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Attorney General Mike DeWine
DeWine Releases
October Sexual Assault Kit Testing Initiative Update
(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 October 1, 2015, 207 law enforcement agencies have submitted
11,067 kits to be tested as part of the initiative. Of those,
1,733 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 8,718 of those kits,
resulting in 3,204 hits in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).
As of today, 400 defendants have been indicted in Cuyahoga County alone
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 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 8,540 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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