BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 1848
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB
1848 (Chiu)
As Amended March 15, 2016
Majority vote
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|Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------|
|Public Safety |7-0 |Jones-Sawyer, | |
| | |Melendez, Lackey, | |
| | |Lopez, Low, Quirk, | |
| | |Santiago | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------|
|Appropriations |19-0 |Gonzalez, Bigelow, | |
| | |Bloom, Bonilla, | |
| | |Bonta, Calderon, | |
| | |Chang, Daly, Eggman, | |
| | |Gallagher, Eduardo | |
| | |Garcia, Holden, | |
| | |Jones, Obernolte, | |
| | |Quirk, Santiago, | |
| | |Wagner, Weber, Wood | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
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AB 1848
Page 2
SUMMARY: Requires local law enforcement agencies to
periodically update the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence
Tracking database (SAFE-T) on the disposition of all sexual
assault evidence kits (rape kits) in their custody.
Specifically, this bill:
1)Finds and declares that there is a significant public interest
in knowing whether rape kits have been tested and if the kits
have not been tested, the reasons why they were not tested.
2)Requires participation by law enforcement agencies in the
SAFE-T database.
3)Requires law enforcement agencies, on a schedule set by the
Department of Justice (DOJ) to submit via SAFE-T the:
a) Number of rape kits collected during the set period,
b) Number of kits where biological evidence was submitted
to a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) laboratory for analysis,
c) Number of kits from which a DNA profile hit was
generated, and
d) Reasons why a particular rape kit was not submitted to a
DNA laboratory for testing.
4)Requires DNA laboratories to enter into SAFE-T, every 120
days, and the reasons why any particular rape kit has not been
tested.
5)States that SAFE-T shall not contain any identifying
information about a victim or a suspect, any DNA profiles, or
any information that would impair a pending criminal
investigation.
6)Requires DOJ to report to the Legislature quarterly a summary
AB 1848
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of the information entered into SAFE-T.
7)States that, beside the required report to the Legislature,
all contents of SAFE-T shall be confidential, and no law
enforcement agency or laboratory may be compelled in a civil
or criminal proceeding to disclose the contents of SAFE-T
unless the contents contain exculpatory evidence for a
criminal defendant.
8)Finds and declares that it is necessary to keep SAFE-T's
contents confidential in order to protect victims of crime.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Requires an adult arrested for or charged with a felony and a
juvenile adjudicated for a felony to submit DNA samples.
2)Establishes the DNA and Forensic Identification Database and
Data Bank Program to assist federal, state, and local criminal
justice and law enforcement agencies within and outside
California in the expeditious and accurate detection and
prosecution of individuals responsible for sex offenses and
other crimes, the exclusion of suspects who are being
investigated for these crimes, and the identification of
missing and unidentified persons, particularly abducted
children.
3)Encourages DNA analysis of rape kits within the statute of
limitations, which states that a criminal complaint must be
filed within one year after the identification of the suspect
by DNA evidence, and that DNA evidence must be analyzed within
two years of the offense for which it was collected.
AB 1848
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4)Encourages law enforcement agencies to submit rape kits to
crime labs within 20 days after the kit is booked into
evidence.
5)Encourages the establishment of rapid turnaround DNA programs,
where the rape kit is sent directly from the facility where it
was collected to the lab for testing within five days.
6)Encourages crime labs to do one of the following:
a) Process rape kits, create DNA profiles when possible,
and upload qualifying DNA profiles into the Combined DNA
Index System (CODIS) within 120 days of receipt of the rape
kit; or
b) Transmit the rape kit to another crime lab within 30
days to create a DNA profile, and then upload the profile
into CODIS within 30 days of being notified about the
presence of DNA.
7)Requires law enforcement agencies to inform victims in writing
if they intend to destroy a rape kit 60 days prior to the
destruction of the rape kit, when the case is unsolved and the
statute of limitations has not run.
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee:
1)Unknown minor reimbursable state mandated costs (General Fund)
for local agencies to provide the required information, in a
AB 1848
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yet unspecified schedule, to DOJ. However, this bill does
require DOJ to submit quarterly reports to the Legislature;
therefore staff assumes the information must be submitted at
least quarterly. The database is web-based and free for local
law enforcement agencies, so the only cost to local agencies
will be workload to enter and data and any status updates.
Also, DOJ manages all DNA evidence testing for 46 of the 58
counties; the reimbursable cost from the other 12 should be
minor, if any. However, reporting the reason why a rape kit
was not tested will be more resource intensive than providing
statistical data; but that should not be a common occurrence.
2)Costs to DOJ are minor and absorbable.
COMMENTS: According to the author, "When tested, DNA evidence can be an
incredibly powerful tool to solve and prevent crime. It can
identify an unknown assailant and confirm the presence of a
known suspect. It can affirm the survivor's account of the
attack and discredit the suspect. It can connect the suspect to
other crime scenes. It can exonerate innocent suspects.
"However, as we've seen over the past few years, there has been
widespread mismanagement of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases
in many jurisdictions. Survivors of sexual assault who are
submitting sexual assault evidence kits aren't getting the
answers they need and deserve.
"To accomplish these things, however, rape kits must be tested.
Right now, some kits are analyzed, but a vast majority is not.
In California, we know there is a backlog of over 6,100 kits -
but we don't know how long they've been sitting on the shelf, or
if there were or were not legitimate reasons why they were not
tested.
AB 1848
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"Currently, there is no comprehensive data on how many rape kits
are collected and the reasons why kits are not tested. To get
at the crux of the backlog problem, we need to know how many
kits are collected each year, and if they're not analyzed, we
need to know why.
"AB 1848 aims to solve this problem by directing law enforcement
agencies to track how many sexual assault evidence kits they
collect and the number of kits they analyze each year, and
further directing agencies to report annually to DOJ their
reasons for not analyzing sexual assault evidence kits.
"Data and transparency are a necessary part of the solution.
The data collected through AB 1848 could help policy makers
consider whether law enforcement agencies' current approaches in
this area need to change or whether or not law enforcement needs
additional resources to better manage the processing of these
kits."
Analysis Prepared by:
Matt Dean/ PUB. S. / (916) 319-3744 FN: 0002805