Multiple editorials & articles - Continuing coverage - NC SBI Lab scandals
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Aug 20, 2010, 12:15:23 PM8/20/10
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From Gerda Stein:
This e-mail contains editorials from:
Charlotte Observer - SBI needs shakeup, lab needs new home
Greensboro News-Record - SBI audit clearly shows miscarriage of justice
Winston-Salem Journal - The SBI lab
News articles from:
News & Observer - Legal tangle may slow SBI reforms
N&O - Ex-SBI analyst defends withholding test results
N&O - SBI's methods stun former FBI official
N&O - State police group urges criminal probe of SBI
N&O - The SBI over the years: Who's been in charge
N&O - Owl theory supported by 3 experts
Column from:
Asheville Citizen-Times - Campbell: SBI guilty of poor law enforcement
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/20/1632651/sbi-needs-shakeup-lab-needs-new.html
Friday, Aug. 20, 2010
SBI needs shakeup, lab needs new home
Thorough review, change in order at dysfunctional agency
Greg Taylor's 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit has forced North Carolina to face an unnerving and horrifying truth: The State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab and some of its agents have done shoddy work, misled judges and juries, hid evidence and deprived defendants of their rights to a fair trial. Some of its practices have aimed at winning convictions, not at the truth.
There will be more troubling revelations to come about the SBI, but this much is glaringly evident: The agency needs a thorough housecleaning, a new purpose and, above all, its lab needs a new home in state government. Without these steps, the agency may never regain credibility.
This conclusion is based not only on the newspaper series "Agents' Secrets" prepared by the News & Observer and also published by the Charlotte Observer. It's also bolstered by an audit of the SBI's blood analysis unit, commissioned by N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper this year after the exoneration of Taylor. Cooper asked former FBI agents Chris Swecker and Mike Wolf to examine the serology unit after SBI blood analyst Duane Deaver admitted he did not report results of a follow-up test showing a substance on Taylor's truck was not blood after all.
The audit examined 15,000 criminal cases and found that in at least 230 of them, the SBI distorted or withheld evidence, practices that may have been key factors in conviction and imprisonment. These cases will require costly and time-consuming reviews to determine whether any were wrongful convictions. The list includes three death penalty cases that led to executions. There were confessions of guilt in each of the three, but it's also possible that accurate evidence might have resulted in life sentences. We will never know.
This much we know: Some SBI agents have done wrong and ought to be fired - and prosecuted where appropriate. In his case, Deaver - suspended from his job Wednesday - was following SBI practice in not reporting negative evidence that does not support prosecutors' cases. The N.C. Innocence Commission is considering whether to hold him criminally responsible for false or misleading statements.
Law enforcement officials also ought to examine the so-called "confession" that former SBI agent Mark Isley says he drew up verbatim after hearing Floyd Brown talk about a murder Isley believed he committed. The "confession" used words and sentence structures that state doctors say Brown, who has an IQ half the average person, was incapable of uttering. A hard look at all of Isley's cases is in order.
Authorities also ought to reexamine cases former SBI agent Dwight Ransome worked on before his retirement. Ransome's handling of one murder case has cost taxpayers nearly $4 million in a lawsuit settlement after Alan Gell was wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for murder. The lawsuit charged that Ransome withheld exculpatory evidence in Gell's case.
This practice of hiding, distorting or manufacturing evidence in order to bolster prosecutors' cases and win convictions is prevalent in some parts of the SBI. It is a morally bankrupt practice. The worst of it is that it allows the real criminals to continue committing crimes while someone else serves time.
Here's another maddening thing: Allegations of shoddy work and indifference at the SBI are not new. Cooper should have and likely did know of them years ago. The same goes for former SBI Director Robin Pendergraft, whom Cooper recently replaced but transferred to another post in the Department of Justice, where Isley now works. Why are they still employed there?
Cooper's tardiness in addressing these allegations and Pendergraft's lack of action are inexcusable. North Carolina's law enforcement establishment will be fighting its reputation for ineptitude, poor performance and cooking the evidentiary books for years. The fastest way out of this mess is to give the crime lab an independent home in state government and give the SBI a new mission to pursue the truth and, this time, justice.
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http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/08/19/article/editorial_sbi_audit_clearly_shows_miscarriage_of_justice
Friday, August 20, 2010
Editorial: SBI audit clearly shows miscarriage of justice
Sickening. That's the word that comes to mind after the public release Wednesday of an audit of the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab.
Commissioned by Attorney General Roy Cooper, the audit found that the SBI had withheld or fudged blood evidence to help prosecutors in 190 cases over 16 years. The review found another 40 reports in which blood evidence was manipulated but no charges were filed.
Among those convicted in the presence of tainted evidence include four people now on death row, five more who died in prison and three who were executed. There is perhaps no more compelling reason to suspend the death penalty in North Carolina than this.
Two former FBI officials examined 15,000 lab files from between 1987 and 2003. In 230 cases, the investigators found that preliminary crime scene tests had discovered evidence of blood, but subsequent and more reliable tests came back negative. The official lab reports then did one of four things, all of them wrong: They didn't mention follow-up testing; failed to include one or more negative or inconclusive tests; stated that follow-up tests weren't done, when in fact they were; or contradicted the test findings. In other words, the SBI reports were intentionally misleading -- all to the potential benefit of the prosecution.
The audit's authors said they did not look to see if tainted evidence was introduced at trial, much less whether it resulted in a conviction. In at least one instance, that of the 1992 murder of an Eden woman, a problematic report did not matter because her killer confessed. But in the case of Greg Taylor, whose exoneration set off the chain of events, the faulty blood evidence was a key piece of the prosecution's case. And if Taylor is innocent, it stands to reason that there might be other innocent people in prison because of the SBI's willful sloppiness.
What now? It's clear that the SBI's reputation has been left in tatters. The seriousness of the facts in the report suggest that state leaders should strongly consider spinning the crime lab off from the SBI and make it an independent agency, one that presumably would be free of bias for the prosecution.
The agency has taken the first step toward redemption by admitting its errors. Now the SBI, as well as local prosecutors and law enforcement, must re-examine these cases where evidence was tainted to ensure that justice was done correctly. Anyone connected to these unnecessary acts and who is still employed by the SBI should be fired.
Justice is supposed to be blind, and trials are supposed to be fair. What went on in the SBI's crime lab for so long was neither just nor fair.
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http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2010/aug/20/the-sbi-lab/opinion-editorials/
August 20, 2010
The SBI lab
JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF
The fallout from the audit of the State Bureau of Investigation crime lab, which revealed analysts omitting, overstating or falsely reporting blood evidence in cases involving 269 people from 1987 to 2003, will be felt for years to come in costly appeals. At the very least, defendants were convicted in part on faulty evidence, and some may have been wrongfully convicted, allowing the guilty to go free. The lab must be removed from the SBI and placed under another state agency, where its staff can work independently as unbiased scientists -- not sworn law-enforcement officers.
"Not only does North Carolina need an independent lab … but some of these agents need to be prosecuted for perpetrating a fraud on the court," said Pete Clary, the Forsyth County Public Defender. "If a defense lawyer tried to introduce the kind of lousy evidence that (SBI Agent Duane) Deaver et al have been testifying to under oath, and getting by with, he or she would likely get disbarred and sent to the slammer."
The audit found that Deaver's work was among the worst of the cases in question. It was his work in the murder case of Greg Taylor of Wake County, who was recently exonerated after 17 years in prison, that caused Attorney General Roy Cooper, who oversees the SBI, to call for the review last winter. Deaver's questionable work with blood spatters in the 2009 murder trial of Clemmons dentist Kirk Turner was chronicled as part of a recent investigative series on the SBI in the Raleigh News & Observer.
Cooper wants to keep the lab under the jurisdiction of his office. He has noted that he asked for the review by two former assistant FBI directors, and he is initiating reforms. He recently hired a new director, Deaver has been suspended with pay and the work of the bloodstain pattern analysis unit has been stopped. But why didn't Cooper take those steps sooner? He won election to his office in 2000. Could he not have known of the myriad problems that have been exposed? Defense lawyers and newspapers, including the Journal, have for years been questioning the SBI's practices.
Gov. Bev Perdue, who told the Journal this week that she would do "everything in her power" to ensure that North Carolinians "have the utmost trust and faith in the science and fairness of our criminal justice system," must push for the lab to be placed under another agency, as other states have done. Some might argue that the state should contract with a private lab. But then the profit motive would enter the picture, as well as the potential of labs pushing for unneeded tests.
Perhaps the legislature could place the lab under the Administrative Office of the Courts or the state Medical Examiner's Office. It could be run by a forensic scientist and be overseen by an advisory panel of defense, lawyers, police, prosecutors and forensic scientists appointed by the governor.
