Home Elections Crime & Courts News Investigations Subscribe Sign In Subscribe Sign In STORIES MOST RECENT STORIES ISU Basketball Iowa State men's basketball wins NIT Season Tip-Off Crime & Courts Court orders new trial in case of mistaken vasectomy Development New transloading facility could make Des Moines a rail shipping hub Crime & Courts Teen who killed her alleged rapist also a victim, lawyers contend education Johnston School Board ends mask mandate for students, staff editorials Editorial: Attacks on books jump from dispiriting to sinister Des Moines New wards would pit 2 Des Moines city councilors against each other in 2023 Cyclone Insider Peterson: Was Iowa State's home finale a goodbye to Matt Campbell too? sports No more Mason City 'Mohawks,' but Iowa's mascot debate still simmers politics Iowa Senate GOP leader to run for reelection in new district 6-year, $3 million initiative brings an end to Iowa's sexual assault evidence kit backlog While officials say the initiative cut the time it takes to process DNA samples to eight weeks and the evidence, some of which dates back to the 1990s, has resulted in four prosecutions, many of the nearly 300 samples that matched known profiles will never result in charges because the evidence came too late for victims who no longer wish to see their attackers prosecuted. WILLIAM MORRIS | Des Moines Register 10 hours ago Show Caption In the end, the evidence that broke open a 17-year-old sexual assault and kidnapping case had been in police possession all along. Myron Brandon of Pacific Junction pleaded guilty in October to kidnapping and transporting a minor with sexual intent and is scheduled for sentencing in March. The two victims, who were 14 and 15 at the time, told police in 2003 that a man in Omaha offered them a ride across town, but instead drove them into Iowa, threatened them with a knife, sexually assaulted them and burned them both with a cigarette. Brandon wasn't identified and charged until last year, when an evidence kit collected after the attack was tested as part of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative by the Iowa Attorney General's Office. The project, which launched in 2015, has finally worked through the state's evidence kit backlog, Attorney General Tom Miller announced Tuesday. Previously: Iowa rolls out new system to track sexual assault test kits, nears end of backlog Iowa received $3 million in federal grant money to tackle its backlog, with roughly 3,800 untested evidence kits collected prior to April 2015, including some dating back to the 1990s. The initiative worked with a private lab to test 1,606 of those kits, resulting in 852 valid DNA samples and 290 matches with other DNA profiles in federal databases. Twenty-six of those belonged to people previously convicted of sex crimes. Others were referred to local prosecutors, and have so far resulted in four criminal cases, the most recent filed in Winnebago County in November, and two convictions, including Brandon's. In announcing the conclusion of the project Tuesday, Miller touted not only the hard work of sorting out the backlog, but procedural changes and additional staffing that will allow the state to process sexual assault evidence faster, with more transparency to victims, and without allowing another backlog to develop despite an 87% increase in kits submitted to the state lab for testing. Get the The Cheat Sheet newsletter in your inbox. Your guide to Iowa's school year. Delivery: Sunday Your Email "We’ve gone from a backlog that was a significant problem to a system where it takes eight weeks to test — and it can be tracked during that eight weeks," Miller said. On the campaign trail: Polk County Attorney candidates spar over untested rape kits, reducing cash bail in first campaign event In 2020, law enforcement agencies across the state began rolling out the new Track-Kit program, a computerized system to help law enforcement, health care providers, labs and victims keep track of kits. The Division of Criminal Investigation, which operates the state's crime lab, has also increased staffing there and overhauled its processes to work more efficiently, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephan Bayens said Tuesday. "Since the inception of this project with the Attorney General's office, the lab has seen an 87% increase in sexual assault kit submissions," he said. "Now, almost every law enforcement agency in the state is sending their kits to the lab. More kits are being processed. More profiles are being entered into CODIS (a federal database of DNA evidence) and we’re seeing a great number of investigative hits and leads." From 2019: With thousands of rape kits untested, Iowa will implement a new tracking, reporting system That 87% increase