RALEIGH -- Several weeks after the exoneration of Greg Taylor, a Wake County man who spent 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, the state Attorney General has ordered an outside review of the State Bureau of Investigation crime lab that played an instrumental role in the wrongful conviction.
State Attorney General Roy Cooper announced today that he asked Chris Swecker and Mike Wolf, two former assistant directors with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to lead the review. The two have been asked to examine the lab's practices on disclosing scientific analyses, internally and externally.
The policies were called into question last month when a three-judge panel heard evidence in the Taylor case.
Duane Deaver, a veteran SBI crime lab analyst, presented a report to Wake County prosecutors in 1991 that said a test of a substance found on Taylor's truck indicated the presence of blood. At trial, a prosecutor repeatedly told jurors the substance was blood.
But Deaver actually had done a test that indicated the substance was not human blood, a result never shared with prosecutors or defense lawyers. Deaver testified recently that it was SBI policy to handle reports the way he did.
The testimony prompted a review of SBI cases.
On Thursday, a team of criminal defense attorneys, including members of the litigation association N.C. Advocates for Justice, met with Cooper and his senior advisors and asked for an external review.
"He listened, and he acted," said Mary Pollard, executive director of N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, who attended the meeting with Cooper. "We sorely need this independent audit to make sure things are being done right."
The problems brought to light in Taylor's case also renewed an outcry from defense lawyers and others who have long wanted the forensic lab to be taken out from under the SBI and the state attorney general and set up as an independent state agency.
The external review will be conducted at the same time as an internal review by Cooper.
