[Congressional Bills 107th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 3961 Introduced in House (IH)]







107th CONGRESS
  2d Session
                                H. R. 3961

 To provide additional resources to States to eliminate the backlog of 
unanalyzed rape kits and to ensure timely analysis of rape kits in the 
                                future.


_______________________________________________________________________


                    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                             March 13, 2002

 Mr. Nadler (for himself, Mrs. Mink of Hawaii, Mrs. Jones of Ohio, and 
 Mr. Andrews) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
                       Committee on the Judiciary

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
 To provide additional resources to States to eliminate the backlog of 
unanalyzed rape kits and to ensure timely analysis of rape kits in the 
                                future.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Rape Kit DNA Analysis Backlog 
Elimination Act''.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND PURPOSE.

    (a) Findings.--The Congress finds the following:
            (1) Every 2 minutes, somewhere in America, someone is 
        sexually assaulted.
            (2) The Department of Justice reports that in the year 
        2000, there were an estimated 261,000 rapes and sexual 
        assaults.
            (3) The annual National Crime Victimization study 
        consistently finds that only about one-third of rapes in the 
        United States are reported.
            (4) According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the 
        Department of Justice, in the year 2000, 34 percent of female 
        victims of rape or sexual assault reported that the offender 
        was a stranger.
            (5) According to the Department of Justice, DNA evidence is 
        often recovered from crime scenes and can be crucial to the 
        investigation of sexual assaults and other violent crimes.
            (6) According to the Department of Justice, the importance 
        of the role forensic DNA evidence plays in solving sexual 
        assault and homicide cases cannot be overstated.
            (7) A DNA profile from a crime scene can be entered into 
        the Combined DNA Index System of the Federal Bureau of 
        Investigation (known as CODIS), which allows agencies to match 
        DNA profiles with other profiles entered into local, State, and 
        national databases to identify a suspect or link serial crimes.
            (8) A 1999 study commissioned by the National Institute of 
        Justice estimated there was an annual backlog of 180,000 rape 
        kits that have not been analyzed, and news reports indicate 
        that the number of rape kits in the backlog may be as high as 
        500,000.
            (9) Law enforcement officials using CODIS have matched 
        unknown DNA evidence taken from crime scenes with known 
        offender DNA profiles in the State and national DNA database 
        2,371 times.
            (10) At least 100 inmates have been cleared and freed to 
        date due to DNA testing.
            (11) By convicting the guilty and freeing the innocent, DNA 
        evidence truly serves the interests of justice.
    (b) Purpose.--The purpose of this Act is to provide adequate 
funding to ensure that the backlog of unanalyzed rape kits is 
eliminated.

SEC. 3. GRANTS FOR DNA ANALYSIS OF DNA SAMPLES FROM RAPE KITS.

    Section 2 of the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act of 2000 (42 
U.S.C. 14135) is amended as follows:
            (1) Subsection (a)(2) is amended by inserting after ``from 
        crime scenes'' the following: ``, to eliminate the backlog in 
        carrying out DNA analyses of samples from rape kits, and to 
        ensure that DNA analyses of samples from rape kits are timely 
        carried out in the future''.
            (2) Subsection (j)(2) is amended--
                    (A) in subparagraph (C), by striking 
                ``$25,000,000'' and inserting ``$150,000,000,''; and
                    (B) in subparagraph (D), by striking 
                ``$25,000,000'' and inserting ``$100,000,000,''.
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