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Attorney General Mike DeWine
DeWine
Announces More than 7,200 Sexual Assault Kits Tested
(COLUMBUS, Ohio) -- Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine today announced
that forensic scientists with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation
(BCI) have now tested more than 7,200 sexual assault kits as part of a
special initiative to test rape kits that had never been tested for DNA.
As of May 1, 2015, 170 law enforcement agencies have submitted 9,643
kits to be tested as part of the initiative. Of those, 308 kits
were submitted after the effective date of Senate Bill 316.
As of May 1, 2015, forensic scientists have completed testing on a
total of 7,211 of those kits, resulting in 2,692 hits in the Combined
DNA Index System (CODIS).
In Cuyahoga County alone, more than 300 defendants have been indicted
following DNA testing conducted as part of the effort, including Van
Patterson, 43, who was arrested last month. Patterson was
indicted for three sexual assaults he allegedly committed in 1995,
1997, and 2009.
Background on the Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) 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 7,300 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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