As defense lawyers from across the state have pointed out in the last several days, there's an inherent bias when lab analysts walk into a courtroom and testify as the sworn agents of a law-enforcement organization. "They wear a badge," Mark Rabil, an assistant capital defender, said in an e-mail to the Journal. "Many have handguns. This certainly creates a tendency to see things through the tunneled lens of law enforcement and the prosecution."
And whether bias or any number of other factors are responsible, the problems at the SBI lab are obvious. The N&O reported that "examiners have bypassed accepted techniques, despite pushback in the wider scientific community." The lab is led by Jerry Richardson, whose college degree is in communications, and the training of many of the analysts leaves much to be desired. Deaver, whose degree is in zoology, has trained other SBI analysts in blood spatters. The jury foreman called the SBI's work in the Turner case "a fraud."
The review didn't reveal any other wrongful convictions, and it says that the SBI has followed more updated procedures since 2003 so more recent work is not under scrutiny. But defense attorneys and prosecutors statewide are reviewing the cases in question, which include five in Forsyth. Jim O'Neill, the Forsyth County District Attorney, said yesterday that his office is starting with the one Forsyth case in which a defendant is still in prison. Timothy Kinnard Williams is serving a 21-year prison sentence for the second-degree murder of Barbara Ann Williams in 1995. SBI lab results had indicated the presence of blood on an item in the case, but those results were not confirmed in further tests.
O'Neill called the results of the audits "very concerning," and wants more stringent control and spot audits of the SBI lab. But putting the lab under another government agency "would jeopardize its role as a crime-solving public agency," he said.
We disagree. Problems in the SBI lab have continued year after year, shaking the faith of many North Carolinians in their justice system. A human tendency on the part of analysts to help police and prosecutors has degenerated, for some analysts, into the overstating and false reporting of evidence. They're falling under the weight of their badges. The state must remove the burden and set a course for an unbiased crime lab.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636934/legal-tangle-may-slow-sbi-reforms.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Legal tangle may slow SBI reforms
BY JOSEPH NEFF AND MANDY LOCKE - Staff writers
The task of reforming the State Bureau of Investigation, as Attorney General Roy Cooper promised to do, will be complicated by civil lawsuits, potential criminal investigations and other attempts to hold the agency accountable for decades of misconduct.
Cooper promised reforms following a growing flood of bad news about the agency. A damning audit showed that lab analysts had misrepresented or hidden test results in 230 cases involving blood work. That audit followed a News & Observer series showing that SBI agents twisted reports and court testimony when facts threatened to undermine their cases. A 2009 audit found that an SBI field agent was working unsupervised while he ignored evidence of a suspect's innocence.
On Thursday, the first few of coming legal challenges surfaced. A police union called for a federal probe. A judicial body announced it may investigate whether an SBI agent perjured himself last year.
Cooper has tasked new SBI director Greg McLeod, his longtime lobbyist, with a number of changes: an independent ombudsman to handle complaints; a review of the DNA section; better supervision of agents in the field; more advanced certification for the lab, and a culture of openness and truth seeking.
Piecemeal change won't turn the SBI around, said Jim Cooney, a Charlotte lawyer who has represented police departments as well as death row inmates. The SBI's very credibility is at stake, but the agency's failure to deal with problems for years shows that the agency is not capable of reforming itself, Cooney said.
Criminal investigations require a high degree of specialization and expertise, Cooney said, but the SBI, the state's largest investigative agency, has been treated as just another branch of the Attorney General's Office.
"You don't need a lawyer or legislative assistant to run it, you need an investigative professional, someone with management experience to run a law enforcement agency of this size and complexity," Cooney said. "It's beyond me why there isn't a nationwide search going on."
Deaver's problems
On Thursday the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission said it may soon convene to discuss the possibility of holding SBI agent Duane Deaver in contempt of court for possibly false statements he made before the commission last September.
Deaver, who was suspended Wednesday, told commissioners at a hearing to determine the innocence of Greg Taylor that he did not perform sophisticated, confirmatory tests on a stain found on Taylor's SUV.
Deaver's lab notes showed otherwise. The commission, a judicial body, could hold Deaver in contempt of court if they find he perjured himself.
Taylor was declared innocent of murder in February; he had spent 17 years in prison
It's not only defense lawyers who are calling for federal criminal investigations into whether agents have falsified evidence or committed perjury.
The N.C. Police Benevolent Association called for a criminal investigation into agents and leaders at the center of allegations that they distorted blood analysis in more than 200 criminal cases.
John Midgette, executive director of the association, said the behavior warrants both a federal civil rights investigation as well as a determination as to whether agents broke state law.
"Undoubtedly, no further laboratory analysis can be trusted to a lab under the current control of SBI leadership," Midgette said.
George Holding, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, has heard those calls but won't discuss them.
"This audit raises very serious questions, but I am not able to comment at this time on whether there will be an investigation of civil rights violations," Holding said.
Federal prosecutors can investigate those in power for civil rights violations when they find that the suspects denied someone his liberties with criminal intent. It's unclear whether the practice of withholding crucial blood evidence was criminally motivated.
David Rudolf, a Charlotte lawyer, has sued the SBI on behalf of Floyd Brown, a mentally disabled Anson County man locked up for 14 years on a confession that Rudolf says was fabricated by an SBI agent.
The audit could spur more civil suits, if defendants could prove the withheld blood evidence was critical to their conviction.
It's unclear how many of those cases there are, but Rudolf anticipates that lawyers will be asking that question in hundreds of cases.
"Depending on how many cases these phony lab people testified in, there could literally be thousands of people whose convictions are called into question," Rudolf said.
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Josep...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4516
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636932/ex-sbi-analyst-defends-withholding.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Ex-SBI analyst defends withholding test results
BY MANDY LOCKE AND JOSEPH NEFF - Staff writers
Jed Taub spent his entire career telling prosecutors whether evidence collected at crime scenes was stained with blood, a clue so critical it sometimes determined the difference between guilt or innocence.
On Wednesday, a former FBI agent hired by Attorney General Roy Cooper criticized the work of Taub and seven other analysts, saying their work amounted to civil rights violations. Taub's work is now being called biased, scientifically unsound and unfair.
For 16 years, SBI blood analysts routinely omitted the results of more sophisticated tests that pointed to the absence of blood. Their reports, instead, stated that they had found chemical indications for blood.
Taub, who retired in 2004 after 30 years at the SBI, defended his analysis and that of his colleagues.
"We didn't report the negative result of a confirmatory test because, really, it's misleading," said Taub, who now works as a forensic investigator for the Pitt County Sheriff's Office. "We couldn't be sure it wasn't blood, so those tests really didn't matter."
In serology, analysts use two sets of tests to check for blood. The first, a presumptive test such as phenolphthalein, offers clues about where blood may be. But it's a problematic test because other substances, such as plant and animal matter, can trigger a positive result. Until 2003, when DNA analysis became commonplace at the SBI, analysts would turn to a second set of sophisticated blood tests to determine if the substance was, in fact, blood.
Former FBI agent Chris Swecker flagged nine cases Taub handled in which he withheld crucial results. Taub said that he worked an average of 230 cases each year from 1974 to his retirement 30 years later.
Taub dismissed the audit and the criticism it has brought to him and several colleagues.
"There's a lot of people making much ado about nothing," Taub said.
Taub said that the only times he reported the absence of blood was when he got a negative result on that first, presumptive test. Any negative results after that were irrelevant, he said.
"People are so spacey about blood," Taub said. "If there was a misunderstanding, that's the fault of the [defense] attorney. We can't forestall every idiot."
Taub said that the safeguard against misunderstanding his analysis would have been to call him to court to testify.
Taub still works with blood analysis at the Pitt County Sheriff's Office.
Three other SBI analysts targeted in the audit still work at the SBI, though new agency director Greg McLeod said he was investigating their performance internally.
Another analyst targeted in the audit, Lucy Milks, is a contract employee in the drug section. She could not be reached for comment.
All other analysts, except Taub, did not return a call for comment.
The analysts include:
Duane Deaver, who is at the center of the questionable serology work. He was suspended Wednesday pending further internal investigation. He earns $72,423 a year and has worked in recent months as a training coordinator.
Suzi Barker, a supervisor in the DNA section. Barker earns $67,938 a year.
Jennifer Elwell, an analyst in the DNA section. She earns $67,917 a year.
Russell Holley, who also works in the DNA section performing serology analysis. He earns $52,449 a year.
Milks left the agency in 2006; her salary then was $65,177. She works on contract as a chemist in the drug chemistry section.
