DENVER — A former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA chemist is facing 102 felony charges, including dozens of counts of forgery after officials claimed she cut corners and violated normal testing methods in hundreds of criminal cases.
Yvonne “Missy” Woods was scheduled to appear in Jefferson County state district court on Thursday for an initial hearing. She retired in November 2023 after 29 years at the state forensic lab.
The authenticity of over 500 cases has been brought into question as a result of her data manipulation, according to an arrest warrant document obtained by prosecutors.
Woods was being held Wednesday in the Jefferson County Jail on a $50,000 cash bond. An attorney for Woods did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.
The investigation into her alleged misbehavior began in September 2023, when an intern at the state investigative bureau noticed missing material in a case Woods handled in 2018.
According to authorities, Woods manipulated data to conceal tampering, removed data indicating she failed to troubleshoot issues during the testing process, and did not adequately document tests completed in case records.
In addition to 52 counts of forgery, she faces 48 counts of attempting to influence a public official, as well as one count each of perjury and cybercrime, for suspected misbehavior from 2008 to 2023.
Concerns about Woods’ work were originally raised more than a decade ago, according to an internal affairs report issued last year by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. A worker questioned her evidence testing in 2014, and in 2018, she was briefly removed from DNA cases after being accused of data manipulation, according to the article.
The consequences from the alleged wrongdoing is still ongoing. In the first prosecution in the state thought to be influenced by Woods’ study, a Colorado man pleaded guilty in June to lesser counts in the deaths of three individuals in 2017.
Prosecutors allowed Garrett Coughlin to plead guilty to second-degree murder in part because they were unable to bring Woods to testify in a case based primarily on circumstantial evidence.
The arrangement allowed Coughlin to avoid a possible life sentence for felony murder after his previous conviction and sentence were overturned due to the discovery that at least one juror misled during jury selection.
Officials announced Wednesday that the reaction to Woods’ alleged wrongdoing had cost more than $11 million.
Among those expenditures, the Colorado Department of Public Safety requested $7.5 million from the Legislature last year to pay for an independent lab to retest up to 3,000 DNA samples and for district attorneys to analyze and potentially reprosecute cases damaged by lab errors.
State officials stated Tuesday that they had hired a consulting firm to examine the state’s forensic program. According to Bureau of Investigations Director Chris Schaefer, the employment of Forward Resolutions LLC was part of the agency’s commitment to “hold itself accountable” in light of the charges against Woods.
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