Man to serve more than 30 years in prison for kidnapping, criminal sexual conduct charges

A Minneapolis man will serve time in prison after being convicted of four criminal charges last month.

As previously reported by 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS, James Andrew Works, 49, was found guilty by a jury in early April of two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of kidnapping.

Judge William Koch sentenced Works to 390 months (32.5 years) in prison on Monday.

Prosecutors allege Works, while holding a gun, approached two victims in June 2010, took them to a secluded spot and then raped them. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) finally tested the kits in 2021 and the DNA pointed investigators to Works.

The victims also later identified Works as the person who raped them upon seeing his picture, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says.

Works’ trial was the first to come from a joint partnership between the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the Minneapolis Police Department, the Sexual Violence Center and the BCA that focused on solving old sexual assault cases.

Back in 2020, the Minnesota Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) was launched using a $2 million grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to the state two years earlier and several subsequent grants. The goal was to test sex assault kits that had gone untested and then collect and evaluate data from the cases.

So far, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says there have been four cases charged due to the kit initiative.