On the recordMarch 28, 2022
I support H.R. 3359, the ``Homicide Victims' Families' Rights Act of 2021,'' and urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation, which establishes a procedure for families of murder victims, in cases investigated at the federal level, to continue to pursue justice for their murdered family member when the trail has gone cold. This legislation gives a designated family member the right to request a review of their murdered loved one's case file after three years. Unfortunately, four out of ten murder victims' families in this country never receive any closure in the loss of their family member. FBI data shows the percentage of homicides cleared by an arrest or other means has declined significantly from 1965 to today while the number of unsolved homicides grows by the thousands nationwide every year. In 2019, four Texas cities, including Houston, cleared 40 percent or less of reported homicides, according to FBI statistics. Low clearance rates lead to low confidence in law enforcement and reduced citizen cooperation, which lead to even lower clearance rates. The backlog of cases and low clearance rates disproportionately affect murder victims who are poor, undereducated, unemployed, and black. Poor, black, and brown victims and their families tend to receive less attention to their cases from law enforcement than those of other socioeconomic backgrounds and racial groups and their cases go unsolved. This disparate treatment is unacceptable.…
