News Roundup

Last month, Jeff blogged about the backlog of rape kits in North Carolina and other jurisdictions across the country.  At the time of his post, there wasn’t a great deal of information available about the magnitude of the backlog in North Carolina, but Jeff noted that a 2017 law required law enforcement agencies to inventory their kits and report their findings to the State Crime Laboratory.  The Associated Press reported this week that the results of that process show that North Carolina has more than 15,000 untested kits.  At a press conference, Attorney General Josh Stein made proposals for testing the kits and tracking the status of kits collected in the future.  Keep reading for more news. Missing Persons.  Last year, the News Roundup noted that a considerable number of people summoned for jury duty in Guilford County weren’t showing up.  This week in Forsyth County, no one showed up.  The Winston-Salem Journal says that a “human error in the county’s print shop” resulted in a failure to mail this week’s jury duty notices.  Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched into the county to recruit volunteers and a plea went out over a local television station, but the efforts did not yield a sufficient number of potential jurors to conduct trials. Exonerated Man Charged with Murder.  The Greensboro News & Record reports that a man who was exonerated after spending 40 years in prison for murder now is facing a new murder charge arising from a killing in 2017.  After being convicted in [...]