SAPD analyzing 121 untested kits from ‘stranger rape’ cases
Three months ago, a CBS News investigation uncovered a backlog of untested rape kits sitting in storage at police departments across the country. The investigation revealed the San Antonio Police Department had 5,191 untested kits in storage. Some of the kits date back nearly 30 years. For the past three months, SAPD has gone back through its 5,191 untested kits to determine which ones need to be tested.
The department discovered 57 of the reported untested kits had actually been tested but had not been updated in the department’s records. The majority of the remaining untested kits are from cases where the suspect is known, and either no sexual assault occurred or the suspect’s DNA wasn’t needed for a conviction, SAPD said. Plus, if a suspect is convicted of a sexual assault, the offender’s DNA information would be submitted into a database by the state, so there was no need for SAPD to test it.
Unlike many cities, over the years SAPD has kept these kits. The department said it is re-evaluating its policy on keeping old rape kits. So after going through the kits, SAPD said it really has 121 untested rape kits. Chief William McManus said in November that all of these stranger rape kits would be tested. So far, 38 have been sent off to the lab. SAPD said the kits from stranger rape kits will soon be sent off as well. It could be a year before all the results are known. For some, regardless of the results, due to the statute of limitations, it will be too late for a conviction.
As great as this may sounds, Grits for Breakfast points out exactly what the real problem here is, so we are not going to rewrite it. Just to give you a hint: “Just as Dallas did under the leadership of its District Attorney Craig Watkins, San Antonio needs to vet those old convictions to identify cases where the defendant pled “not guilty” and was convicted anyway based on eyewitness or other testimony. That’s exactly the category of case that led to so many DNA exonerations in Dallas, but in SA they’re not planning on testing such cases.”
Read the newspaper article here and Grits for Breakfast here.
Categories: Forensics
Tags: Crime Labs, Crime Scene, DNA, DNA Database, Evidence, Forensics, Police, Rape kits, San Antonio, Victim