Brenda Bissette, who retired in 2005 with a salary of $61,149 after she botched blood evidence in a capital murder case, swapping the victim and suspect's blood sample. She has previously declined to comment on her employment at the bureau.
David J. Spittle, who left the bureau in 2001 with a salary of $59,628.
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News researcher Brooke Cain and database editor David Raynor contributed to this report.
Mandy...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8927
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636929/sbis-methods-stun-former-fbi-official.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
SBI's methods stun former FBI official
BY PETER ST. ONGE - Staff writer
In his 30-year career, Chris Swecker has pursued crime as a prosecutor, federal agent and, most prominently, a high-ranking FBI official in Charlotte and Washington.
But Swecker was startled with what he discovered when N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper asked him to investigate the state's forensic investigators.
Swecker's report, released Wednesday after a five-month review, revealed that a renegade unit and flawed policies at the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab led to evidence being withheld and distorted in 230 cases involving 269 defendants.
"What surprised me was the sort of the looseness there, specifically with policy regarding reporting results," said Swecker, now a Charlotte lawyer and consultant in financial crimes security and strategy. "What that created was a very subjective environment withcases."
Swecker was asked by Cooper to audit the SBI in March, after the exoneration of Greg Taylor, a Wake County man imprisoned 17 years for murder. Swecker, who enlisted fellow former agent Mike Wolf for the audit, brought a history of agency work to the task - he joined the FBI as a special agent in 1982, rose to special agent in charge in the FBI's Charlotte office in 1999, then moved to Washington as assistant director for the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division in 2004.
Two years later, after more than two decades with the agency, he moved back to Charlotte to lead Bank of America's corporate security organization. He was laid off in late 2008, along with more than a dozen other Bank of America executives.
Along with his consulting work, he has opened a Charlotte law practice and gone on what he self-effacingly calls "the minor-league speaking tour." On Wednesday, he was in Boone to speak to the Appalachian State football team - "about landmines and pitfalls and life decisions," he said.
Swecker's credentials
Swecker, 54, graduated from Appalachian State with degrees in political science and economics, and he received his law degree from Wake Forest University before beginning his career as an assistant N.C. district attorney. He is married with three daughters and lives in Charlotte.
He said he was gratified that his audit shone a light on troubling SBI practices.
"I'm not happy that some people will suffer for it," he said, "but I think any agency needs this kind of scrutiny in order to get better."
The FBI made significant changes in the mid-1990s after a whistle-blower alleged and an investigation found flawed forensic work by several lab examiners, and the agency faced questions in 2004 about disputed science that matched crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects.
"I think a lot of people think law enforcement is all about getting the bad guy, and it is," Swecker said. "I know it sounds corny, but it really is a search for the truth. You let the facts fall where they fall.
"In those [SBI] cases, that wasn't what happened."
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/19/636269/commission-to-address-whether.html
Thu, Aug 19, 2010 07:06 PM
State police group urges criminal probe of SBI
By Mandy Locke and Joseph Neff - Staff writer
The North Carolina Police Benevolence Association called Thursday for a criminal investigation of SBI analysts, and their supervisors, who withheld critical blood evidence for 16 years.
The association, a coalition of law enforcement officers in North Carolina, expressed dismay and condemnation over revelations that SBI agents kept secret evidence that may have pointed to the innocence of 269 defendants.
John Midgette, executive director of the PBA, said it's a crime for officers and officials to willfully fail to properly discharge the duties of their office. He also called for a federal civil rights investigation.
"Undoubtedly, no further laboratory analysis can be trusted to a lab under the current control of SBI leadership," Midgette said.
The SBI backlash comes a day after two former FBI agents presented a damning audit of the SBI's blood analysis unit.
That audit identified 230 tainted cases involving 269 defendants. In each, analysts withheld information about confirmatory testing.
Already, one of the agents in question could be facing the possibility of criminal penalties.
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission could soon address whether to hold SBI agent Duane Deaver criminally responsible for false and misleading statements made during a hearing last September.
Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said early Thursday that the commission discussed Deaver's statements in April. They decided to wait until an independent audit of the SBI serology unit was complete before addressing the issue again, Montgomery-Blinn said.
"I'll be calling commissioners to see if they want to meet and address this," Montgomery-Blinn said Thursday. She said the commission could hold someone in contempt of court if they found perjury was committed.
Deaver handled blood analysis in 1991 in the case against Greg Taylor, a Wake County man exonerated in February after 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Deaver had reported to prosecutors in 1991 that a stain on Taylor's SUV had given chemical indications for the presence of blood. He withheld the results of more sophisticated tests that proved the substance was not blood.
Deaver was suspended from his job Wednesday after an audit of the SBI blood analysis unit singled him out among the eight agents who commonly withheld results of more sophisticated tests to determine if a substance was blood.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, had commissioned an audit of the unit in March, weeks after Deaver told three judges that supervisors at the SBI told him to write his reports the way he did. Cooper called the practice "troubling" and "unacceptable."
The biggest question for the Innocence Inquiry Commission, however, is whether Deaver lied last September when he testified before the commission that he had not completed confirmatory blood tests on Taylor's SUV.
Deaver's statements about his work in Taylor's case shifted dramatically over the past year. In September, he told commissioners he did not perform confirmatory blood tests. In February, he told prosecutors that he didn't have sufficient evidence to yield conclusive results. Later that month, he told three judges that his supervisors told him to write his reports that way.
Montgomery-Blinn said the Innocence Inquiry Commission will be sending applications to each of the 269 defendants, inviting them to apply to the commission for a review of their cases. The commission was created in 2006 to review claims of innocence from those convicted of crimes in North Carolina.
The audit stopped short of determining whether or not the slanted evidence affected the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Prosecutors and defense attorneys across the state will begin reviewing the cases looking for answers to those questions.
Auditor Chris Swecker painted a picture in his audit of a renegade unit at the SBI crime lab acting without rules and with misguided notions about the science behind blood analysis.
In serology, police use rudimentary presumptive tests at crime scenes to determine where blood might be. Those tests are fallible, prone to giving false positives. So analysts depend on more sophisticated, confirmatory tests to determine whether a substance is, in fact, blood.
Before 1997, the serology unit operated without report-writing guidelines. Analysts set their own criteria until 1997; that policy sanctioned the practice of not reporting negative or inconclusive results of confirmatory tests.
Swecker found policies and practices out of step with the rules of serology. They were also far afield of fairness, according to the report.
"There was anecdotal evidence that some Analysts were not objective in their mindset," Swecker wrote.
Tests used to confirm the presence of blood never yield "inconclusive results," Swecker noted. Two analysts interviewed for the report told Swecker that despite volumes of warnings about the potential for false positives on presumptive blood tests, they didn't believe it because they had not gotten a positive result when testing plant material and bacteria known to signal false positives. Those two analysts believed that positive presumptive tests were absolute indications of blood.
Eight analysts were involved in these bad practices. Some are dead; a few are retired.
Four still work for the SBI, and another performs contract work for the agency.
Behind the five cases Swecker deemed most problematic: Deaver, a 23-year veteran of the agency.
The cost of these errors was tough for lawyers to comprehend Wednesday.
"This report reveals staggering lack of competence at the lab," said Mike Klinkosum, a Raleigh lawyer who represented Taylor in February and helped discover Deaver's withheld test results. "It's an abomination of the criminal justice system and an affront to all the decent law enforcement officers out there doing their jobs."
Cooper delivered copies of the report and a list of affected cases to district attorneys across the state little more than an hour before announcing his findings to the public.
At least one met the findings with anger.
"We've been out here asserting things as fact that just weren't," said John Snyder, district attorney of Union County. "Now, when I've got jurors coming in, I've got to enter into a whole line of questioning I never should have been forced to do. They won't trust us."
Snyder, a Republican, called for an independent audit of the entire crime lab.
On Wednesday, Cooper promised a more independent review would follow and that Greg McLeod, the new director, would bring in experts.
"The lab cannot accept a lack of thoroughness," Cooper said. "It cannot accept attitudes that are not open to the possibility that a mistake has been made. It cannot ignore criticism and suggestions from the outside."
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Mandy...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8927
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/637010/the-sbi-over-the-years-whos-been.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
The SBI over the years: Who's been in charge
Over the past two weeks, a News & Observer series and a scathing internal audit commissioned by Attorney General Roy Cooper have laid bare a host of problems at the State Bureau of Investigation. Analysts withheld or distorted the results of blood tests in 230 cases. Field agents tailored investigations to please prosecutors or ignored key evidence. These problems span decades. Here's a look at who's been in charge of the SBI during that time.
