Work to clear rape evidence kit backlog slowly progressing
With funds allotted, analysts hired, testing begins in October
Despite a 2015 state public safety survey showing New Mexico and Albuquerque have an astonishing backlog of untested sexual assault evidence kits, a fact confirmed by a 2016 state audit showing it’s the worst backlog per capita in the nation, not one of the backlog kits in Albuquerque has been tested.
While that sounds like dismal progress to some in the sexual assault advocacy community, others say significant progress has been made in the months since the December 2016 audit.
And, criminal justice officials and Mayor Richard Berry said Friday that testing of kits will officially begin in October.
“Then the flood gates will open up,” Albuquerque police Commander Jeff McDonald said.
But only six kits — of the estimated 3,800 — will be submitted in that first round, and those will be sent to one of two outof-state labs contracting with the Albuquerque Police Department. The small
number will allow the department to verify the results of the contracted lab.
The department has its own lab, but McDonald said Friday that analysts on staff who have received the necessary training are “barely keeping their heads above water” meeting court-mandated deadlines for current cases, commonly referred to as the Case Management Order.
“We’re not doing a lot of proactive (testing) right now because of the Case Management Order,” McDonald said.
A $1.2 million funding boost from Berry and city councilors in 2016 allowed McDonald to hire six additional analysts, to bring the staff to nine, but four of them are still in lengthy and intensive training and two positions remain unfilled, but with prospects.
The money also paid for a rape kit tracking system and salary for three detectives to start combing through the backlog of kits, connecting them to victim reports, existing criminal cases and other details that will help prosecutors decide if they can move forward with a prosecution.
A kit consists of essentially cotton swabs wiped on different parts of the body of a person who has reported a sexual assault. Kits are taken by medical professionals, mostly practitioners trained in such evidence collection. A single kit can take several days to test. And often no DNA is found.
The kit is stored in an evidence room until tested, and a prosecutor can order a test for a kit or a police agency can have it tested.
The special detectives, who began their work in late 2016, have so far assessed the paperwork associated with 1,000 of the kits, McDonald said.
They are organizing the kits and cases into five priority groups, with priority 1 and priority 2 being recommended for first available testing.
Those two groups consist of the most violent cases, those involving children, and what prosecutor Lee Hood calls “solvability factors.”
Those factors are crucial, she said, and include a case that hasn’t legally expired and most important, a victim who is willing to participate in prosecution. There is no expiration for first-degree sex assault cases, but there is a six year limitation for second-degree cases.
“There is money for 300 tests. The detectives have identified 96 to 104 cases that are priority 1 or 2,” Hood said.
Those cases are now on the desk of a lead prosecutor, who is going through them to see if indeed they are candidate cases for prosecution.
Hood said that in attacking the backlog, there needed to be a system in place so resources were used the most effectively. She said it wouldn’t make initial sense to test a kit for a case in which the victim doesn’t want to pursue prosecution, or can’t be found, or the case has expired, or the case has already been tried and the offender is in prison.
But even if a victim doesn’t want to prosecute or the state can’t, all the kits will be tested and there are other forms of justice and healing than just through the courts.
“The District Attorney’s Office is not going to tell anyone to not test the kit. We’re just trying to figure out ... which ones we are we going to do first,” Hood said. “We’re going to get through them all and we’re going to get it done.” How long that will take isn’t clear. McDonald said that’s going to take more money.
“If I have 10 full-time analysts, and get 90 done a month and send out 90-200 a month, I would need $2.5 million and be done in 1½ years,” McDonald said.
Meanwhile, the state’s lab, with the help of more than $2 million in federal grants, another $1 million state boost and more than 10 analysts, has moved through 611 of its roughly 1,300 backlogged rape kits, a Department of Public Safety spokesman said. The state lab processes DNA for rape kits from agencies around the state, including the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office.
Connie Monahan, the statewide sexual assault nurse exam coordinator, calls the difference between APD and the state’s lab a “tale of two backlogs.”
She was on a panel of experts who testified on Thursday to state legislators on the Health and Human Services Committee meeting in Albuquerque.
She told legislators that the state lab is “testing kits at a phenomenal rate” and have so far found at least 194 of the 604 tested kits contained enough DNA to enter into the federal criminal DNA database, called CODIS.
Of those 194 cases, 72 matched to an offender already in the system.
“That means there are 72 repeat offenders out there,” said state Auditor Tim Keller, who was also on the panel. “This is a public safety issue.”