Shelby County officials urge more funding for TBI to speed up sexual assault kit testing – Tennessee Lookout

Shelby County commissioners urged the Tennessee General Assembly to prioritize clearing the state’s backlog of rape kits on Wednesday.

The Shelby County Legislative Affairs Committee unanimously passed a joint resolution of the Shelby County Commission and the Memphis City Council requesting increased funding to staff the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. 

After the kidnapping and killing of kindergarten teacher Eliza Fletcher, Memphis officials found that police had submitted a rape kit in September 2021 that linked Fletcher’s accused killer to a previous crime, but a backlog had left the evidence untested for nearly a year. 

If requested, the TBI accepts rush jobs in testing evidence, but no such request had been made on the 2021 rape kit linking Cleotha Henderson to the rape of a Memphis woman. Henderson had also previously served nearly a two-decade sentence for aggravated kidnapping and was released in 2020.   

TBI officials have previously requested 40 more special agent/forensic scientist positions and 10 more technicians but only received enough funding to staff half of the requested personnel.

In response to nationwide criticism, Gov. Bill Lee announced that the TBI would receive fast-tracked funding to hire 25 additional forensic lab positions to decrease the state’s turnaround times in processing sexual assault kits. 

But Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. noted that the state has long struggled to process rape kits.  In 2010, Memphis officials voted to increase funding to deal with rape kit backlogs and were party to two federal lawsuits over the city’s backlog of then-12,000 untested kits.

Ford also reference a 2010 episode of Law and Order, a fictional show at times inspired by real criminal cases, in which detectives learned backlogs caused rape kits to be poorly stored, misplaced or accidentally destroyed. 

“You had a lot of cases that were not able to be solved or have evidence because of either the lack of rape kits or longevity and having them tested,” he said in reference to the Law and Order episode.

“It’s unfortunate that 12 years after the fact we’re still having the same type of challenges now,” he added.

Commissioners also noted the correlation between increased violent crime and untested rape kits. Aside from rape kits, TBI forensic scientists also handle biological evidence submitted for homicides, robberies, assaults and break-ins.

The Jackson Crime Laboratory and Headquarters, which processes evidence submitted from Shelby County, reported an average turnaround of 33 to 49 weeks for rape kits between September 2021 and August. 2022. The crime lab is currently staffed by four forensic scientists. 

Shelby County law enforcement agencies submitted 216 rape kit requests to the TBI lab in 2021, the highest number in the state. 

“I personally have had conversations with a number of women’s groups who are in support of this and who are really asking us as public officials to lead the charge in order to secure the resources so we don’t have any other woman feeling more violated than she already does or reviolated as a result of us not having these rape kits processed timely,” said Commissioner Shante Avant. 

Commissioners also discussed requesting additional funding to support violence prevention programs in Shelby County. 

“The state has a surplus, as I’ve said previously, and we need serious funding of all of these programs,” said Commissioner Brandon Morrison in reference to Tennessee’s rainy day balance.  

The Memphis City Council is expected to vote on the resolution during its next meeting on Oct. 11.

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