The N.C. attorney general oversees the State Bureau of Investigation and hires and fires the SBI director.
Roy Cooper: 2001-present
Salary: $123,198
Of note: Cooper has been on notice of SBI problems for years in highly publicized cases such as Floyd Brown, Alan Gell and George Goode, in which SBI agents withheld evidence of innocence, misreported lab results or obtained questionable confessions.
Mike Easley: 1993-2001
Status: After eight years as governor from 2001 to 2009, Easley returned to private life.
Of note: As attorney general, Easley and his staff vehemently opposed opening full police and prosecutorial files to defendants.
Lacy Thornburg: 1985-1993
Status: Thornburg is a U.S. District Court judge in Western North Carolina.
The SBI director runs the state's largest investigative agency, with 337 agents and a $12 million laboratory with a staff of 167. SBI field agents help police agencies across the state investigate serious crimes, while its lab analyzes crime scene evidence such as DNA, blood and firearms.
Greg McLeod: 2010-present
Status: Appointed this past month
Of note: McLeod has spent most of his career as a lobbyist for the attorney general, the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, and the Governor's Office.
Robin Pendergraft: 2001-2010
Status: After being removed in July, Pendergraft is now a senior deputy attorney general in charge of Medicaid Fraud.
Salary: $113,293
Bryan Beatty: 1999-2001
Status: Commissioner, N.C. Industrial Commission
Salary: $123,198
Jim Coman 1993 -1999
Status: Senior deputy attorney general
Salary: $131,829
Of note: One of the state's most senior criminal lawyers and prosecutors, Coman is known for his colorful, blunt-spoken style and loyalty to his staff and colleagues.
Charles Dunn: 1991-1993
Status: died 1996
Of note: Dunn served two terms as SBI director, once in the 1970s.
The SBI counsel is the agency's top legal adviser.
John Watters: 1993-present
Salary: $104,005
Of note: Watters has built a reputation for fighting requests to release information not specifically listed in the state's discovery law, and has been particularly resistant to defense experts observing tests in the crime lab.
SBI crime lab leadership
Jerry Richardson: director: 2002-present
Salary: $98,481
Of note: Richardson has no science education. He graduated with a degree in communications from N.C. State University. During an interview with The News & Observer in July, he struggled to explain the policies of his laboratory.
Al Stevens: 1999-2002
Salary: $78,603
Status: retired
Billy Matthews: mid 1990s
Salary: $64,950
Status: retired
Harold Elliot: 1986 - 1995
Salary: $70,137
Status: retired
Ralph Keaton, assistant crime lab director under Elliot until 1995
Salary: $63,914
Of note: Keaton heads ASCLD-LAB, the agency that certifies the SBI has proper protocol and performs appropriate scientific analysis.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636894/owl-theory-supported-by-3-experts.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Owl theory supported by 3 experts
BY STANLEY B. CHAMBERS JR. - Staff Writer
DURHAM A lawyer for Michael Peterson filed three affidavits this week to further support the theory that an owl killed the novelist's wife.
T. Lawrence Pollard, one of Peterson's attorneys, says the written statements from three experts should persuade Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson to order the state Medical Examiner's Office to turn over all documentation related to Kathleen Peterson's autopsy, including photos, videos, notes and audio recordings. The affidavits also ask to unseal the autopsy photographs.
If granted, the information would be used to prove that Kathleen Peterson was killed by an owl, not from blunt force trauma, Pollard said. Michael Peterson was convicted of killing his wife in 2003 and is currently serving a sentence of life in prison.
Pollard is a former neighbor of Peterson who has pushed the owl theory for several years. Prosecutors and police dismiss his theory, which defense lawyers did not mention during Peterson's trial.
The request follows a News & Observer series that questioned the investigative tactics of State Bureau of Investigation agents. Testimony of SBI Agent Duane Deaver helped convict Peterson of killing his wife, who was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in a pool of blood in 2001. Peterson's children, who recently wrote a letter to The N&O, want their father to have a new trial.
Pollard has asked Hudson to hold off his ruling until all of Peterson's lawyers have met and completed paperwork. A ruling may be made next week, the lawyer said.
"It does give us new hope," he said about the affidavits. "We know that we got the feather. We know that it happened late at night. We know that there was a small wooden slither recovered that was determined to be a tree limb. The SBI crime lab did not examine the feathers. They assumed these feathers didn't have anything to do with the crime."
Pollard has said that according to an SBI evidence report, a microscopic feather was found in Kathleen Peterson's hand with some of her hair.
The affidavits also included a letter from Robert C. Fleischer, who heads the genetics program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who wrote that he was willing to conduct a DNA test on the feathers to determine the species of bird they came from.
Dr. Alan van Norman, in the first affidavit, wrote that two lacerations on Kathleen Peterson's scalp appear to be a pair, with each laceration having "the appearance of a trident with three limbs converging to a point at roughly 30 degrees from each other and a fourth limb converging to the same point at nearly 180 degrees from the center limb of the other three limbs."
Listed in the affidavit as a former U.S. Army surgeon and current North Dakota neurosurgeon and owl expert, Norman recently wrote about owl feathers in The Bismarck Tribune. He said in the affidavit that the injuries are not consistent with a blunt instrument, but rather a large bird of prey.
"The multiple wounds present suggest to me that an owl and Ms. Peterson somehow became entangled," he wrote. "Perhaps the owl got tangled in her hair or perhaps she grabbed the owl's foot."
Dr. Patrick T. Redig, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Minnesota, also agreed with the owl theory.
"In my professional opinion, the hypothesized attack to the face and back of the head resulting in the various punctures and lacerations visible in the autopsy photographs is entirely within the behavioral repertoire of large owls," he wrote in the second affidavit.
Kate P. Davis, executive director of Raptors of the Rockies, located in western Montana, wrote in the third affidavit that it is not uncommon for owls to attack people and that they can kill species much larger than themselves.
"The lacerations on Mrs. Peterson's scalp look very much like those made by a raptor's talons, especially if she had forcibly torn the bird from the back of her head," she wrote. "That would explain the feathers found in her hand and the many hairs pulled out by the root ball, broken or cut. The size and configuration of the lacerations could certainly indicate the feet of a Barred Owl."
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scha...@newsobserver.com or 932-2025
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http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100820/OPINION07/100818031/1007/COLUMNISTS
August 20, 2010
SBI guilty of poor law enforcement
Tom Campbell
Prosecutors, defense attorneys, out-of-state criminal investigators and even law enforcement officials have complained for years about investigative practices at the State Bureau of Investigation. It took two high-profile verdict reversals and knowledge about a damning investigative series in The News and Observer before Attorney General Roy Cooper took action by replacing the Director of the SBI and suspending the bloodstain pattern analyst’s unit.
These revelations are the latest in a series of misconduct, corruption and ethical violations in state government. The public is weary of problems in the Department of Motor Vehicles, the State Highway Patrol, the State Board of Elections and now the SBI. It helps explain why citizens of this state hold a low opinion of state government in general.
We find it unconscionable that one person suffered 17 years in prison and another 14 years in confinement because of poor SBI work. How many more innocent people are behind bars in our state because of “junk science,” prejudiced investigators or lazy and fraudulent investigations? More than one District Attorney is questioning whether shoddy investigative tactics by the SBI might have impacted their homicide cases. They have every right to be concerned and it would be reasonable, although time consuming and expensive, to review every capital conviction in North Carolina.
It is also reasonable to ask what action will be taken against the agents, supervisors and SBI Director whose shoddy work, poor oversight and lax management cost at least two men so much of their lives. The public will forgive honest mistakes but it appears there were deliberate attempts to cover up or, worse still, manufacture evidence. When complaints were lodged, management turned their collective heads.
The state will no doubt pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to these two and perhaps others who have been wronged, but the greater cost is the further loss of confidence in law enforcement. Our pursuit of justice should include those in the SBI who are guilty of crimes of omission and commission. Not only do we hold those in law enforcement to high standards but we should also hold them accountable for their actions. Getting fired for knowingly putting an innocent person in jail for 17 years seems too small a price to pay for the crime committed against this person.
The larger question is what our leaders will do to restore confidence? Business-as-usual responses about people needing more training or reassigning those involved to another division are not acceptable. This is a time when leaders must do three things. They must acknowledge the failures, tell the public what actions they have taken to fix the problems and offer sufficient transparency to demonstrate these sins will not occur again. This accounting must also report personnel actions taken. If we cannot trust those in law enforcement who can we trust?
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Tom Campbell is former assistant North Carolina State Treasurer and is creator/host of NC SPIN, a weekly statewide television discussion of NC issues airing Sundays at 6:00am on WLOS-TV. Contact him at www.ncspin.com.
