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Schimel: DOJ has sent all untested kits to labs

By: Associated Press//May 29, 2018//

Schimel: DOJ has sent all untested kits to labs

By: Associated Press//May 29, 2018//

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel says the state Department of Justice has now sent all untested sexual-assault-evidence kits to private laboratories for analysis.

Schimel made that announcement on Tuesday, countering criticism that DOJ is moving too slowly with its testing responsibilities.

The attorney general began a project in 2016 to test thousands of sexual-assault kits sitting on police department and hospital shelves. The DOJ has identified 6,800 untested kits and is working to test 4,122 of them. The agency chose not to test kits in cases in which victims wouldn’t consent to analysis or when there’s already been a conviction.

According to the DOJ website, testing had been completed on 1,724 kits by May 4. About 60 kits had yielded DNA hits in the FBI’s database.

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