RALEIGH – FactCheck.org says a Republican super PAC ad in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race gives a misleading account of a backlog of untested sexual-assault evidence kits during Roy Cooper’s time as attorney general.
The No Going Back PAC ad began airing Sept. 10 and says Cooper let 16,000 kits remain untested. FactCheck.org reported that the figure referred to kits held by more than 500 local law-enforcement agencies, not evidence that had been submitted to the State Crime Laboratory and left there by Cooper.
That distinction matters because local agencies controlled whether the older kits were sent to the state lab. A 2017 North Carolina law required each local law-enforcement agency to inventory kits in its custody and report the number to the lab by Jan. 1, 2018.
FactCheck.org reported that a 2018 state Justice Department inventory identified 15,160 untested kits. The article said Cooper left the attorney general’s office in early 2017 to become governor, so the report postdated his tenure as attorney general.
North Carolina later enacted the Survivor Act in 2019. House Bill 29 became Session Law 2019-221 and created deadlines for submitting newly collected kits while directing work on the older backlog. FactCheck.org said the law generally required law-enforcement agencies to submit kits within 45 days.
The records do not establish that Cooper had no responsibility for the state’s response while attorney general. But the local custody records do not support the ad’s implication that 16,000 kits were sitting untested at a state lab under his control.
FactCheck.org said a sexual-assault testing expert described the backlog as a system-wide failure involving multiple agencies and officials. FactCheck.org said it was unable to contact No Going Back PAC. Cooper’s campaign told the outlet that the kits were in local law-enforcement offices and that no statewide count existed until after Cooper became governor.
The advertisement is part of the contest between Democrat Cooper and Republican Michael Whatley for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat. The FactCheck.org review addresses the accuracy of the rape-kit claim, not the broader merits of either candidate.
Sources
- FactCheck.org: review of the No Going Back PAC advertisement, Sept. 25
- North Carolina Session Law 2017-57: local law-enforcement kit inventory
- North Carolina House Bill 29 / Session Law 2019-221: Survivor Act
Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Mary Junell / North Carolina National Guard, public domain in the United States. Roy Cooper addresses a July 25, 2019 bill-signing ceremony at Joint Force Headquarters in Raleigh. Cropped from the original.
Editor’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence and was reviewed and fact-checked by a member of the NC Political News editorial team before publication.