Panel Approves Extended Rape Prosecution Statute

SACRAMENTO — After tearful testimony from two Los Angeles rape victims, legislation to extend indefinitely California’s statute of limitations on rape prosecutions cleared a key committee Tuesday.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee unanimously approved a bill by Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) that would allow prosecutors to use DNA evidence many years after a rape occurred--a major exemption from California’s current six-year statute of limitations on rape cases. The bill originally would have extended the statute by two years, but that language was removed before the committee approved it.

Joined by prosecutors, police groups and representatives of the state attorney general’s office, victims rights groups lauded the bill’s progress and vowed to continue lobbying lawmakers to ensure its passage.

Jeri Elster, a Los Angeles rape victim whose accused assailant was located through DNA testing--too late for charges to be filed under the statute--shared her emotional story with the panel.

“It was a little harder, a little more emotional than I thought,” a still teary Elster said after the hearing. “But if this is what I have to do, I am going to continue doing it.”

Across the nation, statutes of limitation have come under intense criticism in recent years as a combination of groups questions whether they block justice in an age when DNA evidence can point to suspects decades after a crime occurred--and sometimes free innocent people from jail.

“As DNA databases grow, more cold rape cases will be solved,” said Karen Pomer of the Rainbow Sisters Project, a Santa Monica-based advocacy group for sexual assault survivors, and the victim of a violent 1995 rape herself. “But without changes in the California law, rapists will go unprosecuted.”

Correa noted that there is a two-year federal backlog in processing DNA tests requested by local authorities, and that many areas still lack the equipment to conduct the tests, making an extension crucial. Though his bill would allow prosecutions years after the statute was up if a DNA link were made, the charges would have to be filed within a year of the DNA test.

The bill, he said, is needed to end “a tragedy that befalls California with every tick of the clock,” as despairing victims see the window of time in which their rapists can be prosecuted fade away.

Another bill related to the consequences of advances in DNA technology also cleared the same committee Tuesday.

The bill by Assembly Minority Leader Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) would require the state to pay anyone who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned $100 for every day spent behind bars. Current law limits such compensation to a total of $10,000.