Republicans and Democrats do not agree on the Iran and Syria or Cuba or China or the state of the nation after Obama. It is estimated that 3.5 million Californians work part-time. In November, San Jose voters approved a first in nation ballot measure that would require employers to give existing workers first dibs on hours as they become available before they hire a new part-time worker or contractor. We're talking to the retina Gonzales is San Diego about a statewide measure she says is modeled after the San Jose measure. What is wrong with the company going around. Isn't it there option to do what they can do to make many? Back you can look at it that way but most companies get help and benefit from the government. Now we are in a situation where companies will hire part-time workers and contract workers. The workers cannot sustain themselves. We have to pick up the slack. We have to provide section 8 housing or food stamps. We have to ensure these other things that were providing rather than it being a model workplace and allow people to earn their capacity. We are not same that companies who do not have enough work do not have to hire more people or to give people hours. Whenever hiring, when they need more work, they need to offer that to the workers. The bill that you introduced would place these requirements on businesses as small as 10 benefits. They avoid paying -- paying benefits. Is at this placing a paperwork burden on? Back you have to establish how this is simple meta-. With respect, there will be. There will be. There always is. The vast majority overwhelming majority of bits how businesses are under 10 people. We have a lot of -- fast food restaurants and franchisees, they sometimes fall under the 35 number but they are part of a corporate structure that make it difficult for workers to be able to survive. That is why we are looking at over 10 people. We have a push that is spread across the country. I'm curious as what you see is next for the labor movement. Where I see the real future going is accepting to a certain extent that work is changing. How do we adjust the labor laws in a way that allows workers in a new economy to organize? Even the right to organize, there are laws that allow unions to form to leverage parish, they are the old models. People do the same job. They are workplace and they are able to come together and sign a card and have election and come together a bargain. That is not where the future of work is. I think we need to look forward and say how can we get workers in different cities and areas. They are working remotely or through technology. How do we allow them to come together with corporate or business interest to provide leverage or balance so that the system of cast the capital works? That was Gonzales speaking with John. Last fall, we learned about untested rape kits languishing in police department custody. The city Council is considering changing policies for tasting great kits and increasing running. San Diego was among many cities being confronted. Mexico has one of the worst sexual assault rates in nation.'s thousands of samples of evidence that could identify repeat sexual offenders were sitting untested. The front desk, they report on what it takes for survivors to provide the evidence in the first place. Known as sure how many untested sexual assault evidence kits there are in evidence lockers and -- among the United States. About 5500 in New Mexico. State officials have known about it for a year. Even though it has got attention. The number of untested kits have not shrunk at all. This breaks my heart. Many of the ones that have done are in storage. Gail is that court Nader for the sexual assault nurse examiners. Nurses collect DNA evidence. She showed me around the safe. We have several doors. It is considered an offender free facility. Hospitals in the area refer everyone to essay any after sexual soul. Survivors do not have to go to the place. Evidence kits can be stored. They do not degrade. We entered an exam room. This one is tailored to assault survivors. It is a hard exam to have done. We make it as comfortable as we can. Were showers. We have close. We can change them into something more comparable. She says they can provide some peace of mind about a person's physical health. It can be healing to have somebody make sure they are okay and make sure the channels are okay. The patient has control over the exam. They -- if they just what medication, they can get medication. We try to re-empower them over what they can do. The nurses do more than collect evidence and examine physical injuries. They can help with sexual infections after an assault. Since they know DNA testing is not been done, they are focusing on the wellness aspect. I am optimistic that some good changes will come. The end tested kits are scattered around the state. The mayor announced 200 rants to clear 10% of them but the state auditors new numbers show that so far, none of the old kids have been tested yet. Even where the systems are falling through, there are so many individuals in the DAs office in the rape crisis center that are outraged with the fact that this backlog exists. This is the volunteer advocate partner at the rape crisis center in central Mexico. They are individually working so hard so that survivors do not have these experiences a feeling like they fell off the map and no one cared. Woody you tell them? They probably have a lot of questions. That is fair. I cannot imagine the frustration of feeling like perhaps everyone that I have dealt with has failed me because this extremely violent thing happened to me. Someone is often free with no consequences for actions. Why was my case less important? Why do people doubt me or why has there not been any action from a case? Something that even if the criminal justice path is not right for survivor, and it is not for lots of people, there is other help available for people to reach out after being assaulted. They see examining all of the DNA so. Let's say they get tested. What is to stop them from stacking up again? Law-enforcement is dropping the ball is a big part of answering the question. We have Marissa. Welcome. Thank you. You describe the same the program and examination of survivors. How did the examinations differ from a standard evidence collection for rape victims? Thefor the --for -- they shifted the emphasis towards wellness. Make sure people have medications and to prevent sexually transmitted infections, checking out entries, and also collecting photographs and write up a report on injuries that are sustained. Those can be used later on in court, even if the kids are not tested. It sounds in a sense, it is a kinder experience to go through them perhaps the standard evidence collection expect I think that is the goal. They want to create a warm environment that can begin the healing process. They see survivors right after something has happened to them. They are kind of beginning the process of people feeling better. Are all the kids collected by the same nurses? Are they turned over to the police? No. Survivors make a choice if they are going to go down the path of the criminal justice. A lot of advocates and said that criminal justice is not a healing path for survivors. It is not at all. It is still in the hands of the person to meet with the nurses. They can choose whether or not to take their case to the police. If they do, they store the DNA evidence