CO HB1020

The Executive Director must begin promulgating rules within 30 days and complete them within 6 months for handling forensic medical evidence in sexual assault cases, including standards for collection, submission, testing, and consent procedures.

Rules must require forensic evidence to be collected if a victim requests it, establish timeframes for submission and analysis (21 days after receipt once backlog is resolved), and set consent standards that notify victims of potential effects at each process step.

Law enforcement and medical personnel are prohibited from discouraging victims from receiving forensic medical examinations, and all agencies must comply with the rules 90 days after promulgation.

Each law enforcement agency must submit an inventory of unanalyzed forensic evidence for active cases to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation within 90 days and forward the evidence within 120 days; the bureau must submit a plan for analyzing the backlog within 120 days.

$6,351,002 is appropriated to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for fiscal year 2013-2014 to fund contract services for testing backlog evidence related to implementation of this act; Section 4 of the backlog provisions repeals effective July 1, 2015.