In a letter to the CBI, the ACLU of Colorado calls for a thorough, independent audit and demands transparency with the public about CBI’s response
DENVER — The ACLU of Colorado, in partnership with the Kory Wise Innocence Project (KWIP), sent a letter today to the Director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Chris Shaeffer, and the Deputy Director of Forensic Services Lance Allen demanding that CBI be transparent with the public about its response to the misconduct of former DNA analyst Yvonne “Missy” Woods and conduct a thorough, independent audit. We are requesting that CBI respond by December 3, 2024.
The joint letter expresses KWIP and the ACLU of Colorado’s concerns regarding CBI’s response to the misconduct of CBI’s former DNA analyst. Ms. Woods spent more than thirty years at CBI. For at least a decade, colleagues repeatedly raised concerns about the quality of her work. In 2014, and again in 2018, CBI technical reviewers identified data deletions in cases handled by Ms. Woods and reported the misconduct to their superiors at the CBI. Ms. Woods’ misconduct was not made public until this year, after an undergraduate CBI intern spoke up about “anomalies” in Ms. Woods’ casework.
As KWIP and the ACLU of Colorado began investigating how CBI allowed Ms. Woods’ misconduct to go unchecked for so long, we discovered that CBI has apparently been out of compliance with requirements of its federal funding, requirements designed to prevent exactly this kind of pervasive and unchecked misconduct.
“CBI allowed Missy Woods to alter forensic evidence for years. This misconduct brings CBI’s entire forensic operation into question, and a thorough, independent audit, followed by full disclosure of the results to stakeholders and the public is essential,” said Emma Mclean-Riggs, ACLU of Colorado Staff Attorney.
This intentional misconduct had the potential to cause grave injustices; victims of sexual assault who endured invasive and traumatic forensic exams may have lost their chance to have their attackers identified, and innocent defendants in highly charged sexual assault cases may have lost the only evidence that could prove their factual innocence.
While we are encouraged that CBI is finally preparing to have an external entity conduct an independent investigation into the root cause of Ms. Woods’ misconduct and the CBI’s failure to prevent it, we are concerned about the scope of the project. The proposed audit covers only a two-year period, between 2022 and 2024, when Ms. Woods’ misconduct was first reported in 2014. The audit will also be overseen by CBI executive staff, compromising its independence.
With this letter, we ask CBI to be transparent with the public about its compliance with the requirements of its federal funding and about the scope of the audit it intends to conduct. We also ask CBI to do what must be done for the outside auditor to conduct the audit properly; independently, rigorously, and with sufficient scope to identify the root causes of this disturbing and unchecked misconduct. We look forward to their prompt response.
