The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation will apply for a special grant to help deal with the state's thousands of untested rape kits and asked District Attorney General Neal Pinkston to offer support.
As part of the application process, the TBI asked Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston to write a letter to a New York prosecutor who is offering up the grants.
In a letter to New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Pinkston wrote that "we intend to submit each and every inventoried kit" with the exception of those where victims weren't tested or where it was determined that no crime was committed.
In April, Vance released applications for a $35 million initiative providing grants that seek to end the rape kit backlog nationwide. Grants will be awarded up to $2 million, and are available to local and state agencies.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation intends to apply for a grant by the June 1 deadline, Spokesman Josh DeVine said. Pinkston's letter was written in support of that application, and comes the 2013 revelation that at that time more than 12,000 rape kits had been untested by Memphis police.
If they receive a grant, the TBI will use the funds to outsource testing of those kits and cut through the existing backlog, DeVine said.
All local agencies with untested kits could benefit from the grant, DeVine said, in this "forklift approach."
"We will tell them 'if you have untested sex assault kits, send them our way," DeVine said.
Vance said Pinkston's support is an important because many kits will only be tested at the request of a prosecutor. To receive the grant, agencies must agree to abide by certain conditions set down in the grant, and in his letter Pinkston promises to do so.