I’m happy to say that there is a little good news on Capitol Hill today. Rep. Swalwell (D-CA) and Rep. McCaul (R-TX) introduced the Homicide Victims’ Families Rights Act, to grant family members the right to have cold case homicide investigations reviewed if 3 years have passed with no new leads.
The percentage of murders for which someone is charged has steadily declined from over 90% in 1965 to under 65% in 2018. There are now more than 250,000 U.S. homicides since 1980 for which no one has been charged. Overwhelmingly, this is due to declining clearance rates of murders of African-Americans (clearance rates for other ethnic groups slightly improved during that time period).
As noted by former DOJ homicide prosecutor Glenn Kirschner (a key proponent of this bill), when time passes, new witnesses may be willing to come forward as their own lives have changed, and new technologies may yield additional information. Most important, when we return to those cases we show families that their loved ones are not forgotten. We will continue to fight for them.
Read the full text of the bill here: https://swalwell.house.gov/sites/swalwell.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/Homicide%20Victims’%20Families%20Rights%20Act%20of%202020.pdf