It would add insult to injury if, presented with a glaring example of how the State Bureau of Investigation withheld key evidence, North Carolina justice officials hunkered down behind a wall of excuses and blew off the need for follow-up action. Fortunately, Attorney General Roy Cooper is facing up to the problem.
Upon Cooper's orders, a review will be conducted to identify instances where the SBI might have failed to turn over relevant information to prosecutors or defendants. As he told The N&O, "If the crime lab was deficient, we need to know, and the public needs to know it will be remedied."
The Greg Taylor case was the latest to suggest that in reality, there was no "if" about the lab's deficient performance.
When Taylor was tried in 1993 in connection with the murder of a Raleigh woman, prosecutors made much of an SBI agent's report that blood had been found on Taylor's vehicle. But that report turned out to have been based on preliminary findings. A necessary follow-up test had failed to confirm blood's presence. That result was not shared with the Wake County district attorney's office or with Taylor's counsel.
Taylor was convicted, but was recently freed from prison when a panel of judges agreed with the recommendation of the state's Innocence Inquiry Commission.
Turning over evidence that tends to show a suspect didn't do what he stands accused of doing is about as basic as it gets when it comes to fair play in the justice system. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has long viewed such disclosure as an obligation on the part of authorities. North Carolina law dating to the late 1990s requires the prosecution to share all of its information with the defense, but older cases in particular should be scrubbed for signs that exculpatory evidence was swept under the state's rug.
Cooper says the review will be conducted internally at the outset, but that an independent look might be warranted. Independence would ensure maximum credibility. Neither Cooper nor SBI director Robin Pendergraft was in office when Greg Taylor went to trial, but it falls to them to identify other defendants who might have been wrongfully convicted because of what amounts to cheating with the evidence.