This e-mail contains editorials from:
Charlotte Observer - SBI needs shakeup, lab needs new home
Greensboro News-Record - SBI audit clearly shows miscarriage of justice
Winston-Salem Journal - The SBI lab
News articles from:
News & Observer - Legal tangle may slow SBI reforms
N&O - Ex-SBI analyst defends withholding test results
N&O - SBI's methods stun former FBI official
N&O - State police group urges criminal probe of SBI
N&O - The SBI over the years: Who's been in charge
N&O - Owl theory supported by 3 experts
Column from:
Asheville Citizen-Times - Campbell: SBI guilty of poor law enforcement
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http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/08/20/1632651/sbi-needs-shakeup-lab-needs-new.html
Friday, Aug. 20, 2010
SBI needs shakeup, lab needs new home
Thorough review, change in order at dysfunctional agency
Greg Taylor's 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit has forced North Carolina to face an unnerving and horrifying truth: The State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab and some of its agents have done shoddy work, misled judges and juries, hid evidence and deprived defendants of their rights to a fair trial. Some of its practices have aimed at winning convictions, not at the truth.
There will be more troubling revelations to come about the SBI, but this much is glaringly evident: The agency needs a thorough housecleaning, a new purpose and, above all, its lab needs a new home in state government. Without these steps, the agency may never regain credibility.
This conclusion is based not only on the newspaper series "Agents' Secrets" prepared by the News & Observer and also published by the Charlotte Observer. It's also bolstered by an audit of the SBI's blood analysis unit, commissioned by N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper this year after the exoneration of Taylor. Cooper asked former FBI agents Chris Swecker and Mike Wolf to examine the serology unit after SBI blood analyst Duane Deaver admitted he did not report results of a follow-up test showing a substance on Taylor's truck was not blood after all.
The audit examined 15,000 criminal cases and found that in at least 230 of them, the SBI distorted or withheld evidence, practices that may have been key factors in conviction and imprisonment. These cases will require costly and time-consuming reviews to determine whether any were wrongful convictions. The list includes three death penalty cases that led to executions. There were confessions of guilt in each of the three, but it's also possible that accurate evidence might have resulted in life sentences. We will never know.
This much we know: Some SBI agents have done wrong and ought to be fired - and prosecuted where appropriate. In his case, Deaver - suspended from his job Wednesday - was following SBI practice in not reporting negative evidence that does not support prosecutors' cases. The N.C. Innocence Commission is considering whether to hold him criminally responsible for false or misleading statements.
Law enforcement officials also ought to examine the so-called "confession" that former SBI agent Mark Isley says he drew up verbatim after hearing Floyd Brown talk about a murder Isley believed he committed. The "confession" used words and sentence structures that state doctors say Brown, who has an IQ half the average person, was incapable of uttering. A hard look at all of Isley's cases is in order.
Authorities also ought to reexamine cases former SBI agent Dwight Ransome worked on before his retirement. Ransome's handling of one murder case has cost taxpayers nearly $4 million in a lawsuit settlement after Alan Gell was wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for murder. The lawsuit charged that Ransome withheld exculpatory evidence in Gell's case.
This practice of hiding, distorting or manufacturing evidence in order to bolster prosecutors' cases and win convictions is prevalent in some parts of the SBI. It is a morally bankrupt practice. The worst of it is that it allows the real criminals to continue committing crimes while someone else serves time.
Here's another maddening thing: Allegations of shoddy work and indifference at the SBI are not new. Cooper should have and likely did know of them years ago. The same goes for former SBI Director Robin Pendergraft, whom Cooper recently replaced but transferred to another post in the Department of Justice, where Isley now works. Why are they still employed there?
Cooper's tardiness in addressing these allegations and Pendergraft's lack of action are inexcusable. North Carolina's law enforcement establishment will be fighting its reputation for ineptitude, poor performance and cooking the evidentiary books for years. The fastest way out of this mess is to give the crime lab an independent home in state government and give the SBI a new mission to pursue the truth and, this time, justice.
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http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/08/19/article/editorial_sbi_audit_clearly_shows_miscarriage_of_justice
Friday, August 20, 2010
Editorial: SBI audit clearly shows miscarriage of justice
Sickening. That's the word that comes to mind after the public release Wednesday of an audit of the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab.
Commissioned by Attorney General Roy Cooper, the audit found that the SBI had withheld or fudged blood evidence to help prosecutors in 190 cases over 16 years. The review found another 40 reports in which blood evidence was manipulated but no charges were filed.
Among those convicted in the presence of tainted evidence include four people now on death row, five more who died in prison and three who were executed. There is perhaps no more compelling reason to suspend the death penalty in North Carolina than this.
Two former FBI officials examined 15,000 lab files from between 1987 and 2003. In 230 cases, the investigators found that preliminary crime scene tests had discovered evidence of blood, but subsequent and more reliable tests came back negative. The official lab reports then did one of four things, all of them wrong: They didn't mention follow-up testing; failed to include one or more negative or inconclusive tests; stated that follow-up tests weren't done, when in fact they were; or contradicted the test findings. In other words, the SBI reports were intentionally misleading -- all to the potential benefit of the prosecution.
The audit's authors said they did not look to see if tainted evidence was introduced at trial, much less whether it resulted in a conviction. In at least one instance, that of the 1992 murder of an Eden woman, a problematic report did not matter because her killer confessed. But in the case of Greg Taylor, whose exoneration set off the chain of events, the faulty blood evidence was a key piece of the prosecution's case. And if Taylor is innocent, it stands to reason that there might be other innocent people in prison because of the SBI's willful sloppiness.
What now? It's clear that the SBI's reputation has been left in tatters. The seriousness of the facts in the report suggest that state leaders should strongly consider spinning the crime lab off from the SBI and make it an independent agency, one that presumably would be free of bias for the prosecution.
The agency has taken the first step toward redemption by admitting its errors. Now the SBI, as well as local prosecutors and law enforcement, must re-examine these cases where evidence was tainted to ensure that justice was done correctly. Anyone connected to these unnecessary acts and who is still employed by the SBI should be fired.
Justice is supposed to be blind, and trials are supposed to be fair. What went on in the SBI's crime lab for so long was neither just nor fair.
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http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2010/aug/20/the-sbi-lab/opinion-editorials/
August 20, 2010
The SBI lab
JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF
The fallout from the audit of the State Bureau of Investigation crime lab, which revealed analysts omitting, overstating or falsely reporting blood evidence in cases involving 269 people from 1987 to 2003, will be felt for years to come in costly appeals. At the very least, defendants were convicted in part on faulty evidence, and some may have been wrongfully convicted, allowing the guilty to go free. The lab must be removed from the SBI and placed under another state agency, where its staff can work independently as unbiased scientists -- not sworn law-enforcement officers.
"Not only does North Carolina need an independent lab … but some of these agents need to be prosecuted for perpetrating a fraud on the court," said Pete Clary, the Forsyth County Public Defender. "If a defense lawyer tried to introduce the kind of lousy evidence that (SBI Agent Duane) Deaver et al have been testifying to under oath, and getting by with, he or she would likely get disbarred and sent to the slammer."
The audit found that Deaver's work was among the worst of the cases in question. It was his work in the murder case of Greg Taylor of Wake County, who was recently exonerated after 17 years in prison, that caused Attorney General Roy Cooper, who oversees the SBI, to call for the review last winter. Deaver's questionable work with blood spatters in the 2009 murder trial of Clemmons dentist Kirk Turner was chronicled as part of a recent investigative series on the SBI in the Raleigh News & Observer.
Cooper wants to keep the lab under the jurisdiction of his office. He has noted that he asked for the review by two former assistant FBI directors, and he is initiating reforms. He recently hired a new director, Deaver has been suspended with pay and the work of the bloodstain pattern analysis unit has been stopped. But why didn't Cooper take those steps sooner? He won election to his office in 2000. Could he not have known of the myriad problems that have been exposed? Defense lawyers and newspapers, including the Journal, have for years been questioning the SBI's practices.
Gov. Bev Perdue, who told the Journal this week that she would do "everything in her power" to ensure that North Carolinians "have the utmost trust and faith in the science and fairness of our criminal justice system," must push for the lab to be placed under another agency, as other states have done. Some might argue that the state should contract with a private lab. But then the profit motive would enter the picture, as well as the potential of labs pushing for unneeded tests.
Perhaps the legislature could place the lab under the Administrative Office of the Courts or the state Medical Examiner's Office. It could be run by a forensic scientist and be overseen by an advisory panel of defense, lawyers, police, prosecutors and forensic scientists appointed by the governor.
