"SBI AGENT DUANE DEAVER TESTIFIED DURING TAYLOR'S EXONERATION HEARING THAT IT WAS SBI POLICY TO REPORT THAT EVIDENCE SHOWED A CHEMICAL INDICATION FOR THE PRESENCE OF BLOOD EVEN WHEN A FOLLOW-UP TEST CAME BACK NEGATIVE. A FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST FILED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SHOWS THAT THE POLICY HE DESCRIBED WASN'T JUST AN UNWRITTEN PART OF THE SBI CULTURE. BY 1997, AN SBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE HAD PUT THE POLICY IN WRITING. IN A 1997 ORDER SENT TO MEMBERS OF THE LAB'S MOLECULAR GENETICS SECTION, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE MARK NELSON WROTE THAT IF AN INITIAL TEST FOR BLOOD OR SALIVA IS POSITIVE BUT CONFIRMATORY TESTS ARE NOT, THEY SHOULD SAY THE EVIDENCE SHOWED CHEMICAL INDICATIONS FOR THEIR PRESENCE. NELSON DECLINED TO DISCUSS THE POLICY IN A PHONE INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSOCIATED PRESS."
REPORTER MARTHA WAGGONER: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS;
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BACKGROUND: Seventeen years ago, Taylor was convicted of the September, 1991 murder of Raleigh prostitute Jacquetta Thomas, 26, whose body was found dumped on South Blount Street in Raleigh. Taylor, 47, said he spent the night of September 25, 1991 drinking and doing drugs with friends while he drove around southeast Raleigh to buy crack cocaine. Taylor said he believed police latched on to him for the murder because he and a friend drove along a dirt path off the same cul-de-sac where Thomas's body was found. Taylor and the friend smoked crack, but his SUV got stuck as they tried to drive away. They abandoned the SUV and walked to a nearby street to get a ride. Taylor testified they saw what they thought was a body but didn't report it to police. When Taylor returned in the morning to get the SUV, the police were already there. During several days of testimony, a parade of witnesses poked holes in the original evidence against Taylor. A SBI agent testified that while initial tests on some items from Taylor's sport utility vehicle were positive for blood, follow-up tests were negative. Those negative tests were not revealed to the jury that convicted Taylor. A dog training expert testified that the bloodhound that investigators said found the scent of the victim on Taylor's SUV was not trained in scent identification. A jailhouse snitch who said that Taylor confessed his involvement in Thomas's killing to him stood by his original testimony, but did admit that Taylor got the method of killing wrong. Johnny Beck, the man who was in Taylor's SUV on the night of the murder, testified neither he nor Taylor were involved in Thomas's death. Taylor had exhausted his appeals, but the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission reviewed the evidence against him last year and recommended the case to the three judge panel for further review. The commission is the only state-run agency in the country that investigates claims of innocence. Now the Commission has declared him innocent - the first time an inmate has been freed through the actions of the state's Innocence Inquiry Commission.
REPORTER MARTHA WAGGONER: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS;
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"RALEIGH, N.C. — Trial attorneys in North Carolina have identified more cases that they believe may have been adversely affected by policies at the state crime lab after a man who spent more than 16 years in prison was exonerated of a murder conviction that was based partly on incomplete lab test results," the Associated Press story by reporter Martha Waggoner published on May 14, 2010, under the heading, "Defense attorneys turn over cases to SBI lab reviewers," begins.
"The defense lawyers have turned over information about those cases to two former FBI assistant directors who were called in by state Attorney General Roy Cooper to review the lab," the story continues.
"The N.C. Advocates for Justice, an association of about 4,000 trial attorneys, asked its members earlier this year to identify any cases that may have been adversely affected by the State Bureau of Investigation crime lab policies that led to the outside review.
"We're requesting cases where the attorneys thought there may have been some problems with the analysis at the SBI lab or the reporting," said Mike Klinkosum, a Raleigh attorney who is co-chairman of the group's task force on the lab.
He said the group received several responses. He declined to be more specific.
Klinkosum said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the outside review would result in changes at the lab.
"As far as I know they're reviewing a sampling of lab reports," Klinkosum said Wednesday of the investigators' work.
The two who are reviewing the lab are Mike Wolf, who led an inspection team that fixed problems at the FBI crime lab in 1998 and 1999, and Chris Swecker, who was in charge of nine FBI divisions, including the science and forensic lab divisions. Swecker, an attorney, also is a former FBI special agent in charge for North Carolina.
The contracts with Swecker and Wolf pay each man up to $40,000 and expire in mid-June.
The outside review and the requests to defense attorneys came about in the aftermath of Greg Taylor's landmark exoneration by the North Carolina Innocence Commission, the only state-run agency in the country dedicated to proving a convicted person's innocence.
When Taylor was convicted in 1993 of killing Jacquetta Thomas, 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 SBI kept filed away until Taylor's case came before the innocence panel.
The eventual discovery of the notes helped set Taylor free in February. Klinkosum was one of his attorneys.
SBI Agent Duane Deaver testified during Taylor's exoneration hearing that it was SBI policy to report that evidence showed a chemical indication for the presence of blood even when a follow-up test came back negative.
A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Associated Press shows that the policy he described wasn't just an unwritten part of the SBI culture. By 1997, an SBI special agent in charge had put the policy in writing.
In a 1997 order sent to members of the lab's molecular genetics section, special agent in charge Mark Nelson wrote that if an initial test for blood or saliva is positive but confirmatory tests are not, they should say the evidence showed chemical indications for their presence.
Nelson declined to discuss the policy in a phone interview with The Associated Press.
"I already discussed what I intend to discuss with the reviewers who are looking into this," said Nelson, who now works for the U.S. Justice Department. "I have nothing further I want to say."
By March 2001, the SBI had revised its policy to add these words in case of an inconclusive second test: "Further testing failed to confirm the presence of blood."
An SBI spokeswoman said that because of the outside review, no one at the agency could comment on the policies.
Former SBI agent Jed Taub, 60, of Greenville, who said he helped train Deaver, defended the wording of the reports.
"So you can't say it's not blood and you can't say that it is blood. All you can say is the test didn't work, that you couldn't confirm it. And we've never denied that," he said.
But a federal judge disagreed in a court order issued last year in the case of George Goode. The judge said Deaver's testimony was misleading because he led a 1993 jury to believe that he found blood when he had only conducted a preliminary test that indicated the possibility it was present."
The story can be found at:
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/7606151/
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
