4 hours Ago
Five hundred and twenty-nine days. That is the wait time to get DNA test results from a rape kit submitted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Nearly a year and a half to finalize the results of a criminal investigation or to potentially even identify a suspect and press charges.
For the victims of sexual assault, that is justice delayed. It is the haunting understanding that a perpetrator is walking free. And, quite frankly, it is unacceptable.
And it is just one symptom of the “perfect storm” engulfing the CBI. At the center of the storm is former CBI DNA analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods. Earlier this year, Woods was charged with 102 felonies related to her 30-year career at the CBI.
Charges range from forgery of a government-issued document to attempting to influence a public servant to perjury and committing a cybercrime. Woods’ apparent misconduct at the agency led to an official review of all 10,786 of her cases and to the discovery of 1,003 cases with “anomalies.” The ramifications of these “anomalies” are potentially huge.
They throw into doubt convictions, sow distrust in our criminal justice system and undermine the credibility of the CBI. These are huge issues that will take years to sort out — of the 1,003 cases flagged, so far just 14 have been retested. Another ramification, though, is the ballooning wait for law enforcement to get lab results back from the department — lab results that can be instrumental to prosecuting a case or proving someone’s innocence.
The fallout from the Woods scandal has monopolized resources at the CBI. Instead of processing new requests for forensic testing, DNA analysts were forced to re-examine thousands of Woods’ cases. And as more district attorneys request testing from the 1,003 cases with “anomalies,” more time will be spent rectifying past mistakes.
(To be clear, even before the Woods scandal erupted, it still took 275 days for a rape kit to be processed — still an unsatisfactory amount of time.) Things have gotten so bad that some organizations are turning away from the state-funded CBI altogether. The Boulder County Sheriff’s Department has made the decision to contract with the Jefferson County Regional Lab in Golden for DNA analysis instead of working with the CBI, even though the JeffCo lab will cost the Sheriff’s Department $100,000 in annual dues.
That’s a lot of money, but considering the dysfunction at the CBI and the importance of forensic testing, it appears to be money well spent. (The Boulder Police Department has, thus far, opted to stay with the CBI.) This is exactly why the issues at the CBI need to get sorted out — and as quickly as possible.
The CBI is a taxpayer-funded governmental department that law enforcement agencies across the state rely on. It is past time that our lawmakers make certain that the systemic issues at the CBI are put to rest. Concerns about Woods’ work were first raised in 2014.
More concerns were raised in 2018. But the department’s “golden child,” who was frequently rewarded for her efficiency, just kept getting accolades for the amount of work she took on and the overtime hours she accrued. Woods’ alleged misconduct was her own doing.
She alone is responsible for her actions. But it appears as though her practices were condoned by the system around her — as though expediency was prized over accuracy. In fact, quality control was so lax at the CBI, a lawsuit alleges , that, in several cases, the technical review of one scientist checking another’s work lasted just one minute.
On its surface, this may not sound shocking, but when you consider the importance of the work that the CBI is doing — processing evidence that could put someone in prison for life or let them walk away scot-free — thorough and precise quality control should be routine. Earlier this year, the department went to the Legislature seeking approval to roll over $3 million in funding to start clearing its test kit backlog. The Joint Budget Committee, though, refused, saying they had “zero trust” in the agency and citing an “appallingly bad” plan to address its test kit backlog.
This lack of trust was well-earned. But the fact of the matter is, the CBI is an imperative department and the work it is doing must be funded. This means lawmakers need to do the hard work to see the department is reformed so that it can be trusted and then funded.
The full Legislature eventually came together to approve the rollover of $3 million in funding for the CBI — with plenty of much-needed conditions. An amendment to Senate Bill 105 will require that the CBI provide an email update to lawmakers every 30 days, accelerate testing for the rape kit backlog by contracting with a third-party lab, provide a progress report to the Joint Budget Committee by Nov. 1, and set up a public dashboard so the public knows the status of the backlog.
This is a necessary start. Lawmakers must ensure the CBI follows through on these conditions and makes meaningful progress addressing its backlog — something that should be helped once an additional 15 forensic scientists who are currently in training are brought fully online. But more serious questions must be asked of the department as well.
Have the systemic issues that made Woods’ misconduct possible been rooted out? Have all the appropriate parties — who facilitated or maybe even implicitly encouraged expediency over accuracy — been held accountable? Has the CBI created a better plan for addressing its backlog than the “appallingly bad” one they originally shared with lawmakers? And what happens if they don’t meet their goals? In addition to the millions of taxpayer dollars that are already being spent to undo the damage wrought at the CBI, millions more might have to be paid out if someone was wrongfully convicted based on altered or improperly analyzed forensic evidence. This amounts to a profound waste of our tax dollars. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of this fiasco — and just how much work still needs to be done to restore trust and ensure this sort of systemic failure does not occur again.
The ability to rely on the outcomes of our criminal justice system is imperative to the foundation of our society. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is an integral part of this equation. Individual DNA analysts are responsible for executing this work in good faith, but the buck ultimately stops with our lawmakers.
They are right to fund the CBI — the test kit backlog must be addressed — and they are right to attach conditions and requirements and to demand reform at the CBI. But more work must be done to restore trust in the department. Our lawmakers owe it to everyone in our state to see to it that the CBI is returned to functionality — so that justice can be fairly and quickly served in our state.
— Gary Garrison for the Editorial Board.
