The legal case against Yvonne Woods, the former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA scientist at the heart of a scandal that has engulfed the agency, was delayed on Monday until late October due to the sheer volume of material.

Defense attorney Tom Ward asked to delay Woods’ arraignment for more than two months, citing nearly 50,000 pieces of evidence and information in the case that his team was still wading through.

Woods, who goes by the name Missy, was arrested on 102 felony charges after turning herself into authorities in January. She is accused of skipping steps and manipulating data in criminal cases for nearly 30 years during her time at the state crime lab.

CBI has acknowledged finding problems in 1,022 Colorado criminal cases so far, or roughly one-in-10 of the more than 10,780 cases she worked on. 

Prosecutor Darren Kafka said his office would typically object to such a lengthy delay but acknowledged “exceptional circumstances.”

Jefferson County District Judge Andrew Poland granted the defense request and scheduled Woods’ arraignment for 1 p.m. Oct. 27.

Woods retired from CBI in November 2023 just prior to the scandal breaking. She was not fired and has retained her pension.

She was in the courtroom for the brief hearing on Monday but did not speak.

It has been a stunning fall from grace for a forensic scientist once considered the go-to DNA expert in Colorado and revered for her proficiency and productivity. She has testified in hundreds of trials about findings, often in cold cases where her analysis was key.

Nearly three years ago, in September 2023, it all began to unravel after an intern in the lab raised concerns about her work. Multiple investigations followed, both internally and externally.

During the agency’s internal investigation, Woods was vague with interviewers, not denying that she deleted data but rather that it might have happened as she rushed to keep her productivity high and move on to the next case.

Among the allegations in the January indictment are that Woods altered or failed to fully test samples. She is also alleged to have concluded there was no DNA found in sexual assault cases when, in fact, there was.

A sharply critical report about the culture and procedures at the CBI lab, released last month by an independent Wisconsin consulting firm, said that even when told of problems, past CBI leadership was slow and ineffective in its response.

Last year, the CBI internal investigation revealed that workers in the lab had alerted management about suspicions surrounding Woods’ work in both 2014 and 2018, but no concrete action was ever taken. The judicial system and the public were never told about those incidents.

The more recent external report from Forward Resolutions, who had been hired by CBI to review policies and lab procedures, concluded that, while Woods’ wrongdoing was at the heart of the scandal, also to blame was the lab’s past leadership that favored and rewarded speed and a “productivity-above all” mindset over “thoroughness and complexity.”

The full impact of the scandal and its fall-out may take years to untangle. But reverberations are already being felt.

Last year, three murder cases headed for trial were abruptly derailed and suspects were offered plea deals with lesser chargers and lighter sentences because of potentially compromised evidence at the CBI lab.

Also, Michael Clark, convicted of a cold case murder in Boulder and sentenced to life without parole, had his conviction vacated in April, after a retest of DNA evidence against him by an independent lab found different results and “statistically excluded him,” according to the Boulder County District Attorney’s office. 

Clark was released from custody on bond after serving 12 years in prison for a crime he has long said he did not commit. The Boulder County District Attorney is expected to decide later this month whether to retry Clark.