A federal law mandated outside oversight of crime labs. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation didn't use it, watchdogs allege

DENVER — The Colorado Bureau of Investigation did not use a federally mandated oversight process designed to investigate misconduct in forensic testing, even as one of the agency’s star scientists manipulated DNA testing data for years, two Colorado watchdog agencies claimed in a letter to the CBI on Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and the Korey Wise Innocence Project jointly criticized the CBI in a five-page letter both for failing to use that mandated process and for ultimately commissioning an outside investigation into the scientist’s misconduct with only a limited scope.

The criticism comes in the wake of revelations that longtime CBI forensic scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods routinely deleted and manipulated DNA testing during her nearly 30-year career, creating unreliable results in hundreds of cases and sending shockwaves through the Colorado criminal justice system.

Her misconduct went unaddressed for years even though coworkers raised concerns about the quality of her work in 2014 and 2018. The CBI has so far identified problems in 809 of Woods’ cases between 1994 and 2023, and state lawmakers set aside $7.5 million to remedy the wrongdoing.

The watchdogs’ complaint centers around particular grant money that the CBI receives annually from the U.S. Department of Justice. The agency has received more than $2 million in the federal funding since 2016, The Denver Post found.

As a condition of receiving that grant money, the CBI was required to have in place an independent entity to carry out investigations into “allegations of serious negligence or misconduct substantially affecting the integrity of the forensic results committed by employees,” federal law says.

The CBI named the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office as that independent agency in its grant applications — but there’s no indication that the role was anything but nominal, the letter alleged. The sheriff’s office said it had never investigated an allegation of serious negligence or misconduct at the CBI, and said it would only do so at the CBI’s request, the letter claimed.

Officials at the sheriff’s office “may not have known” the agency was listed as the CBI’s independent oversight until the ACLU and Korey Wise Innocence Project, based at the University of Colorado School of Law, began asking questions this year, the letter alleges.

Emma McLean-Riggs, staff attorney at the ACLU of Colorado, said the federal law was created in response to a “pattern of unaddressed, pervasive misconduct in labs.”

“The hope was if agencies were receiving federal funding they would engage in more rigorous audit and investigation when misconduct arose,” she said.

The fact that the CBI apparently did not use that process, she said, is problematic.

“Given that we have at least two reports from employees internally about Ms. Woods’ misconduct, it does seem that if there were an entity that was widely known as the place to report misconduct, that was doing thorough and responsive investigations, it may have been discovered sooner,” she said.

When Woods’ misconduct came to light, the CBI did not turn to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for the investigation but rather relied on the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

CBI spokesman Rob Low did not immediately comment Tuesday.

The letter also criticized CBI for hiring a fledgling Wisconsin consulting firm to conduct an outside investigation into the agency’s forensic services, particularly because the review will be limited to forensic work conducted between 2022 and 2024.

The organizations called for a broader, more thorough independent audit that looks back at Woods’ track record.

“External investigations and audits of state crime laboratories are essential to identifying the system-level root causes of past misconduct to create safeguards that can reduce the risk of future misconduct,” the letter reads. “We raise these concerns with you because a strong, transparent and high-quality forensic science system will be essential to restoring public trust.”