RALEIGH — North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein announced the hiring of Amanda Thompson as the new director of the State Crime Lab.
“Amanda has been an integral part of the Crime Lab for more than two decades, and I know she’ll do incredible work as director,” Stein said in a May 13 press release. “She will continue to lead the state’s efforts to use science to deliver justice.”
Following a nationwide search, Thompson will replace Interim Director Leslie Cooley Dismukes. Thompson has served as the Crime Lab’s assistant director of administrative operations since 2016.
Thompson joined the Crime Lab in 2000 as a DNA database analyst and has served in several roles including forensic scientist, forensic scientist supervisor and forensic scientist manager of the DNA Database section.
Stein’s press release noted that while serving as assistant director, Thompson “helped lead the work to end North Carolina’s backlog of untested older sexual assault kits.”
At a press event in April, Stein announced the backlog had been cleared. Stein, a Democrat, is near the end of his second term as attorney general and is running for governor in November.
The backlog has a more than 20-year history tied to Gov. Roy Cooper, who served as state attorney general for 16 years before Stein was elected.
When Cooper ran for governor in 2016, he claimed he had cleared a “5,000-deep” DNA testing backlog from when he first took office in 2001. However, when Stein took office as attorney general, North Carolina had more than 15,000 untested rape kits, the most of any state in the country.
