is in the process of rebuilding trust. We know that.'
CBI currently has 16 scientists working at the state lab and is training 15 more.
So far, Weissman is the only sponsor on the bill. If it passes the Senate Appropriations Committee, it will move to the entire Senate for consideration, and then the House. The lawmaking term ends on May 7.
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