John Cornyn: “today the House will take up a piece of legislation known as the Justice for All Reauthorization Act, a bill that will…”

“today the House will take up a piece of legislation known as the Justice for All Reauthorization Act, a bill that will help victims as they seek to restore their lives and will better equip law enforcement to fight some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. This legislation will help put more of the guilty behind bars and provide key resources to forensic labs across the country while aiming to end the rape kit backlog. The rape kit backlog in particular has been something that a wonderful woman named Debbie Smith has committed much of her life to, making sure we provide the resources to local forensic labs that test those rape kits because of the power of DNA and forensic testing. One can literally tell with almost certainty whether the evidence contained in a rape kit matches a DNA sample from a suspected sexual offender. Likewise, one can also exclude the suspect from being the one who provided that forensic DNA sample. In other words, you can exonerate as well as convict people as a result of testing from these rape kits. Being involved in this issue, we initially heard there were as many as 400,000 untested rape kits in America. Some of them had been tested 20 years after the fact only to find that the sexual offender didn't just commit one act of violence or sexual assault but was a serial offender.…”