For Planning Purposes:
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Contact:
Nazneen Ahmed (919) 716-0060
(RALEIGH) Attorney General Josh Stein today shared that the North Carolina State Crime Lab has had 283 CODIS DNA hits in the current fiscal year, which began in July 2024. These DNA hits help further law enforcement’s efforts to solve cases.
“These hits are going to help law enforcement solve crimes and get dangerous criminals out of our communities,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “I’m grateful to the State Crime Lab scientists for their continued dedication to analyzing evidence and making our state safer.”
In October 2024, the State Crime Lab uploaded 1,183 samples to the CODIS database, which led to 69 hits within the database from people who were arrested, people convicted of offenses that require DNA collection, and evidence collected through forensic analysis. Since the State Crime Lab began using the CODIS system, they have seen more than 11,772 hits in CODIS. Those hits have aided more than 9,438 law enforcement investigations.
These CODIS hits are also helping to drive arrests related to sexual assault cold cases after Attorney General Stein announced that North Carolina ended the rape kit backlog. In October, the Raleigh Police Department arrested David Lee Toney in connection with a 1998 sexual assault and charged him with felony first-degree rape, felony attempted first-degree sexual offense, felony kidnapping, and felony assault inflicting serious bodily injury. The Crime Lab coordinated testing of the kit with a vendor lab and a profile was uploaded to CODIS last year. The North Carolina Department of Justice continues to be as transparent as possible about the process of testing kits and updating the CODIS databases at www.ncdoj.gov/testthekits.
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