A set of Colorado Senators are demanding extra oversight of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation before approving a spending request for it to dig out of a 500-day backlog of uncompleted sexual assault exams and questionable DNA tests.
The agency asked for more time to spend money authorized by lawmakers last year to retest DNA samples affected by alleged data manipulation by former CBI analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods. But members of the powerful joint budget committee rejected the request when the Department of Public Safety, which houses CBI, shared a “thin” and “appallingly bad” plan for how it would address those compromised results and the staggering wait time for sexual assault exam results, Sen. Jeff Bridges, chair of committee, said Tuesday.
“We were simply not willing to hand over cash to an agency that has proven, time and again, to have a track record of failing to deliver justice to the people of Colorado,” Bridges told members of the Democratic majority in a meeting about upcoming spending requests.
Lawmakers last year authorized $7.4 million for CBI to work through suspicious lab results from Woods. Without additional approval, that money needs to be spent by the end of this year.
Only 14 of the more than 1,000 cases flagged for retesting have been completed, Bridges said. The department’s answer to how retesting was proceeding was “voluminous, ambiguous, and did not provide a clear response,” budget committee staff wrote. Further, it looked like cost of the internal retests was “an inordinately expensive alternative” compared to using external labs, according to staff documents
In a statement, CBI spokesperson Rob Low said the agency has only been doing retests of Woods’ cases at the request of district attorneys — and so far, only 14 requests have been made.
The allegations against Woods also exacerbated an existing 275-day backlog in testing sexual assault forensic exams, commonly called rape kits, Low said, because CBI’s forensic scientists spent half their time last year reviewing Woods’ cases for anomalies.
All scientists have since returned to casework, and an additional 15 forensic scientists are in training now, he said.
“Reducing this backlog is the priority of the CBI, and we are fully aware of the impact this situation has, most importantly, on victims awaiting test results,” Low said in the statement. “The CBI has a 90-day turnaround goal for completing and testing these cases.”
CBI is facing a backlog of more than 500 days to process the sexual assault exams. That backlog became public after a sexual assault survivor testified last month to the Judiciary Committee that she’s been waiting more than 400 days for the results of her exam.
“How do we allow 1,400 humans to be treated this way after going through the most horrific, violent and violating crimes that exist,” the survivor, Miranda Spencer, testified Monday to the Joint Budget Committee, citing the number of people with untested rape kits.
Kelsey Harbert, a volunteer advocating with Spencer, told the JBC that she worried giving CBI more spending authority without oversight would lead to “literally kicking the kit down the road.”
Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat on the budget committee, said she wants a “concrete plan” for how the backlog will be cleared. In explaining the choice to the Democratic majority Tuesday, she cited Spencer and Harbert’s testimony.
“They did not want us to grant more spending authority to this department because they had zero trust in this agency or that this money would be well spent,” Amabile said.
Lawmakers are still deciding what that additional oversight might look like. Sens. Julie Gonzales and Mike Weissman, both Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, said that could be a full-time job to oversee the expedited testing of rape kits.
“As far as oversight, we want more of it, more often, and urgent communication back to us as a General Assembly,” Gonzales said.