Washington Attorney General orders company to stop selling DIY sexual-assault evidence kits, cites chain-of-custody risks

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office issued a cease-and-desist letter to Lida Health to stop distribution of do-it-yourself sexual-assault evidence kits, saying the kits fail to preserve a chain of custody and therefore cannot reliably be used in criminal prosecutions.

"When you have gone through a traumatic experience ... that chain of custody on evidence related to DNA is critically important to have that DNA admissible in court," Ferguson said in an interview on Cairo 7 Live, adding that evidence collected by professionals can be entered into the national DNA database CODIS, enabling cross-jurisdictional matches.

Ferguson said that while intentions behind the at-home kits may be good, DIY collection leaves unknowns about who handled or contaminated samples. "If you do it at home, there is no what they call chain of custody to make sure that that evidence can be presented before a judge and a jury," he said.

The attorney general also described a longstanding backlog of untested forensic kits held by local law enforcement in Washington. "Thousands of these kits are untested," Ferguson said, giving a figure of about 10,000 stored kits; he said coordinated funding and agency work has reduced that backlog "to just the last few hundred" that still need processing.

Ferguson highlighted a recent result the office calls a success: a tested kit from a 1994 Spokane assault led to a match that helped investigators in California identify a suspect in an unrelated cold-case murder. He said the example shows the value of professionally processed kits entering the national database.

Asked whether the cease-and-desist stops sale of the kits statewide, Ferguson said his office believes the company is complying with the order but that the next step is legislation. "There's actually a bill before the state legislature right now that would do essentially that," he said, adding the measure passed the Washington House by unanimous vote and now moves to the state Senate.

Ferguson urged survivors to use professional services when possible and for authorities to continue addressing testing backlogs and service access. The studio directed viewers to an extended interview on its website for more detail.

The attorney general's office said it had sent a cease-and-desist to Lida Health in response to the product's distribution; Lida Health's response was not provided in the interview.