Criminal Justice Update 

Karen Kwek had been a member of the lab team at the Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation for 14 years when she was named BCI’s laboratory director in late spring. She oversees 150 staff members and an ultramodern lab that law enforcement and prosecutors around the state rely on for fast, accurate evidence analysis.

The first year of a major push to analyze Ohio’s untested sexual assault kits has concluded, and the results exceed even the most hopeful predictions.

The Attorney General’s special prosecutors work on a wide range of cases in all corners of Ohio, and thanks to an impressive conviction rate, their proponents are just as widespread. In fact, demand for the office’s help with prosecutions prompted Attorney General Mike DeWine to increase staff in this area and to designate Special Prosecutions as its own section.

Karen Beaudin knows the sorrow of losing a loved one to homicide and the anguish of seeing the crime go unsolved. Her 13-year-old sister was raped and murdered in 1971.

Police Sgt. Mike Lang chased more than 100 leads while investigating the 2001 rape of a 14-year-old girl by a man who climbed through her bedroom window.