To Solve More Rape Cases, Government Needs to Test Backlog of DNA Evidence

When a 43-year-old legal secretary was raped in her home in Los Angeles a decade ago, a Los Angeles police detective had a gut feeling that a repeat offender was the perpetrator.

To reduce an expected one-year delay in getting DNA evidence from the crime analyzed, Detective Tim Marcia personally drove the rape test kit 350 miles to a laboratory in Sacramento. It still took four months to get the results, and meanwhile the same offender broke into two other homes and sexually assaulted a pregnant woman and a teenager, the New York Times reported last year.

Such delays in DNA testing are still occurring nationwide right now, contributing to perhaps tens of thousands of unsolved rapes that have been reported by victims, according to a column by Nicholas Kristof published in the New York Times yesterday.

Expedited DNA testing can be completed within a week, he notes. Yet "stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority."

Right now, there are 12,669 untested rape kits stored in police facilities in Los Angeles County alone, he reports.

One exception to the lackadaisical approach commonly taken throughout the country to DNA testing in rape cases is New York City, Kristof writes. There, authorities strive to test every rape kit they receive. The result: At least 2,000 hits, and an exponential increase in arrests. Now, arrests are being made in 70 percent of reported rape cases in the city, up from 40 percent.

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