A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled in favor of North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in his bid to duck being prosecuted for allegedly violating a law criminalizing false and “derogotory” statements in political advertising as unconstitutional, Politico reports.
The investigation stemmed from an ad in which Stein’s campaign called out his 2020 Republican opponent, Forsyth County DA Jim O’Neill on his office’s handling of rape kits. O’Neill had lodged a complaint with the State Board of Elections in September 2020 over the Shapiro attack ad, which said his office had “left 1,500 rape kits sitting on a shelf,” an assertion O’Neill said was false because law enforcement and not prosecutors are responsible for processing that evidence.