Greeley’s Sen. John Cooke, the former Weld County Sheriff, wants to remove the statute of limitations on sexual assault crimes.
The
Republican senator is working across the aisle with Rep. Rhonda Fields,
D-Aurora, to completely repeal Colorado’s 10-year statute of
limitations on felony sexual assault crimes, such as rape.
Although
the bill has garnered a lot of attention in the wake of the sex-abuse
allegations against actor Bill Cosby — including allegations from at
least two Colorado women — advances in technology and evidence
collection motivate Cooke, he said.
“Law
enforcement is like any other profession. You grow and you learn, and
there are always new ways to investigate,” he said Thursday. “Evidence
collection is better than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and it
continues that way all the time.”
,,,
"Well, that’s not the case when we have
this type of physical evidence, and we have DNA. We can solve these
(sexual assault) cases years down the road,” he said. “Rape is such a
crime of violence. For God’s sake, forgery doesn’t have a statute of
limitations, but rape does, so we need to do a little better job.”
Removing
the statute of limitations wouldn’t immediately bring every felony
sex-assault case into court. It would give prosecutors the option to
bring a case to court that occurred more than 10 year ago if they think
it’s provable, said Weld District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Kimberly
Corban, herself a sex-assault survivor.
Scientific
advances in DNA evidence collection and retention, means many
sex-assault cases can be investigated and prosecuted well past the
current statute of limitations.
It is always going to be in the best interest of the victims — and the
public — to give prosecutors the discretion to try a case, not let the
statute of limitations decide what goes to court, she said.
Sen. John Cooke works to remove 10-year sex-assault statute of limitations | GreeleyTribune.com
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