"Review finds flawed NC cases, including executions," is the AP report written by Martha Waggoner. It's via Google News. Here's an extended excerpt:
Analysts at North Carolina's crime lab omitted, overstated or falsely reported blood evidence in dozens of cases, including three that ended in executions and another where two men were imprisoned for murdering Michael Jordan's father, according to a scathing review released Wednesday.
The government-ordered inquest by two former FBI officials found that agents of the State Bureau of Investigation repeatedly aided prosecutors in obtaining convictions over a 16-year period, mostly by misrepresenting blood evidence and keeping critical notes from defense attorneys.
The review of blood evidence in cases from 1987 to 2003 by two former assistant directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation calls for a thorough examination of 190 criminal cases, stating information that could have helped defendants was sometimes misrepresented or withheld.
"It impacted the decisions that were made — it could have," report author Chris Swecker said Wednesday. "Let me step back and make sure you understand: It could have resulted in situations where information that was material and favorable to the defendant was not disclosed."
The report does not conclude that innocent people were convicted, noting the evidence wasn't always used at trials and defendants may have admitted to crimes. But it states prosecutors and defense lawyers need to check whether tainted lab reports helped lead to confessions or pleas.
Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered the review in March after an SBI agent testified the crime lab once had a policy of excluding complete blood test results from reports offered to defense lawyers before trials. The existence of the policy was later confirmed by a former SBI director. Agent Duane Deaver's testimony led to the exoneration of a murder convict imprisoned nearly 17 years.
Cooper said Wednesday that he will send the cases cited in the report back to the counties where they were tried for review. "This report is troubling. It describes a practice that should have been unacceptable then and is unacceptable now," he said during a news conference.
The review found 230 cases in which eight SBI analysts filed reports that, at best, were incomplete. Of those, 190 resulted in criminal charges. The report says the lab may have violated federal and state laws mandating that evidence favorable to defendants be shared with their lawyers. It also bolsters defense attorneys' long-held argument that the lab is in the pocket of law enforcement.
Besides the executions, the report urged a closer look at the cases of four people on death row and one whose death sentence was commuted to life.
Today's News & Observer carries, "Under fire, SBI blood analyst suspended." It's reported by Mandy Locke, Joseph Neff and J. Andrew Curliss.
Duane Deaver, a veteran SBI analyst at the center of a growing controversy on how the agency reported blood evidence, has been suspended pending further investigation.
The move came Wednesday afternoon, hours after Attorney General Roy Cooper revealed an audit of the crime lab's serology unit calling into question convictions in 230 criminal cases, involving 269 people.
Deaver performed the work in the five cases an independent auditor deemed most troubling.
Deaver's work - and the practices of the SBI - came under fire in February when Greg Taylor, a Wake County man, was exonerated after 17 years in prison. Deaver withheld results of more sophisticated blood tests that yielded negative results. He reported to prosecutors that Taylor's SUV gave chemical indications for the presence of blood.
Deaver testified in February that supervisors told him to report his findings that way. According to the audit released Wednesday, the practice was widespread. Eight analysts completed their reports in a similar fashion.
"This is a damning indictment of the entire serology section," said Mary Pollard, executive director of Prisoner Legal Services. Her agency will begin reviewing the cases of 80 defendants who are currently in prison. "It is absolutely horrifying."
The criminal convictions or sentences of three people who have since been executed in North Carolina, and four more cases in which the defendants are now on death row, are may be in doubt because of flawed reports.
Chris Swecker, a former FBI agent who audited serology work from 1987 to 2003 said in the report that the questionable work is the result of "poorly crafted policy; lack of objectivity; the absence of clear report writing guidance; inattention to reporting methods that left too much discretion to the individual Analyst; lack of transparency; and ineffective management and oversight..."
According to the review, the cases involved SBI lab reports that were overstated, misleading or omitted important information about negative test results that would have been favorable to the defendants.
The SBI's lab work is often powerful evidence in criminal cases, shaping decisions at the heart of a defense that include decisions about plea bargaining or how to cross examine witnesses.
The SBI has followed more updated procedures on blood analysis since 2003, and more recent work is not under scrutiny. "The tests that are examined in the bulk of this report are no longer in use," the agents wrote.
The serology unit has been under intense scrutiny since February when, in the case of Taylor, it was shown that SBI agent Duane Deaver reported to prosecutors that the fender of Taylor's SUV gave chemical indications for the presence of blood.
But according to lab notes discovered in 2009, Deaver had performed more specific tests, which registered negative results for the presence of blood. He never mentioned those results or the additional tests; at Taylor's hearing in February, Deaver testified that his superiors taught him to write his reports like that.
The new report says that Deaver gave "inaccurate" testimony before the Innocence Commission in the hearings that resulted in Taylor's exoneration when he testified that he was following policies. There were no such policies then, the report says, though it was the SBI's practice at the time to omit negative results in some cases. It became the agency's actual policy in 1997.
One of the defendants who has been executed is Desmond Keith Carter, who had confessed to a March 1992 murder. The report says Deaver in that case "confirmed the presence of blood despite a negative confirmatory test." The questionable evidence wasn't introduced at the trial, according to the report.
Preliminary, or presumptive, blood tests can give false reads; those tests often give positive results for substances such as metals, plants and animal matter. More sensitive tests are seen as confirmatory.
Swecker and Wolf examined more than 15,000 old cases involving serology work to identify the cases similar to the Taylor case.
The former agents said they could not conclude that each case has a wrongful conviction, but said each will need to be reviewed by defendants, prosecutors and, in some cases, the courts.
The Swecker-Wolf Independent Review of the SBI Forensic Lab is in Adobe .pdf format.
There are more news articles and editorials on the SBI Lab scandal, and I'll be updating with an additional post this afternoon.
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