Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday created new oversight for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in the wake of a sweeping DNA testing scandal at the statewide law enforcement agency.
The governor established a 14-member oversight committee for CBI’s forensic services division that will review “quality incidents” in the division, offer feedback on policies and procedures, and propose improvements, according to a three-page executive order.
The new oversight committee comes in the wake of revelations that a longtime scientist at CBI, Yvonne “Missy” Woods, manipulated DNA testing results for years even as her colleagues repeatedly raised concerns about the quality of her work during her nearly 30-year career.
CBI has so far identified problems in 809 of Woods’ cases between 1994 and 2023. The flawed DNA testing is sending shockwaves through the state’s criminal justice system as the state moves to re-test hundreds of DNA samples.
The law enforcement agency has been criticized for its handling of the scandal — for failing to act on the initial red flags about Woods’ work in 2014 and 2018, for apparently not using federally mandated oversight for its forensic services division, and for limiting the scope of an outside investigation into the division.
Attorney Adam Frank, who is representing a man who claims he was wrongfully convicted of a 1994 murder because of Woods’ flawed DNA work, said Friday it’s hard to tell whether the new oversight committee will be empowered to make real change at CBI.
“Any examination of CBI’s practices is a necessary step, but this still involves treating CBI like a functional organization that needs minor changes, as opposed to a dysfunctional place that ignored major misconduct for a decade,” he said. “I don’t know how you reform a corrupted agency with a task force that is supposed to make suggestions to the existing leadership of that agency.”
Ally Sullivan, a spokeswoman for Polis, did not answer questions Friday about whether the oversight committee would have any power to enforce its recommendations or whether the committee was a direct response to Woods’ misconduct. The 14 committee members will be volunteers, spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said.
She said the goal of the newly-created CBI Forensic Services Committee is “strengthening our criminal justice investigation and adjudication system to ensure the most accurate outcomes.”
In his executive order, Polis called the committee a “forum to address and discuss issues, concerns and oversight relating to the forensic services provided by (CBI), and their application to and impact on the criminal justice system.”
About a third of the committee will be CBI leaders or their designees, including CBI’s deputy director for forensic services, laboratory system director and quality director, according to the order.
The remaining two-thirds of members will come from outside agencies, including from law enforcement, academia and the criminal defense community. The Office of the Colorado State Public Defender will have a seat on the committee, as will the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
Criminal defense attorney Ann Roan said Friday that the committee’s makeup is problematic.
“The lion’s share of the committee members are embedded in the same systems that contributed to the current crisis,” she said. “Only a completely independent body with unfettered access to the necessary information will be able to restore the public trust that CBI broke. This proposal is nothing but a way to distract from the serious problems at CBI.”
The Colorado Criminal Defense Bar agreed to send a member to the committee because the professional association’s membership “is extremely concerned by the falsification of DNA and forensic evidence and the culture within the Colorado Bureau of Investigation that allowed it to persist unchecked for decades,” executive director Kathleen Murphy said in a statement Friday.
But she went on to blast Polis’s announcement of the effort for including language that framed the committee as aimed at helping to “catch and convict criminals.”
“Participation in a process intended to ‘help law enforcement catch and convict criminals’ is antithetical to our core values and mission — prioritizing convictions over justice created the situation we find ourselves in,” Murphy said in the statement. “Any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate.”
The Colorado Criminal Defense Bar will have further discussions with the governor’s office about the scope of the association’s contribution to the committee, Murphy said.
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