Criminal justice officials in Ramsey County and advocates against sexual assault are continuing their push for passage of legislation to preserve key evidence in such cases for longer periods.
Ramsey County Attorney John Choi, St. Paul Police chief Todd Axtell as well as a representative from Minnesota’s Coalition Against Sexual Assault and others emphasized the legislation’s urgency during a press conference held online Monday.
The bill is aimed at ensuring proper processing and storage of so-called rape kits. The kits consist of evidence collected by Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners from rape victims who report to hospitals after sexual assaults.
Recent reports have revealed a massive backlog of untested kits across the state, as well as inconsistent protocols and timelines for storing them.
That has sometimes meant that victims who decide to pursue charges long after their sexual assaults come to find out that their kits have been destroyed, leaving them and prosecutors without critical evidence.
NEW LEGISLATION
The legislation tries to address at least part of that problem by requiring the state’s crime lab at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to store all untested rape kits for more than two years. It also calls for corresponding data be kept in an online database that victims can access and track.
The original bill also sought to mandate law enforcement to test every rape kit, but advocates said Monday they are no longer pursuing that component due to its associated cost at a time the state’s budget is stretched thin due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Across the state there is just no consistency, so what we are seeing oftentimes is that communities just run out of (storage room) so sexual assault kits are being destroyed in three to nine months,” said Jude Foster of MNCASA.
That’s a problem because many victims aren’t ready to pursue criminal charges until several months or more have passed.
Axtell echoed Foster’s remarks.
“(Our) 87 counties need to be on the same page and this law will allow us to do that,” he said. “Sexual assault trauma has no timeline and has no boundaries and we have an obligation to investigate … the survivor’s timeline … not ours.”
Recognizing the “patchwork” approach to the issue in Ramsey County, Choi cobbled together resources to buy an extra refrigerator to expand kit storage.
The added space will allow Regions Hospital to store untested kits for up to two years, whereas its previous policy allowed for destroying them after 90 days if patients hadn’t reported to law enforcement, said Ellen Johnson, SANE program supervisor for the hospital.
Despite the policy, Johnson always tried to call patients six times to see if they wanted it preserved before taking action, she said.
Ramsey County also recently added a deputy squarely focused on sexual assaults and committed to preserving kits.
Deputy Jessica O’Hern saved a kit from destruction at Hennepin County Medical Center in 2018 after getting a call from a woman who was ready to pursue charges against a man she met on Facebook who raped her seven months prior, O’Hern said Monday.
The DNA evidence collected during her exam was critical to the woman’s case, which she ended up winning after the man who raped her pleaded guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct, according to the Ramsey County attorney’s office.
He was sentenced to 48 months in prison.
BROADER SOLUTIONS
While Ramsey County has found a short-term fix, a broader-scale solution is necessary, Choi said.
“We should not have a local community trying to scramble to find safe storage, … We really need to have one centralized framework … to ensure this is taken care of across the state,” Choi said.
The language is included in the House’s public safety and criminal justice reform finance and policy division’s appropriations bill, which is slated to be heard this week, said Lindsay Brice, MNCASA’s law and policy director.
No information was immediately available about how much it would cost to implement, Brice said.
“Obviously, there are going to be financial considerations that go into all of this, just like there are any year, and COVID-19 is absolutely providing an added challenge around that but as far as I know (the bill) is moving forward,” she said.