A four million dollar donation from the state could help cut in half a backlog of untested rape kits in Detroit.
We have more from The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta.
There are eight or nine thousand rape kits remaining of those that were left behind and untested when the city of Detroit police lab closed three years ago. Some of the cases are 25 years old.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette says it’s unacceptable that some of these crimes have gone decades without being solved.
“Twice, women were violated – once by the rape, and then second, that justice was put in a box, put on a shelf,” he says.
The funds will come from money won in lawsuits by the state.
Tests on a few hundred kits have already turned up suspects living all across Michigan and half a dozen other states. The Wayne County prosecutor says, in one case, timely DNA tests of an evidence kit might have stopped a rapist from going on to murder seven women.