A.G. Gancarski
In Tampa Thursday, Governor Rick Scott ceremonially signed SB 636, a bill introduced by Senator Lizbeth Benacquisto that requires testing of rape kits within 120 days of submission to a state crime lab, and requires that agencies submit kits for testing inside of 30 days after the beginning of the investigation
In a statement, Scott said that the bill will provide thousands of women with a renewed sense of safety and closure as they heal from the horrific crime of rape” and “will also help eliminate the backlog of rape testing kits in Florida and reduce future turnaround time for processing evidence.”
As of January 2016, an audit revealed over 13,000 untested kits throughout Florida, some of them from cases decades old.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said that as a career prosecutor, I have seen first-hand the heartache caused by sexual assault, and this legislation is a significant step toward bringing more predators to justice and helping victims heal,” adding that the Governor is “investing millions of dollars to begin testing the thousands of unprocessed kits in our state.”
The bill, approved by Governor Scott in March, will be a step toward bringing justice to thousands of Florida women to whom it has been denied.