As defense lawyers from across the state have pointed out in the last several days, there's an inherent bias when lab analysts walk into a courtroom and testify as the sworn agents of a law-enforcement organization. "They wear a badge," Mark Rabil, an assistant capital defender, said in an e-mail to the Journal. "Many have handguns. This certainly creates a tendency to see things through the tunneled lens of law enforcement and the prosecution."
And whether bias or any number of other factors are responsible, the problems at the SBI lab are obvious. The N&O reported that "examiners have bypassed accepted techniques, despite pushback in the wider scientific community." The lab is led by Jerry Richardson, whose college degree is in communications, and the training of many of the analysts leaves much to be desired. Deaver, whose degree is in zoology, has trained other SBI analysts in blood spatters. The jury foreman called the SBI's work in the Turner case "a fraud."
The review didn't reveal any other wrongful convictions, and it says that the SBI has followed more updated procedures since 2003 so more recent work is not under scrutiny. But defense attorneys and prosecutors statewide are reviewing the cases in question, which include five in Forsyth. Jim O'Neill, the Forsyth County District Attorney, said yesterday that his office is starting with the one Forsyth case in which a defendant is still in prison. Timothy Kinnard Williams is serving a 21-year prison sentence for the second-degree murder of Barbara Ann Williams in 1995. SBI lab results had indicated the presence of blood on an item in the case, but those results were not confirmed in further tests.
O'Neill called the results of the audits "very concerning," and wants more stringent control and spot audits of the SBI lab. But putting the lab under another government agency "would jeopardize its role as a crime-solving public agency," he said.
We disagree. Problems in the SBI lab have continued year after year, shaking the faith of many North Carolinians in their justice system. A human tendency on the part of analysts to help police and prosecutors has degenerated, for some analysts, into the overstating and false reporting of evidence. They're falling under the weight of their badges. The state must remove the burden and set a course for an unbiased crime lab.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636934/legal-tangle-may-slow-sbi-reforms.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Legal tangle may slow SBI reforms
BY JOSEPH NEFF AND MANDY LOCKE - Staff writers
The task of reforming the State Bureau of Investigation, as Attorney General Roy Cooper promised to do, will be complicated by civil lawsuits, potential criminal investigations and other attempts to hold the agency accountable for decades of misconduct.
Cooper promised reforms following a growing flood of bad news about the agency. A damning audit showed that lab analysts had misrepresented or hidden test results in 230 cases involving blood work. That audit followed a News & Observer series showing that SBI agents twisted reports and court testimony when facts threatened to undermine their cases. A 2009 audit found that an SBI field agent was working unsupervised while he ignored evidence of a suspect's innocence.
On Thursday, the first few of coming legal challenges surfaced. A police union called for a federal probe. A judicial body announced it may investigate whether an SBI agent perjured himself last year.
Cooper has tasked new SBI director Greg McLeod, his longtime lobbyist, with a number of changes: an independent ombudsman to handle complaints; a review of the DNA section; better supervision of agents in the field; more advanced certification for the lab, and a culture of openness and truth seeking.
Piecemeal change won't turn the SBI around, said Jim Cooney, a Charlotte lawyer who has represented police departments as well as death row inmates. The SBI's very credibility is at stake, but the agency's failure to deal with problems for years shows that the agency is not capable of reforming itself, Cooney said.
Criminal investigations require a high degree of specialization and expertise, Cooney said, but the SBI, the state's largest investigative agency, has been treated as just another branch of the Attorney General's Office.
"You don't need a lawyer or legislative assistant to run it, you need an investigative professional, someone with management experience to run a law enforcement agency of this size and complexity," Cooney said. "It's beyond me why there isn't a nationwide search going on."
Deaver's problems
On Thursday the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission said it may soon convene to discuss the possibility of holding SBI agent Duane Deaver in contempt of court for possibly false statements he made before the commission last September.
Deaver, who was suspended Wednesday, told commissioners at a hearing to determine the innocence of Greg Taylor that he did not perform sophisticated, confirmatory tests on a stain found on Taylor's SUV.
Deaver's lab notes showed otherwise. The commission, a judicial body, could hold Deaver in contempt of court if they find he perjured himself.
Taylor was declared innocent of murder in February; he had spent 17 years in prison
It's not only defense lawyers who are calling for federal criminal investigations into whether agents have falsified evidence or committed perjury.
The N.C. Police Benevolent Association called for a criminal investigation into agents and leaders at the center of allegations that they distorted blood analysis in more than 200 criminal cases.
John Midgette, executive director of the association, said the behavior warrants both a federal civil rights investigation as well as a determination as to whether agents broke state law.
"Undoubtedly, no further laboratory analysis can be trusted to a lab under the current control of SBI leadership," Midgette said.
George Holding, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, has heard those calls but won't discuss them.
"This audit raises very serious questions, but I am not able to comment at this time on whether there will be an investigation of civil rights violations," Holding said.
Federal prosecutors can investigate those in power for civil rights violations when they find that the suspects denied someone his liberties with criminal intent. It's unclear whether the practice of withholding crucial blood evidence was criminally motivated.
David Rudolf, a Charlotte lawyer, has sued the SBI on behalf of Floyd Brown, a mentally disabled Anson County man locked up for 14 years on a confession that Rudolf says was fabricated by an SBI agent.
The audit could spur more civil suits, if defendants could prove the withheld blood evidence was critical to their conviction.
It's unclear how many of those cases there are, but Rudolf anticipates that lawyers will be asking that question in hundreds of cases.
"Depending on how many cases these phony lab people testified in, there could literally be thousands of people whose convictions are called into question," Rudolf said.
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Josep...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4516
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636932/ex-sbi-analyst-defends-withholding.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Ex-SBI analyst defends withholding test results
BY MANDY LOCKE AND JOSEPH NEFF - Staff writers
Jed Taub spent his entire career telling prosecutors whether evidence collected at crime scenes was stained with blood, a clue so critical it sometimes determined the difference between guilt or innocence.
On Wednesday, a former FBI agent hired by Attorney General Roy Cooper criticized the work of Taub and seven other analysts, saying their work amounted to civil rights violations. Taub's work is now being called biased, scientifically unsound and unfair.
For 16 years, SBI blood analysts routinely omitted the results of more sophisticated tests that pointed to the absence of blood. Their reports, instead, stated that they had found chemical indications for blood.
Taub, who retired in 2004 after 30 years at the SBI, defended his analysis and that of his colleagues.
"We didn't report the negative result of a confirmatory test because, really, it's misleading," said Taub, who now works as a forensic investigator for the Pitt County Sheriff's Office. "We couldn't be sure it wasn't blood, so those tests really didn't matter."
In serology, analysts use two sets of tests to check for blood. The first, a presumptive test such as phenolphthalein, offers clues about where blood may be. But it's a problematic test because other substances, such as plant and animal matter, can trigger a positive result. Until 2003, when DNA analysis became commonplace at the SBI, analysts would turn to a second set of sophisticated blood tests to determine if the substance was, in fact, blood.
Former FBI agent Chris Swecker flagged nine cases Taub handled in which he withheld crucial results. Taub said that he worked an average of 230 cases each year from 1974 to his retirement 30 years later.
Taub dismissed the audit and the criticism it has brought to him and several colleagues.
"There's a lot of people making much ado about nothing," Taub said.
Taub said that the only times he reported the absence of blood was when he got a negative result on that first, presumptive test. Any negative results after that were irrelevant, he said.
"People are so spacey about blood," Taub said. "If there was a misunderstanding, that's the fault of the [defense] attorney. We can't forestall every idiot."
Taub said that the safeguard against misunderstanding his analysis would have been to call him to court to testify.
Taub still works with blood analysis at the Pitt County Sheriff's Office.
Three other SBI analysts targeted in the audit still work at the SBI, though new agency director Greg McLeod said he was investigating their performance internally.
Another analyst targeted in the audit, Lucy Milks, is a contract employee in the drug section. She could not be reached for comment.
All other analysts, except Taub, did not return a call for comment.
The analysts include:
Duane Deaver, who is at the center of the questionable serology work. He was suspended Wednesday pending further internal investigation. He earns $72,423 a year and has worked in recent months as a training coordinator.
Suzi Barker, a supervisor in the DNA section. Barker earns $67,938 a year.
Jennifer Elwell, an analyst in the DNA section. She earns $67,917 a year.
Russell Holley, who also works in the DNA section performing serology analysis. He earns $52,449 a year.
Milks left the agency in 2006; her salary then was $65,177. She works on contract as a chemist in the drug chemistry section.
Brenda Bissette, who retired in 2005 with a salary of $61,149 after she botched blood evidence in a capital murder case, swapping the victim and suspect's blood sample. She has previously declined to comment on her employment at the bureau.
