The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is moving to retest DNA samples in thousands of criminal cases and expects to spend at least $7.5 million to remedy problems discovered in one longtime employee’s lab work, according to a state budget request.
Officials discovered “anomalies” in the DNA testing work of Yvonne “Missy” Woods last year and started both internal and criminal investigations into Woods. She worked for the CBI for 29 years and left before the agency publicly announced the anomalies in November.
About 3,000 DNA samples need to be retested by a third-party laboratory, CBI officials estimated in a January budget request. That will cost roughly $3 million. Additionally, the agency asked for $4.4 million to pay out to district attorney’s offices across Colorado to address claims by people who say they were wrongly convicted of crimes because of Woods’ work.
The former CBI scientist was involved in some of Colorado’s most high-profile criminal cases in recent decades, including the 2004 Kobe Bryant rape case, the 1994 murder of Rhonda Maloney, the prosecution of Aaron Thompson in the death of his daughter, and the murder of University of Colorado student Susannah Chase.
Susan Medina, spokeswoman for the CBI, said in a statement Thursday that the agency aims to “thoroughly examine and assess various aspects” of Woods’ work.
The agency has not explained the specific anomalies found in Woods’ DNA testing or offered any detail about how they occurred. But the budget request notes that the re-testing could reveal situations in which prior “testing by the former scientist was inaccurate” and that the re-testing could create “substantial evidence” to retry prior criminal cases.
“It is anticipated that… motions for post-conviction relief will be filed in most, if not all, cases impacted by the former CBI scientist’s work in DNA testing,” CBI’s budget request reads.
The 3,000 DNA samples that need to be retested are a preliminary number and will likely change going forward, Medina said in the statement.
The agency is prioritizing re-testing for people who are currently incarcerated, the budget request says. The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council estimates prosecutors will spend 72,000 hours to address claims of innocence due to Woods’ work. The organization estimates larger district attorney’s offices have roughly 100 cases involving Woods, while smaller offices have roughly 25 cases involving the former CBI scientist.
In Boulder, the district attorney’s office has 15 open criminal cases in which Woods was listed as a potential witness at trial and another 55 closed criminal cases, spokeswoman Shannon Carbone said Thursday. The office has received two petitions for post-conviction relief — that is, a legal filing challenging the validity of a conviction — based on the DNA anomalies, she said.
Ryan Brackley, an attorney representing Woods, said Thursday that the former CBI scientist is cooperating with the investigations into her work.
“It is understandable and appropriate for the CBI to review the totality of Ms. Woods’ work and to support the local district attorneys’ offices in their reviews, and she continues to stand by the reliability and integrity of her work on matters that were filed in court, and particularly in cases in which she testified in court under oath,” Brackley said in a statement.
In addition to the DNA re-testing and funding for prosecutors, CBI also wants to hire a full-time accountant at a $102,000 annual salary for three years to handle the distribution of the funds to district attorney’s offices across the state, according to the budget request.
“I’m… shocked that one person can cause this much expense to the state,” State Sen. Jeff Bridges said during a joint budget committee hearing on Jan. 17.
Lawmakers at that hearing decided to table CBI’s $7.5 million funding request until the agency could give a better estimate of its immediate expenses in the upcoming fiscal year, rather than the longer-term, multi-year costs to remedy the anomalies.
“I presume this is something that was going on for a very long time,” Rep. Emily Sirota said. “…That’s quite concerning in terms of whatever internal checks they have — or don’t have — going on there.”
The problems with Woods’ work were discovered during a review of a sampling of cases “as part of an internal process” within CBI, according to the budget request.
The CBI so far has reviewed 10% of Woods’ cases and discovered that 229 of those cases were “impacted by this employee’s actions,” according to the budget request. Officials expect to find roughly 2,300 impacted cases across all of Woods’ work. Officials expect another few hundred cases that were not immediately suspected still will need to be re-tested to ensure Woods’ work was, in fact, accurate.
Officials believe the issues are isolated to Woods’ work and not a wider systematic problem with all of CBI’s DNA testing.
Denver Post reporter Nick Coltrain contributed to this report.
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