Mitch Morrissey
Former District Attorney of Colorado’s Second Judicial District
It is no secret that Colorado has had problems with a massive pileup of sexual assault evidence kits in the past decade. What we did not know until recently was just what it costs the state every year that those kits and cases linger.
I started my career as a trial attorney in 1983 and prosecuted the first case in Denver, Colorado, where DNA evidence was admitted as evidence in trial. The case involved a home invasion rape. I quickly realized how DNA and later the CODIS DNA database would revolutionize the criminal justice system and become the most cost-effective law enforcement tool for preventing violent crime and holding violent criminals accountable. I spent the next decade ensuring that different DNA methods were admissible in court as well as training law enforcement throughout the world on how to apply DNA technology in criminal investigations and prosecutions. After being elected Denver District Attorney in 2004, I spearheaded the Denver Cold Case Project, which reviewed over 4,200 unsolved sexual assaults and murders using DNA technologies to solve old cases and test rape kits. We prosecuted over 120 murderers and rapists that thought they had gotten away with their violent crimes. After leaving the Denver D.A.’s office in 2017, I co-founded United Data Connect, where we use DNA and genealogy to solve rapes and murders. For DNA testing to be most effective, DNA from a criminal case, e.g., a rape kit in a sexual assault, must be tested in a timely fashion and follow-up on any DNA matches should occur shortly after the DNA match in the DNA database is reported.
I currently serve as the Owens-Early Criminal Justice Fellow for the Common Sense Institute. CSI is a non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to the protection and promotion of the Colorado economy. This month, along with CSI research analysts, I completed a study examining not only the backlog of cases at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation but also the economic impact of the delays.
By processing all of the 1,369 DNA kits in the state’s 18-month backlog, Colorado could prosecute up to 200 rape cases. This would also prevent up to 1,030 sexual assaults, 108 other violent crimes, 230 property offenses, and 113 drug/alcohol, public disorder, and other crimes.
Those crimes are human tragedies; they are also economic black holes. Each crime carries a cost—in lost property, lost wages, adjudication, man-hours of police payroll, and the drag of trauma on a person’s productivity.
The amount is significant: the 200 expected rape convictions are projected to save Colorado $286.5 million in crime-related costs.
Clearing that backlog would cost a tenth of that price. At a testing cost of $2,000 per kit and adjudication, public services, and work-loss costs totaling $82,000 per case, clearing the backlog and prosecuting cases associated with it will cost the state $21 million.
In return, Colorado’s economy will eventually save $234.7 million due to the prevention of future crimes.
Delays will cost Colorado – the longer authorities take to clear the backlog, the larger the costs and smaller the savings will become.
CBI intends to clear its DNA backlog of excess kits by July 2027 if it can train 15 more analysts in the next year. Delayed processing of kits currently in the backlog, which are expected to be tested by September 2026, will have allowed $51.8 million worth of additional criminal activity.
In 2013 the Colorado legislature, recognizing that Colorado had a large backlog of untested rape kits, passed a law requiring law enforcement to submit untested kits for testing and providing funds to eliminate that backlog. In 2016, CBI announced that the backlog had been eliminated.
In Colorado today, nearly 1,400 kits sit untested, a legacy of mismanagement, improperly distributed funds, redundancy, and the alleged negligence of a former star analyst. Whatever the reasons, the consequences are the same: delayed justice for survivors, eroded trust in American jurisprudence, lives derailed, and crime-related economic costs.
In response to these consequences, the Colorado state legislature passed a bill in 2025 that allocated millions to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to help clear the backlog; the bill was signed by Governor Jared Polis.
To address this issue in the meantime, state funds should be allocated to local and regional crime labs in Colorado. These respected labs currently lack funding to test the rape kits mandated by the 2013 law. This unfunded mandate forces them to send untested kits to the only funded lab, CBI. As an example, the Denver Crime Lab is forced to send approximately 150 untested rape kits to CBI annually. By funding these local labs, we could reduce the backlog and improve DNA result turnaround times, thus mitigating the impact of state lab mismanagement or misconduct by an analyst. In addition, the state should make use of the private DNA testing labs that have helped eliminate the backlog in many states over the last 20 years.
Sexual assault kit backlogs have become ubiquitous public conversations in the last decade. From coast to coast, these backlogs have sadly become as much a feature of political discourse as bad roads. State legislatures discuss them alongside budgetary items, not because they are an afterthought but because they so stubbornly persist.
When it comes to the rape kit backlog, the need for justice weighs heavily. So do the economics of the situation. Justice should be enough to push cities and states to address their backlogs, but we hope that CSI’s findings about the economic costs of these backlogs will give incentive to get the job done and will be useful in other states facing the same challenges.