With the passage of Ohio’s new rape kit testing bill—signed into law in December—we are highlighting Ohio State Senator Capri Cafaro, the legislation’s sponsor, as today’s Featured Reformer.
“The time to act is overdue. We have an obligation to assure justice for all victims regardless of when a crime occurred.”
Ohio State Senator Capri Cafaro
Ohio State Senator Capri Cafaro has been a powerful advocate of ending the backlog of untested rape kits in Ohio. With the passage of Senate Bill 316, sponsored by Cafaro, Ohio is now the sixth state in the country to require law enforcement agencies to send previously unanalyzed rape kits to be tested and to submit all kits for testing moving forward. Ohio follows Illinois, Texas and Colorado.
“This bill is essential to ensuring justice and closure to survivors of these heinous crimes,” Senator Cafaro stated in a press release on SB 316. “I am glad to see that both chambers recognized the importance of this legislation and passed it unanimously.” As of March 2015, 9,237 untested rape kits have been sent into the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for testing. Of those 8,774 kits, 6,577 have been tested, leading to 2,465 hits in CODIS. In Cuyahoga County alone, those hits yielded 255 indictments and 69 convictions.
Senator Cafaro’s work on the rape kit backlog included sponsoring another bill that was introduced at the same time as SB-316. Last year, Senator Cafaro and former Ohio Senator Nina Turner worked together to introduce legislation that would end the statute of limitations—the time period that a legal proceeding must begin within—on rape and sexual battery. In Ohio, it is currently 20 years. But as untested rape kits are discovered—many dating back years or even decades—and with advances in DNA technology, some states are extending or eliminating the statute of limitations. Unfortunately, the bill did not make it past the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
“The time to act is overdue. We have an obligation to assure justice for all victims regardless of when a crime occurred. It takes time and courage for a victim of a sexual crime to come forward,” Cafaro stated on her work with ending the backlog and extending the statute of limitations, “If [victims] learn that they are unable to seek justice because the law thinks they waited too long, these victims are victimized yet again by the system. Justice should not have an arbitrary timeline.”
For more information on Ohio’s efforts to end their backlog, click here.
– By Sophia Schrager and Vivian Long, March 9, 2015