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Attorney General Mike DeWine
DeWine Issues
Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative Update for December
(COLUMBUS, Ohio)—Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine today released a
status update on the progress of DNA testing being conducted as part of
the Ohio Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative.
As of December 1, 2015, 240 law enforcement agencies have submitted
11,665 kits to be tested as part of Attorney General DeWine's Sexual
Assault Kit (SAK) Testing Initiative. Of those, 2,331 kits were
submitted after Senate Bill 316 took effect.
Forensic scientists with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation
(BCI) have completed testing on a total of 9,230 of the kits, resulting
in 3,377 hits in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
In Cuyahoga County alone, 420 defendants have been indicted following
DNA testing conducted as part of the effort.
Background on Attorney General DeWine's Sexual Assault Kit Testing
Initiative:
Attorney General DeWine launched the initiative in 2011 after learning
that dozens of law enforcement agencies across the state were in
possession of rape kits, some of which were decades old, that had never
been sent to a DNA lab for testing. Attorney General DeWine then
made an open call to law enforcement to send their kits to BCI for DNA
testing at no cost to them.
To ensure the timely analysis of the thousands of kits submitted as
part of the SAK Testing Initiative, Attorney General DeWine hired 10
additional forensic scientists. By hiring this additional staff,
the older kits are tested as quickly as possible, without slowing down
the testing of the more than 8,913 rape kits associated with recent
crimes tested by BCI as part of their regular casework since 2011.
Senate Bill 316, which went into effect on March 23, 2015, now requires
Ohio law enforcement agencies to submit any remaining previously
untested sexual assault kits associated with a past crime to a crime
laboratory within one year. The law also requires that all newly
collected rape kits be submitted to a crime lab within 30 days after
law enforcement determines a crime has been committed.
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