For nearly three decades, Colorado forensic scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods was relied on by police and prosecutors to test DNA evidence in baffling crimes. Her work helped put away infamous murderers, including the “Colorado Hammer Killer.” In November, Woods abruptly resigned. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation said it had discovered anomalies in her work during an internal review and was launching a criminal probe, the Wall Street Journal reports. The unfolding scandal—potentially one of the largest in the history of forensic DNA testing—is throwing Colorado’s criminal justice system into chaos. The state will review and retest 3,000 DNA samples that Woods handled. Public defenders estimate thousands of cases could be affected.
Prosecutors are bracing for legal challenges from people charged or convicted based on Woods’s findings. State lawmakers allocated nearly $7.5 million for possible retrials and case reviews, along with the retesting.
Was Woods just sloppy, or has she been purposefully cutting corners for decades to put people behind bars? “This is a huge, unprecedented mess,” said George Brauchler, a former district attorney in the Denver suburbs whose office oversaw numerous cases in which Woods testified. “I want to know, what in the world did she do?” Ryan Brackley, an attorney for Woods, said “She continues to stand by the reliability and integrity of her work." In a Dec. 5 email to district attorneys, the lab director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said Woods had in some cases altered data and in others, analyzed samples several times but reported only one result. As prosecutors pore over hundreds of cases that Woods worked on, they must consider two nightmare scenarios: Whether any of Woods’s cases ended in a wrongful conviction and whether some people correctly put behind bars must be retried because of shoddy DNA testing.