David J. Spittle, who left the bureau in 2001 with a salary of $59,628.
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News researcher Brooke Cain and database editor David Raynor contributed to this report.
Mandy...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8927
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636929/sbis-methods-stun-former-fbi-official.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
SBI's methods stun former FBI official
BY PETER ST. ONGE - Staff writer
In his 30-year career, Chris Swecker has pursued crime as a prosecutor, federal agent and, most prominently, a high-ranking FBI official in Charlotte and Washington.
But Swecker was startled with what he discovered when N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper asked him to investigate the state's forensic investigators.
Swecker's report, released Wednesday after a five-month review, revealed that a renegade unit and flawed policies at the State Bureau of Investigation's crime lab led to evidence being withheld and distorted in 230 cases involving 269 defendants.
"What surprised me was the sort of the looseness there, specifically with policy regarding reporting results," said Swecker, now a Charlotte lawyer and consultant in financial crimes security and strategy. "What that created was a very subjective environment withcases."
Swecker was asked by Cooper to audit the SBI in March, after the exoneration of Greg Taylor, a Wake County man imprisoned 17 years for murder. Swecker, who enlisted fellow former agent Mike Wolf for the audit, brought a history of agency work to the task - he joined the FBI as a special agent in 1982, rose to special agent in charge in the FBI's Charlotte office in 1999, then moved to Washington as assistant director for the FBI's Criminal Investigative Division in 2004.
Two years later, after more than two decades with the agency, he moved back to Charlotte to lead Bank of America's corporate security organization. He was laid off in late 2008, along with more than a dozen other Bank of America executives.
Along with his consulting work, he has opened a Charlotte law practice and gone on what he self-effacingly calls "the minor-league speaking tour." On Wednesday, he was in Boone to speak to the Appalachian State football team - "about landmines and pitfalls and life decisions," he said.
Swecker's credentials
Swecker, 54, graduated from Appalachian State with degrees in political science and economics, and he received his law degree from Wake Forest University before beginning his career as an assistant N.C. district attorney. He is married with three daughters and lives in Charlotte.
He said he was gratified that his audit shone a light on troubling SBI practices.
"I'm not happy that some people will suffer for it," he said, "but I think any agency needs this kind of scrutiny in order to get better."
The FBI made significant changes in the mid-1990s after a whistle-blower alleged and an investigation found flawed forensic work by several lab examiners, and the agency faced questions in 2004 about disputed science that matched crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects.
"I think a lot of people think law enforcement is all about getting the bad guy, and it is," Swecker said. "I know it sounds corny, but it really is a search for the truth. You let the facts fall where they fall.
"In those [SBI] cases, that wasn't what happened."
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/19/636269/commission-to-address-whether.html
Thu, Aug 19, 2010 07:06 PM
State police group urges criminal probe of SBI
By Mandy Locke and Joseph Neff - Staff writer
The North Carolina Police Benevolence Association called Thursday for a criminal investigation of SBI analysts, and their supervisors, who withheld critical blood evidence for 16 years.
The association, a coalition of law enforcement officers in North Carolina, expressed dismay and condemnation over revelations that SBI agents kept secret evidence that may have pointed to the innocence of 269 defendants.
John Midgette, executive director of the PBA, said it's a crime for officers and officials to willfully fail to properly discharge the duties of their office. He also called for a federal civil rights investigation.
"Undoubtedly, no further laboratory analysis can be trusted to a lab under the current control of SBI leadership," Midgette said.
The SBI backlash comes a day after two former FBI agents presented a damning audit of the SBI's blood analysis unit.
That audit identified 230 tainted cases involving 269 defendants. In each, analysts withheld information about confirmatory testing.
Already, one of the agents in question could be facing the possibility of criminal penalties.
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission could soon address whether to hold SBI agent Duane Deaver criminally responsible for false and misleading statements made during a hearing last September.
Kendra Montgomery-Blinn said early Thursday that the commission discussed Deaver's statements in April. They decided to wait until an independent audit of the SBI serology unit was complete before addressing the issue again, Montgomery-Blinn said.
"I'll be calling commissioners to see if they want to meet and address this," Montgomery-Blinn said Thursday. She said the commission could hold someone in contempt of court if they found perjury was committed.
Deaver handled blood analysis in 1991 in the case against Greg Taylor, a Wake County man exonerated in February after 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Deaver had reported to prosecutors in 1991 that a stain on Taylor's SUV had given chemical indications for the presence of blood. He withheld the results of more sophisticated tests that proved the substance was not blood.
Deaver was suspended from his job Wednesday after an audit of the SBI blood analysis unit singled him out among the eight agents who commonly withheld results of more sophisticated tests to determine if a substance was blood.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, had commissioned an audit of the unit in March, weeks after Deaver told three judges that supervisors at the SBI told him to write his reports the way he did. Cooper called the practice "troubling" and "unacceptable."
The biggest question for the Innocence Inquiry Commission, however, is whether Deaver lied last September when he testified before the commission that he had not completed confirmatory blood tests on Taylor's SUV.
Deaver's statements about his work in Taylor's case shifted dramatically over the past year. In September, he told commissioners he did not perform confirmatory blood tests. In February, he told prosecutors that he didn't have sufficient evidence to yield conclusive results. Later that month, he told three judges that his supervisors told him to write his reports that way.
Montgomery-Blinn said the Innocence Inquiry Commission will be sending applications to each of the 269 defendants, inviting them to apply to the commission for a review of their cases. The commission was created in 2006 to review claims of innocence from those convicted of crimes in North Carolina.
The audit stopped short of determining whether or not the slanted evidence affected the guilt or innocence of the defendant. Prosecutors and defense attorneys across the state will begin reviewing the cases looking for answers to those questions.
Auditor Chris Swecker painted a picture in his audit of a renegade unit at the SBI crime lab acting without rules and with misguided notions about the science behind blood analysis.
In serology, police use rudimentary presumptive tests at crime scenes to determine where blood might be. Those tests are fallible, prone to giving false positives. So analysts depend on more sophisticated, confirmatory tests to determine whether a substance is, in fact, blood.
Before 1997, the serology unit operated without report-writing guidelines. Analysts set their own criteria until 1997; that policy sanctioned the practice of not reporting negative or inconclusive results of confirmatory tests.
Swecker found policies and practices out of step with the rules of serology. They were also far afield of fairness, according to the report.
"There was anecdotal evidence that some Analysts were not objective in their mindset," Swecker wrote.
Tests used to confirm the presence of blood never yield "inconclusive results," Swecker noted. Two analysts interviewed for the report told Swecker that despite volumes of warnings about the potential for false positives on presumptive blood tests, they didn't believe it because they had not gotten a positive result when testing plant material and bacteria known to signal false positives. Those two analysts believed that positive presumptive tests were absolute indications of blood.
Eight analysts were involved in these bad practices. Some are dead; a few are retired.
Four still work for the SBI, and another performs contract work for the agency.
Behind the five cases Swecker deemed most problematic: Deaver, a 23-year veteran of the agency.
The cost of these errors was tough for lawyers to comprehend Wednesday.
"This report reveals staggering lack of competence at the lab," said Mike Klinkosum, a Raleigh lawyer who represented Taylor in February and helped discover Deaver's withheld test results. "It's an abomination of the criminal justice system and an affront to all the decent law enforcement officers out there doing their jobs."
Cooper delivered copies of the report and a list of affected cases to district attorneys across the state little more than an hour before announcing his findings to the public.
At least one met the findings with anger.
"We've been out here asserting things as fact that just weren't," said John Snyder, district attorney of Union County. "Now, when I've got jurors coming in, I've got to enter into a whole line of questioning I never should have been forced to do. They won't trust us."
Snyder, a Republican, called for an independent audit of the entire crime lab.
On Wednesday, Cooper promised a more independent review would follow and that Greg McLeod, the new director, would bring in experts.
"The lab cannot accept a lack of thoroughness," Cooper said. "It cannot accept attitudes that are not open to the possibility that a mistake has been made. It cannot ignore criticism and suggestions from the outside."
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Mandy...@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8927
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/637010/the-sbi-over-the-years-whos-been.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
The SBI over the years: Who's been in charge
Over the past two weeks, a News & Observer series and a scathing internal audit commissioned by Attorney General Roy Cooper have laid bare a host of problems at the State Bureau of Investigation. Analysts withheld or distorted the results of blood tests in 230 cases. Field agents tailored investigations to please prosecutors or ignored key evidence. These problems span decades. Here's a look at who's been in charge of the SBI during that time.
The N.C. attorney general oversees the State Bureau of Investigation and hires and fires the SBI director.
