“State Attorney General Roy Cooper has properly kept the pressure on the General Assembly for more funds to reduce the backlog of more than 6,000 rape kits and 23,000 blood samples from felons that have not undergone DNA testing. Although North Carolina lags behind many other states in using DNA evidence to convict rapists and other criminals, or to free prisoners mistakenly convicted, legislators have yet to show a serious intent to eliminate a testing backlog...So Cooper is right. North Carolina can hardly afford at the moment not to do more in its own right. In that way, justice in this state, if and when federal help comes, will be that much farther along.”