Nevada lawmakers allocate funds to test rape kits

LAS VEGAS – Nevada lawmakers have agreed to allocate almost $3.7 million to test 7,500 sexual assault evidence kits languishing in police vaults around the state, including some in Las Vegas dating back 30 years.

State Attorney General Adam Laxalt told the legislature’s Interim Finance Committee on Wednesday the state is just getting started digging through the backlog.

The money includes $1.7 million from a settlement this summer with JPMorgan Chase in a debt collection practices case toward the rape kit effort.

Hundreds of rape kits untested in Washoe County

About 6,300 of the untested evidence collection kits are in Las Vegas.

Police forensic lab director Kimberly Murga says full funding could get every one of them tested by 2020.

Funding is also coming from the U.S. Justice Department and a New York City-based Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Program.

The effort comes after Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval signed a new law this year extending to 20 years the statute of limitations for reporting sex assaults in Nevada.

A DNA match can be crucial to prosecuting a case. The emergence and refinement of DNA evidence testing, along with the expansion of nationwide criminal DNA databases are credited with helping to solve sex attack cases that might otherwise have had to rely on third-party witness testimony.

Murga said Tuesday the state money would provide full funding toward testing every rape kit by 2020.

“We’re excited to get going,” Murga said. “This would allow us to bridge the gap and test the remaining sex assault kits that are in the backlog that we know of today.”

Murga said Las Vegas police are also receiving almost $2 million from the New York County District Attorney Sexual Assault Kit Backlog Elimination Program in conjunction with the Joyful Heart Foundation, an advocacy group associated with “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” star Mariska Hargitay.

Nearly $2 million would come to the state from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Early this year, officials tallied about 6,300 untested rape kits in Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County, an area with about 2 million people and 40 million tourists a year, including the Las Vegas Strip. Two untested kits in Las Vegas date to 1985.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department alone has about 5,600 kits to test, Murga said. The number put Las Vegas in the top four of one recent ranking of large U.S. cities with the most untested kits.

Officials think there are another 1,200 untested evidence kits in evidence vaults elsewhere in the state.

Testing can be expensive, from $500 to $1,500 per kit.

Murga’s lab has about 60 full-time personnel and tests about 100 sex assault kits in-house per year. It uses a Texas firm to test others. The police forensic lab is a sister agency to the Las Vegas police crime scene investigations unit.