Truth Test: NC governor candidates swap punches over crime lab

North Carolina's crime lab has a history of controversy. And now, it's at the heart of the race for governor.

Democrat Roy Cooper became attorney general in 2001, so, he's overseen the crime lab for 15 years.  And Republican incumbent Gov. Pat McCrory's successfully made it a talker in this race.

There are at least eight ads about North Carolina's crime lab. McCrory -- and the Republican Governors Association -- accuse Cooper of shoddy investigation, botching cases and backlogs.

Cooper's firing back with ads of his own, saying he inherited the mess and cleaned it up.

So what's the truth?

Well, Cooper did take over a lab saturated with issues, especially work piled up. By 2005, his office had cleared a lot of the cases. Four years later, more reports of sloppy work surfaced. Cooper hired two outsiders, including former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker, to put the lab under a microscope.

They found 230 cases tainted, but almost all of them were from before Cooper became attorney general. Only 11 were on his watch.

"The vast bulk of them took place either in the late 1980s or early 1990s," said Joe John, Cooper supporter and head of the lab from 2010-2014.

Cooper said he went on to address these cases and, as proof, points to this: The lab earned national accreditation from one group in 2013 and from another group in 2014. At the time, it was rare for a state lab to achieve both.

But critics said there's still a backlog. At last check, the average wait time for lab work was around seven months. But the crime lab said that's not for an individual test, it's for an entire case, which can have multiple pieces of evidence, some with multiple tests. The lab has about 120 scientists to handle tens of thousands of cases.

But if the problem is resources, it's a question of funding, which depends on McCrory and the General Assembly. They approved $3.6 million for more crime lab staff and to open a new lab in the western part of the state next year.

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