SBI fires much-criticized agent

Duane Deaver, the SBI agent and analyst who has been the public face of problems at the State Bureau of Investigation, has been fired.

Deaver was terminated Friday, according to an e-mail message from Noelle Talley, spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Deaver's attorneys called the firing "pathetic" and "political." Lawyers for criminal defendants said it is a good first step toward cleaning up the SBI.

Christine Mumma, executive director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, said Deaver's termination is not enough. She saw firsthand the effect of Deaver's work on Greg Taylor, who was convicted in part because of a lab report Deaver prepared in 1991 that falsely gave the impression that a substance found on Taylor's SUV was blood. Subsequent tests showed the substance wasn't blood, but Deaver did not include those tests in his report to prosecutors. After spending 16 years in prison, Taylor was exonerated.

"The SBI director may feel that this act sends a message that progress is being made at the lab," Mumma said, "but in my view this is an act of throwing the employee under the bus while those responsible for giving the employee direction and approving his work walk away unscathed."

After Taylor went free, Cooper commissioned an independent audit of the crime lab's serology unit. The audit called into question the lab's work in 229 criminal cases. Deaver performed the work in the five cases the auditor deemed most troubling.

Deaver's lawyers said the SBI letter of termination did not cite the substance of Deaver's work for the SBI.

"The reasons given for his termination are pathetic," lawyer Philip Isley said. "We believe there are a lot of politics behind this. There was pressure being put on him to retire early."

The SBI cited three reasons for firing Deaver, according to his lawyers:

Deaver has been charged with contempt of court by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, which alleges that he gave false and misleading testimony in the Taylor case. In his 1991 lab report, Deaver withheld the results of confirmatory blood tests that were favorable to Taylor. The commission also charged that Deaver gave conflicting testimony about the tests in an exchange with the staff and during two court appearances.

Deaver's utterance as he finished videotaping a bloodstain pattern experiment in a Davie County murder case. National experts derided the experiments as unscientific productions designed not to seek the truth but to produce results sought by prosecutors.

At the end of the video, Deaver made a comment that was more film director than scientist. "Oh, even better,holy cow, that was a good one. Beautiful. That's a wrap,baby."

The SBI cited the phrase "That's a wrap baby," but did not mention the underlying work in the case. The defendant in the case, Clemmons dentist Kirk Turner, was acquitted. The jury foreman described the SBI's work in the case as "fraud."

Deaver reviewed some casework for a colleague in the fall while he was on investigative leave and banned from working.

Isley said Deaver has been treated unfairly and will appeal his firing. Isley also said he looks forward to questioning SBI brass and Department of Justice officials under oath during the appeal and at the contempt of court hearing.

Diane Savage, a Chapel Hill lawyer and longtime critic of Deaver, said she is surprised it took the attorney general so much time and the agency so much effort to find Deaver unsuitable. She began complaining about his work and testimony in 2004, when she represented former death row inmate George Goode. In 2009 a federal judge found Deaver's testimony about blood evidence in that case "misleading."

"It's about time," Savage said. "It's great news, but it is just the beginning of what needs to happen."

Mike Klinkosum, a Raleigh lawyer who questioned Deaver in the innocence hearing of Taylor, said he hopes this is a sign that Cooper and the leaders of the SBI are taking seriously their promises of reform.

"I hope this is a movement toward meaningful reform to where this type of conduct will no longer happen or if it does, it can be discovered and rooted out immediately," Klinkosum said.