Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate the 15-year deadline to prosecute rape in cases where there’s a DNA match.
Current Massachusetts law bars rape prosecutions in older cases, even when DNA testing has identified a suspect.
An investigation last year by WBUR and ProPublica found that nearly all other states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. Many of those 47 states extended their deadlines in recent decades as DNA technology helped solve old cases and as evidence mounted that police had failed to fully investigate rapes.
The WBUR-ProPublica investigation followed the story of Louise, a woman who had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college, a police report said. Although DNA testing would later connect a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, prosecutors had to drop charges in her attack under Massachusetts’ statute.
(WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission. We agreed to identify Louise by her middle name.)