for up to year. They have a year to make a decision. I want to follow up on that. Pursuing the assault in the criminal justice system is not the right choice for a lot of survivors as you are saying. What are the reasons for that? You will see this in the rest of the series. There is a lot of different attitudes towards sexual assault across different law-enforcement agencies. How seriously individual officers and investigators take the survivors and their stories. That is one of the reasons that they do not get tested. There's not standardized policies across the agency same every time someone comes in and is DNA evidence, were going to bring it to lapse. You can come up to -- it can be an individual officers decisions about whether to send the evidence down the chain and take the story seriously. The DA tells us that there is a lot of trouble that the survivors are telling truth. They are giving consent is an issue of whether or not there is a kit involved in the prosecution. In San Diego, prosecutors say there is often no reason to test rape kits for DNA when a victim knows the attacker. Is at the same reason given in New Mexico for not testing kits? Isn't clear. There are so many different agencies that are involved in making these decisions. I cannot speak to the individual decision but advocates and some experts will tell you that entering -- having the kit tested at entering the DNA in the database links crimes across the state and across the nation. It can help catch people. A lot of sexual offenders are repeat offenders. It can really do a lot if you catch them early. It can prevent repeat offenders -- offenses down line. What about the cost involved in testing the kids? Back here, it is 400-$500 per kit. There is other costs associated. The cost of investigation or bringing it to trial, the cost of providing an advocate to a survivor who maybe has had a kit backlog since the 80s. Some of these kids date back that far. Maybe you have a kit that was submitted when they were child and now they are an adult. There is a lot of expenses associated with opening this up endeavor. What we learn? Were going to talk about police awareness of the backlog. I spoke to a captain who did not realize that there was a backlog. We're going to talk about the policies and laws in New Mexico. And the idea that maybe the law is not being followed. We have 1:00's the says the kids should be tested. We're going to get into the trial and talking about how bring in the cases to trial can be a challenge for prosecutors and some of the things that prevent conviction in courtrooms. We will hear the next part of your series through the end of the week. Thank you so much.
This is the third report in a three-part series looking at sexual assault and the criminal justice system that fails so many survivors. Here is part one and part two.
New Mexico has the highest rate of untested sexual assault evidence kits per capita in the nation. We’ve talked to advocates, a nurse and law enforcement about their surprise and struggles with decades of ignored evidence in the state. But even if a prosecutor has DNA to use in court, that doesn’t mean an accused rapist is going straight to jail. The biggest hurdle of all might be how hard it is to convince people that survivors are telling the truth.
Only about one-third of all of the sexual assaults in New Mexico get reported to police. And in the end, only a small fraction of people go to jail for it—six for every 1,000 sexual assaults, according to the state Auditor’s Office.
Bernalillo County District Attorney Kari Brandenburg remembered a rape case earlier on in her career. She was sure the jury was going to come up with a guilty verdict. The physical evidence was startling. It looked like a clear win for the newish prosecutor. Instead, the guy walked. "And I can’t think of anything worse than being a victim of rape and having the courage to go through the system and testify at trial, and then have the defendant acquitted," she said.
A quick note: There are lots of other resources that have nothing to do with police or courts that people can get by reaching out to an advocate after a sexual assault. There are free health exams, counseling and even financial help. But for the moment, we’re talking about the court system.
Of the cases that make it to District Courts around the state, about half of them are dismissed entirely. Lack of consent, Brandenburg said, can be hard to argue. "Probably a vast majority of rape cases are what we would call acquaintance rapes where the accused person could use consent as a defense," she said.
Part of the problem in found in a jury box. Juries are made up of a cross-section of people selected from the general public. And that means the nuances of what people believe about sexual assault and who’s to blame can affect the success of a prosecution. "We give a lot of lip service to valuing women in our society—and the majority of rape victims are women although they can be male—but I think that there is somewhat of an undervaluing in reality," she said.
MAP: Will Your Sexual Assault Be Prosecuted? Depends On Where You Live
Lawyer Jacqueline James said jurors come in with their own ideas about sexual assault. "There are preconceptions of what a rape is, of how a victim should react," she said. "Juries believe that if she didn’t fight, then that didn’t show that she was raped."
James has been prosecuting adult sexual assault cases in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County for four years at the District Attorney’s Office. She says forensic evidence like DNA can fortify a case. "It can help us, let’s say, if a victim is intoxicated, passed out, or doesn’t remember what happened, it provides the evidence of what kind of sexual assault it was," she said. "So DNA in that case is invaluable to show that something did occur."
Juries like to see DNA evidence, James said. But having DNA doesn’t mean it’ll be easy to prove rape. "In rape you have a few defenses, which is, ‘I wasn’t there,’ ‘I didn’t do it,’ ‘There was no sex’ and ‘It was consensual.’ And arguing the consent portion is the most difficult."
And questions about a survivor’s character, history and personal life can end up getting dragged into court. "It’s devastating. It’s absolutely devastating," James said.
She added that all of what the nurses collect is useful—even when the labs haven’t tested the kits. There are photos, evaluations and information about injuries, and that helps determine what they should charge someone with.
Many cases wind up being settled out of court.
Sometimes a detective might think she’s delivered a clear-cut case with all the evidence necessary to lock up a sexual offender. But DA Brandenburg said prosecutors have to bring a critical eye to the case. "We have to believe that we can get a conviction, we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt," she said. "If we can’t prove that, then we shouldn’t go forward with a case."
She said she wishes it had been possible over her 16 years in the DA's Office to have prosecuted more sexual assault cases. "I have full faith that the ones that we could prosecute and go forward on ethically and professionally, we did," she said. "The ones that we couldn’t, we relinquished that case regretfully."
The incoming Second Judicial district attorney, Raul Torrez, is inheriting this problem, these kits and maybe a slew of assault cases to prosecute. He takes office in January.
