NC Report: State Crime Lab Withheld or Overstated Evidence in 230 Cases
The exoneration of a North Carolina man imprisoned 17 years for a murder he didn’t commit has led to a review of the State Bureau of Investigation and some surprising findings: The SBI withheld or overstated blood evidence in 230 cases, 190 of which resulted in criminal charges.
The state had a written policy beginning in 1997 to withhold results of more sophisticated blood tests that would have shown a substance on an SUV driven by exonerated inmate Greg Taylor was not in fact blood, the Raleigh News & Observer reports.
According to the newspaper, the impact of the findings “will reverberate for years to come as prosecutors and defense attorneys re-examine cases as much as two decades old to figure out whether these errors robbed defendants of justice. Some of the injustices can be addressed as attorneys bring old cases back to court. For others, it’s too late: Three of the defendants in botched cases have been executed.”
An Associated Press story on the report calls the findings “a scathing review.” Among the cases mentioned in the report were those against two men sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Michael Jordan’s father.
Taylor, whose 1993 conviction was overturned in February, told EyewitnessNews9 that the report shows the need for an independent crime lab.
Corrected at 11:39 a.m. to read that cases mentioned involved the murder of Michael Jordan’s father.
