wrongful conviction
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State crime lab debacle had earlier warnings of misconduct from ‘golden child’ DNA scientist
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State crime lab employees for years repeatedly tried to warn their superiors at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation that Yvonne “Missy” Woods had become a rogue employee who was cutting corners. But officials failed to respond forcefully until last year, when an intern at the lab found new anomalies, an internal affairs investigation found. The…
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More than a thousand Colorado criminal cases now ‘in question’ due to data manipulation by state DNA scientist, investigative report says
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DNA findings in more than 1,000 criminal cases in Colorado are now “in question” due to data manipulation by former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods, state officials announced on Friday when they unveiled the findings of an internal investigative report into Woods’ work. The internal CBI investigation found that Woods deviated…
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10th Circuit denies immunity to Denver detectives who coerced teenager’s false murder confession
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Four Denver law enforcement officers may be sued for the coerced confession of a cognitively-impaired 14-year-old boy, resulting in false information that led to his wrongful conviction for murder, the federal appeals court based in Colorado ruled on Friday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a strongly-worded…
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State Supreme Court to scrutinize trial of man found responsible for 1991 double killing
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Although Timothy John Kennedy reportedly had no motive, left no conclusive DNA evidence at the crime scene, and could point to another suspect who was indisputably hatching a murder plot, an El Paso County jury convicted Kennedy in 2014 for an execution-style double homicide. But that trial, which took place after a judge overturned a…
