The Debbie Smith Act, which first became law in 2004 and was last reauthorized in 2014, allows the attorney general and Congress to make grants available to states or localities to address the backlogs of rape kits, which usually contain DNA samples of perpetrators of sexual assault crimes. In May, the Senate voted unanimously to reauthorize the act, but the bill has been languishing in the House since then.
During a press conference at the Washington, D.C., Department of Forensic Sciences, a teary-eyed Smith — who had left her dying mother to come speak at the event — pled with lawmakers to reauthorize the act which bears her name.
"For many, this bill is their only hope for justice," Smith said. "Every day we don't reauthorize this could mean that a rapist's hope of claiming a new victim is realized."
According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, there has been an 85% increase in the demand for rape kit testing since 2011. The Debbie Smith Act gives Congress the ability to allocate $151 million to state and local labs to handle this increased demand for testing.
And the law has made an impact. According to the National Institute of Justice, 42% of hits in the FBI's DNA database system were the direct result of Debbie Smith Act funding.
In March, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced the Debbie Smith Act of 2019, which would reauthorize the original law.
"Profiles from this grant program now compose 43% of all forensic profiles in the FBI database," Feinstein said in a statement when the bill was introduced. "This program is incredibly important for rape survivors seeking justice, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to get it enacted."
Despite the law's importance, the reauthorization bill has been sitting in the House Judiciary Committee since May.
The office of committee chair Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., did not immediately return a request for comment.
Scott Berkowitz, the president and founder of RAINN, said that some members of the House were using the bill as leverage to get other things passed in the Senate, and that playing politics should be secondary to getting the bill passed.
"We need the speaker to step up and lead on this issue," Berkowitz said Friday. "We want to see Congress move on this when they come back from break next week."
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--Editing by Katherine Rautenberg.
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