A. By October 1, 2017, every law enforcement agency shall develop and implement a policy that:

(1) prescribes how the agency handles a sample of biological material collected pursuant to a medical examination of a sexual assault victim who reported the sexual assault to law enforcement that is received by the agency;

(2) provides how the agency prioritizes a sample for DNA testing by the agency's servicing laboratory; and

(3) requires the agency to send a sample of biological material collected pursuant to a medical examination of a sexual assault victim who reported the sexual assault to law enforcement to that agency's servicing laboratory for DNA testing as soon as practicable after receiving the sample and, in all cases, within thirty days of the agency's receipt of the sample.

B. Records derived from DNA testing that qualify for insertion into CODIS shall be submitted by the servicing laboratory to the administrative center.

C. By November 1 of each year, a law enforcement agency's servicing laboratory shall report to the legislature if, at the end of the immediately preceding fiscal year, the laboratory had in its possession three hundred or more untested samples of biological material collected pursuant to medical examinations of sexual assault victims.

D. As used in this section:

(1) "administrative center" means the law enforcement agency or unit that administers and operates the DNA identification system pursuant to the provisions of the DNA Identification Act;

(2) "biological material" means material that is derived from a human body and includes bodily fluids, hair and skin cells;

(3) "CODIS" means the federal bureau of investigation's "combined DNA index system", a national DNA index system for storage and exchange of DNA records submitted by forensic DNA laboratories;

(4) "DNA" means deoxyribonucleic acid;

(5) "DNA testing" means a forensic DNA analysis that includes restriction fragment length polymorphism, polymerase chain reaction or other valid methods of DNA typing performed to obtain identification characteristics of samples; and

(6) "sample" means a sample of biological material sufficient for DNA testing.

History: Laws 2006, ch. 104, § 10; 2017, ch. 99, § 1.

Cross references. — For the collection of samples of certain sex offenders, see 29-16-6 NMSA 1978.

For the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, see Chapter 29, Article 11A NMSA 1978.

Severability. — Laws 2006, ch. 104, § 11, effective January 1, 2007, provided that if any part or application of this act is held invalid, the remainder or its application to other situations or persons shall not be affected.

The 2017 amendment, effective June 16, 2017, required law enforcement agencies to develop and implement policies related to handling and testing of sexual assault examination kits, and required law enforcement agencies' servicing laboratories to report to the legislature on an annual basis the number of untested samples of biological material collected pursuant to medical examinations of sexual assault victims; in the catchline, added "law enforcement agency policies"; in Subsection A, deleted "Samples from" and added the remainder of the introductory clause and Paragraphs A(1) and A(2), and added paragraph designation "(3)" preceding the remaining language of the first sentence from former Subsection A, in Paragraph A(3), added "requires the agency to send a sample of", after the first occurrence of "sexual assault victim", deleted "shall be submitted by the investigating law enforcement agency" and added "who reported the sexual assault to law enforcement", and after "DNA testing", added "as soon as practicable after receiving the sample and, in all cases, within thirty days of the agency's receipt of the sample"; added subsection designation "B." preceding the remaining language of the second sentence from former Subsection A; added new Subsection C and redesignated former Subsection B as Subsection D; and in Subsection D, Paragraph D(3), after "investigation's", added "'combined DNA index system', a".