PD Editorial: Clear California’s backlog of sexual assault kits

The arrest of the suspected Golden State Killer showed how useful DNA can be in solving crimes, even old ones. Yet an enormous collection of DNA evidence sits untouched in California. State lawmakers and local law enforcement should prioritize testing thousands of rape kits.

Two bills introduced in Sacramento would do just that.

The kits contain forensic evidence gathered from survivors of sexual assault, and local law enforcement agencies hold most of them in their evidence storage. Some localities are better at testing promptly than others. Under current law, testing is voluntary.

Shockingly, no one knows how many rape kits are sitting on shelves. The best estimate is that there are more than 13,000. Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, wants better than an estimate. He has authored a bill, AB 3118, that would require a statewide audit of the kits, with results provided to the state Justice Department and the Legislature by 2020.

Meanwhile, state Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, has authored a bill, SB 1449, that would start to clear the backlog and require local law enforcement agencies to test kits promptly. They would have to submit kits to a crime lab within 20 days of collection, and the labs would then have 120 days to test them.

These ideas aren’t new. Lawmakers have considered other bills to tackle the backlog over the years, but they either didn’t pass or wound up vetoed. The biggest hurdle has been cost. Under the California Constitution, when the state imposes mandates on localities, it must come up with money to pay for them. Depending on how many kits are out there, testing all of them could cost $5 million to $13 million. The audit would add to that price tag.

Money is not a good excuse this time. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget includes an $8.8 billion surplus. The amount needed to clear the backlog is less than two-tenths of 1 percent of that.

Brown seems to agree. Leyva’s bill to test all the kits had specified $2 million as a start. Brown budgeted $6 million, which could make real headway.

Friday is the deadline for the Assembly and Senate appropriations committees to act on these bills.

After the suspected Golden State Killer’s arrest, important conversations began about genetic privacy, but they don’t apply to testing rape kits. This doesn’t require searching through third-party genetic testing databases or putting innocent people into the state database. Rather, the tests might generate hits or reveal previously unseen patterns that could lead to arrests.

After the trauma of sexual assault, survivors prove their courage when they allow evidence to be gathered from their bodies. The least law enforcement can do is test it. It’s hard not to see an element of sexism in the backlog. The vast majority of sexual assault victims are women, and the vast majority of assailants are men. Would police - a profession that skews male - leave untested evidence in unsolved crimes against 13,000 men?

Testing the kits is about fulfilling a promise to survivors of sexual assault. It tells them that their lives matter, that what was done to them was horrible and that we as a community will do what is possible to capture the perpetrators so that they face justice - and so that they do not offend again.