RALEIGH -- Two former assistant directors of the FBI have begun a review of the state's crime lab after revelations that led to the groundbreaking exoneration of a man wrongly accused in a 1991 murder.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper said a review has been ordered of cases dating to the 1990s.
Past practices at the state crime lab that Cooper now oversees came into focus after judges exonerated Greg Taylor after a lengthy inquiry into his claim of innocence. Cooper also has ordered an internal review into the crime lab's now-defunct policy of not automatically providing complete notes on blood test results for trials.
When Taylor was convicted in 1993, prosecutors relied partly on a lab report that indicated blood was found in his SUV near the slain woman's body. However, the report used at trial didn't mention that a second test for blood was negative. The negative result was contained in more extensive, informal notes that the State Bureau of Investigation kept filed away until the case came before the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission.
An Associated Press review of audio recordings, interviews and court filings revealed the notes were turned over to the commission in July 2008, yet at least 18 months passed while commission investigators overlooked the evidence. Uncovering it took a chance brainstorm by a defense lawyer, repeated questioning of a crime lab investigator and a nudge from an unlikely source - the prosecutor who sent the man to prison.
The jurist who came up with the commission thinks the panel should overhaul its personnel.
"It was a very horrendous oversight," said former state Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr., who formed a coalition in 2002 that recommended the panel's creation. "It's very definitely a critical failure on the part of whoever had that information."
Wade Smith, a defense attorney who's a commission member, said the commission "is in uncharted territory because it's the only commission of this type in all of America. And it is having to find its way and invent itself."
If the commission has made mistakes, "we're going to be happy to know about it and thrilled at a chance to do better," he said.