is not necessarily due to an increase in sexual assaults, Bayens said, but rather a change in how local agencies collect and process evidence. "It’s more that there was a practice for a long period of time among many local law enforcement agencies to simply not submit those kits for DNA analysis for a variety of reasons," he said. "And really, part of this program was to get past whatever those stumbling blocks were and to make sure they were all coming in for testing." The lab went from testing 433 kits in 2019 to three times as many, 1,298, in 2020. So far this year, the lab has tested 734 kits. Iowa has 4,265 untested rape evidence kits Iowa has 4,265 untested rape evidence kits held in storage by the state's law enforcement agencies, including 36 that date back to the 1990s. Testing of the kits will begin in June. WOCHIT The often years-long delay in testing kits has cost investigators and survivors. The 1,606 kits tested represent less than half of the pre-2015 kits that were identified in a statewide audit. Of the rest, the most common reason they were not tested is that the victim could not be identified or declined to cooperate, Miller said. For the same reason, many of the 290 cases in which investigators matched DNA evidence to known profiles will never result in charges. "Of the 290, the main reason prosecution didn’t take place was that the victims did not want to go forward," Miller said. "And that was largely due to the timing. They were very, very, very old cases." Hard questions: Should Iowa test DNA evidence even when the victim doesn't want it done? Officials are determined not to leave assault survivors in limbo for so long in the future. When the project began, it took an average of 10-14 months for the state crime lab to process a DNA sample. Better processes and more staff have gotten that time down to eight weeks, and Bayens is hopeful to shrink it further still. That represents a sea change in how local agencies can investigate and prosecute sexual assaults, said Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, the director of the Crime Victim Assistance Division in the Attorney General's office. "As a prosecutor, that was one of the things that always broke my heart when I had a sexual assault case, was to tell a victim, 'Yes, you've done everything right — you've reported, you got your kit done — (but) we're going to have to wait to file any charges because we're not going to get any evidence back for a year,'" she said. Mike Halverson, a DNA technical leader at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation lab in Ankeny, demonstrates how rape evidence is collected using an alternative … Show more BRYON HOULGRAVE/THE REGISTER In addition to testing old kits and improving the process to test new ones, the six-year initiative also saw the state adopt new statewide protocols for sexual assault forensic examiners and training thousands of investigators in best practices for sexual assault cases. Murphy's division also received legislative approval this year to add a new position and is currently hiring for the new Sexual assault Forensic Response Coordinator role. All of this work will make Iowa law enforcement better able to investigate and prosecute sexual assaults and more responsive to the needs of survivors, Bayens said. "Future sexual assaults may be better solved and better addressed because if we had someone that was engaged in serial sexual assaults … now a sexual assault kit that was entered into CODIS five years ago is now hitting one that happened a week ago," he said. By the numbers: 4,275: untested sexual assault kits when the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative began. 1,606: Kits selected for testing. 852: Valid DNA profiles developed from testing. 290: Matches found for those profiles in federal databases. 26: DNA profiles matched to people already convicted of sex crimes. 4: New criminal cases filed. 439: Sexual assault kits tested at the DCI Criminalistics Laboratory in 2018. 433: Kits tested by the lab in 2019. 1,298: Kits tested in 2020. 734: Kits tested in 2021 as of Nov. 30. WHAT'S HAPPENING Stories you might want to read Judge says feds can't require COVID vaccine for health care workers in Iowa, 9 other states What we know about two carbon capture pipelines proposed in Iowa A homeless Des Moines teen who killed her alleged rapist faces 20 years in prison. She's a victim, too, her attorneys say. Iowa Senate GOP leader Jack Whitver to move, seek reelection in more rural district Fairfield teens plead not guilty in Iowa high school teacher's death William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris. 10 hours ago Share your feedback to help improve our site! 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