Roy Cooper: 2001-present
Salary: $123,198
Of note: Cooper has been on notice of SBI problems for years in highly publicized cases such as Floyd Brown, Alan Gell and George Goode, in which SBI agents withheld evidence of innocence, misreported lab results or obtained questionable confessions.
Mike Easley: 1993-2001
Status: After eight years as governor from 2001 to 2009, Easley returned to private life.
Of note: As attorney general, Easley and his staff vehemently opposed opening full police and prosecutorial files to defendants.
Lacy Thornburg: 1985-1993
Status: Thornburg is a U.S. District Court judge in Western North Carolina.
The SBI director runs the state's largest investigative agency, with 337 agents and a $12 million laboratory with a staff of 167. SBI field agents help police agencies across the state investigate serious crimes, while its lab analyzes crime scene evidence such as DNA, blood and firearms.
Greg McLeod: 2010-present
Status: Appointed this past month
Of note: McLeod has spent most of his career as a lobbyist for the attorney general, the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, and the Governor's Office.
Robin Pendergraft: 2001-2010
Status: After being removed in July, Pendergraft is now a senior deputy attorney general in charge of Medicaid Fraud.
Salary: $113,293
Bryan Beatty: 1999-2001
Status: Commissioner, N.C. Industrial Commission
Salary: $123,198
Jim Coman 1993 -1999
Status: Senior deputy attorney general
Salary: $131,829
Of note: One of the state's most senior criminal lawyers and prosecutors, Coman is known for his colorful, blunt-spoken style and loyalty to his staff and colleagues.
Charles Dunn: 1991-1993
Status: died 1996
Of note: Dunn served two terms as SBI director, once in the 1970s.
The SBI counsel is the agency's top legal adviser.
John Watters: 1993-present
Salary: $104,005
Of note: Watters has built a reputation for fighting requests to release information not specifically listed in the state's discovery law, and has been particularly resistant to defense experts observing tests in the crime lab.
SBI crime lab leadership
Jerry Richardson: director: 2002-present
Salary: $98,481
Of note: Richardson has no science education. He graduated with a degree in communications from N.C. State University. During an interview with The News & Observer in July, he struggled to explain the policies of his laboratory.
Al Stevens: 1999-2002
Salary: $78,603
Status: retired
Billy Matthews: mid 1990s
Salary: $64,950
Status: retired
Harold Elliot: 1986 - 1995
Salary: $70,137
Status: retired
Ralph Keaton, assistant crime lab director under Elliot until 1995
Salary: $63,914
Of note: Keaton heads ASCLD-LAB, the agency that certifies the SBI has proper protocol and performs appropriate scientific analysis.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/20/636894/owl-theory-supported-by-3-experts.html
Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Owl theory supported by 3 experts
BY STANLEY B. CHAMBERS JR. - Staff Writer
DURHAM A lawyer for Michael Peterson filed three affidavits this week to further support the theory that an owl killed the novelist's wife.
T. Lawrence Pollard, one of Peterson's attorneys, says the written statements from three experts should persuade Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson to order the state Medical Examiner's Office to turn over all documentation related to Kathleen Peterson's autopsy, including photos, videos, notes and audio recordings. The affidavits also ask to unseal the autopsy photographs.
If granted, the information would be used to prove that Kathleen Peterson was killed by an owl, not from blunt force trauma, Pollard said. Michael Peterson was convicted of killing his wife in 2003 and is currently serving a sentence of life in prison.
Pollard is a former neighbor of Peterson who has pushed the owl theory for several years. Prosecutors and police dismiss his theory, which defense lawyers did not mention during Peterson's trial.
The request follows a News & Observer series that questioned the investigative tactics of State Bureau of Investigation agents. Testimony of SBI Agent Duane Deaver helped convict Peterson of killing his wife, who was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in a pool of blood in 2001. Peterson's children, who recently wrote a letter to The N&O, want their father to have a new trial.
Pollard has asked Hudson to hold off his ruling until all of Peterson's lawyers have met and completed paperwork. A ruling may be made next week, the lawyer said.
"It does give us new hope," he said about the affidavits. "We know that we got the feather. We know that it happened late at night. We know that there was a small wooden slither recovered that was determined to be a tree limb. The SBI crime lab did not examine the feathers. They assumed these feathers didn't have anything to do with the crime."
Pollard has said that according to an SBI evidence report, a microscopic feather was found in Kathleen Peterson's hand with some of her hair.
The affidavits also included a letter from Robert C. Fleischer, who heads the genetics program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who wrote that he was willing to conduct a DNA test on the feathers to determine the species of bird they came from.
Dr. Alan van Norman, in the first affidavit, wrote that two lacerations on Kathleen Peterson's scalp appear to be a pair, with each laceration having "the appearance of a trident with three limbs converging to a point at roughly 30 degrees from each other and a fourth limb converging to the same point at nearly 180 degrees from the center limb of the other three limbs."
Listed in the affidavit as a former U.S. Army surgeon and current North Dakota neurosurgeon and owl expert, Norman recently wrote about owl feathers in The Bismarck Tribune. He said in the affidavit that the injuries are not consistent with a blunt instrument, but rather a large bird of prey.
"The multiple wounds present suggest to me that an owl and Ms. Peterson somehow became entangled," he wrote. "Perhaps the owl got tangled in her hair or perhaps she grabbed the owl's foot."
Dr. Patrick T. Redig, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Minnesota, also agreed with the owl theory.
"In my professional opinion, the hypothesized attack to the face and back of the head resulting in the various punctures and lacerations visible in the autopsy photographs is entirely within the behavioral repertoire of large owls," he wrote in the second affidavit.
Kate P. Davis, executive director of Raptors of the Rockies, located in western Montana, wrote in the third affidavit that it is not uncommon for owls to attack people and that they can kill species much larger than themselves.
"The lacerations on Mrs. Peterson's scalp look very much like those made by a raptor's talons, especially if she had forcibly torn the bird from the back of her head," she wrote. "That would explain the feathers found in her hand and the many hairs pulled out by the root ball, broken or cut. The size and configuration of the lacerations could certainly indicate the feet of a Barred Owl."
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scha...@newsobserver.com or 932-2025
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http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100820/OPINION07/100818031/1007/COLUMNISTS
August 20, 2010
SBI guilty of poor law enforcement
Tom Campbell
Prosecutors, defense attorneys, out-of-state criminal investigators and even law enforcement officials have complained for years about investigative practices at the State Bureau of Investigation. It took two high-profile verdict reversals and knowledge about a damning investigative series in The News and Observer before Attorney General Roy Cooper took action by replacing the Director of the SBI and suspending the bloodstain pattern analyst’s unit.
These revelations are the latest in a series of misconduct, corruption and ethical violations in state government. The public is weary of problems in the Department of Motor Vehicles, the State Highway Patrol, the State Board of Elections and now the SBI. It helps explain why citizens of this state hold a low opinion of state government in general.
We find it unconscionable that one person suffered 17 years in prison and another 14 years in confinement because of poor SBI work. How many more innocent people are behind bars in our state because of “junk science,” prejudiced investigators or lazy and fraudulent investigations? More than one District Attorney is questioning whether shoddy investigative tactics by the SBI might have impacted their homicide cases. They have every right to be concerned and it would be reasonable, although time consuming and expensive, to review every capital conviction in North Carolina.
It is also reasonable to ask what action will be taken against the agents, supervisors and SBI Director whose shoddy work, poor oversight and lax management cost at least two men so much of their lives. The public will forgive honest mistakes but it appears there were deliberate attempts to cover up or, worse still, manufacture evidence. When complaints were lodged, management turned their collective heads.
The state will no doubt pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation to these two and perhaps others who have been wronged, but the greater cost is the further loss of confidence in law enforcement. Our pursuit of justice should include those in the SBI who are guilty of crimes of omission and commission. Not only do we hold those in law enforcement to high standards but we should also hold them accountable for their actions. Getting fired for knowingly putting an innocent person in jail for 17 years seems too small a price to pay for the crime committed against this person.
The larger question is what our leaders will do to restore confidence? Business-as-usual responses about people needing more training or reassigning those involved to another division are not acceptable. This is a time when leaders must do three things. They must acknowledge the failures, tell the public what actions they have taken to fix the problems and offer sufficient transparency to demonstrate these sins will not occur again. This accounting must also report personnel actions taken. If we cannot trust those in law enforcement who can we trust?
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Tom Campbell is former assistant North Carolina State Treasurer and is creator/host of NC SPIN, a weekly statewide television discussion of NC issues airing Sundays at 6:00am on WLOS-TV. Contact him at www.ncspin.com.
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