Employees at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation who observe misconduct and don’t report it could be in for problems of their own under a bill now heading to the governor’s desk.

House Bill 1275 creates “a duty to report” wrongful actions committed by crime lab employees. It also requires the crime lab director to investigate those actions, and creates a process for individuals to seek post-conviction relief if their case is impacted. 

The bill is yet another outgrowth of the misconduct allegations tied to Yvonne Woods, a nearly 30-year employee of the CBI accused of deleting data and manipulating DNA evidence in more than 1,000 instances.

Those errors are estimated to have cost CBI more than $11 million. Woods has been indicated on 102 felony charges.

Meanwhile, the conviction of a man in Boulder County was vacated after a retest of evidence by an independent lab in Virginia revealed different results and that he could be, in fact, “statistically excluded.” The man had been arrested and convicted years after a 1994 murder in large part on the strength of a DNA analysis by Woods.

HB 1275 is retrospective; it deals with problems that took place as far back as 2014, requiring CBI to issue a report by Sept. 1 on investigations “concerning wrongful actions that brought criminal allegations against an employee.” 

The bill also comes with a cost of more than $400,000 in general funds, but those dollars were approved by both the House and Senate appropriations committees on nearly unanimous votes. It also won unanimous votes in both the House and Senate judiciary committees. 

In a statement on Wednesday, Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, one of the bipartisan sponsors of HB 1275, said Coloradans “deserve confidence in the evidence used to prosecute crimes. When a state crime lab employee compromises that evidence, it calls the entire system into question.”

The bill will help to restore faith in state institutions by creating a clear process for notification and review, and it adds transparency, he said. 

“It is unfair to victims, defendants, prosecutors, and the general public when evidence is tampered with, causing doubt to be placed in the results of our criminal justice system,” Soper said.

In a year when unanimous votes had been rare, HB 1275 won unanimous approval in both chambers.