On the Job 

A hit rate of 36 percent on evidence from rape kits stored for years across the state translates into “miracles almost every day,” says Attorney General Mike DeWine.
 
Ohio law enforcement agencies have submitted 8,774 old kits under the Attorney General’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative as of Sept. 1. The AG’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) has tested 4,716 kits so far, with 1,698 — more than a third — providing links to convicted offenders or evidence profiles in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).


Investigations based on those hits are giving law enforcement and  prosecutors evidence to charge and prosecute rapists and providing survivors with the justice they have been denied far too long.
 
“Thanks to this initiative and the investigative follow-up work by local law enforcement, more than 200 people so far have been charged for sexual assaults they allegedly committed years ago,” Attorney General DeWine said. “The results leave no doubt that testing this evidence is the right thing to do. We’re seeing miracles almost every day.”
 
After taking office in 2011 and learning that several Ohio law enforcement agencies — like many of their counterparts around the country — had untested rape kits in storage, Attorney General DeWine asked his Sexual Assault Kit Commission to examine the problem. Following that group’s recommendations, he urged the state’s law enforcement agencies to submit all sexual assault kits from cases prior to 2011 in which they believed crimes occurred.
 
To ensure the testing would not affect turnaround times for active casework, the Attorney General authorized the hiring of four forensic scientists and later brought six more on board.
 
So far, 143 of Ohio’s 967 law enforcement agencies have submitted kits. The top five contributing police departments are Cleveland, 4,230 kits; Toledo, 1,506; Akron, 1,396; Cincinnati, 338; and East Cleveland, 175. Eighty agencies have submitted five or fewer kits.
 
Keeping up with current cases
 
BCI has also relied on increased automation and careful attention to its lab process in order to test the kits without delaying the analysis of evidence from recent crimes. The goal was to test 1,500 old kits per year beginning in October 2012, when the first new scientists were fully trained, and 3,000 in the second year. BCI hit both goals, including the second-year mark more than a month ahead of schedule.
 
“One of the directives we had from the Attorney General was that this testing could not impact the active casework that’s being processed in the lab,” said DNA Technical Leader Lewis Maddox. “He did not want to see turnaround times go up in order to handle this project. In fact, he still wanted to see a focus on active casework and to drive the turnaround times down, which we did during the course of this project as well.”
 
BCI prioritized its caseload to test the oldest kits first because of Ohio’s 20-year statute of limitations on rape. Then it began to work backward from the initiative cutoff date of Dec. 31, 2010, in hopes of catching rapists more likely to still be offending.
 
Still have kits?
 
If your law enforcement agency has not yet submitted stored sexual assault kits from crimes prior to 2011, contact BCI at 855-BCI-OHIO (855-224-6446) for testing.