MADISON, Wis. (AP) - The Latest on the state Department of Justice’s efforts to test unanalyzed sexual assault kits (all times local):
2 p.m.
Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel says the state Department of Justice is mailing the last of thousands of untested sexual assault evidence kits to private laboratories for analysis.
Schimel started a project in 2016 to test thousands of sexual assault kits sitting on police and hospital shelves. The DOJ has identified 6,800 untested kits and has been working to get about 4,000 tested in hopes of developing DNA profiles.
The attorney general said during a news conference Tuesday that testing has been completed on 1,884 kits with 2,271 still being analyzed. The DOJ sent the last 48 kits to labs for testing on Tuesday. He says testing on all the kits will be done by the end of the year.
Critics have charged that testing is moving far too slowly.
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10:50 a.m.
Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel says the state Department of Justice has finished sending untested sexual assault evidence kits to private laboratories for analysis.
Schimel made the announcement Tuesday, countering criticism that DOJ is moving too slowly to finish testing.
The attorney general began a project in 2016 to test thousands of sexual assault kits sitting on police department and hospital shelves. The DOJ has identified 6,800 untested kits and is working to test 4,122 of them. The agency chose not to test kits in cases where the victim wouldn’t consent to analysis or there’s already been a conviction in the case.
According to the DOJ website, testing had been completed on 1,724 kits as of May 4. About 60 kits had yielded DNA hits in the FBI’s database.
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