A judge should not have to order a scientist to prepare an accurate report for use in a murder case. That should just come naturally to the scientist. Unfortunately, our North Carolina SBI crime lab does not believe in this basic principle. Our SBI lab believes that prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges should comb through volumes of policies and procedures in order to predict what an SBI lab analyst will say in court.
Tamera Bean is on trial in a murder case in Asheboro. She is claiming that she shot her boyfriend in self-defense. When the sheriff arrived, they found the boyfriend shot dead in the home, with a shotgun and several shotgun shells by his side. The state is claiming that Bean staged the scene to look like self-defense by placing the shotgun and shells beside the dead man. Naturally, the sheriff sent the gun and shells to the SBI crime laboratory for fingerprint and DNA analysis to determine whether Bean had touched the gun or shells. This was a good move. Unfortunately, the lab found no prints of value for comparison. They did find some "touch DNA" on one of the shell casings. This means they found skin cells left on one shell from when someone touched it. The good news for Bean was that her DNA was not on the shell, and the boyfriend's DNA cannot be excluded as the source of skin cells on the shell.
The problem is that the SBI lab analyst wrote a report in 2009 that she could form no conclusion about the identity of anyone from the DNA testing. Now, in 2011, just three days before trial, she told the defense attorney, David Botchin, that she would go to court and testify that Bean was excluded as the source of the DNA on the shell and that the boyfriend could not be excluded. This supports Bean's argument of self-defense and contradicts the state's assertion that she staged the scene.
To simplify, at the particular genetic location tested on the shell — called a loci — the SBI analyst found genetic material from the boyfriend — called alleles, with the numbers 14 and 14 (one allele from each parent); the finding of the "14, 14" means that it could not have come from Bean, whose genetic markers at that location are "13, 15." In other words, Bean is 100 percent excluded as the source of the skin cells on the shell casing found by the dead man. From a basic fairness and scientific point of view, the SBI lab should have written the report correctly from the outset. Then, if the findings or opinion changed, the SBI lab should have written an amended report and sent it to the attorneys. This is just common sense.
In a motion filed on the first day of the trial, Botchin said that the SBI analyst told him that there had been a change in policy that changed her final opinion; no new testing was done, it was just a new interpretation. As someone who has been involved in the criminal justice system for over three decades, and who has handled cases involving DNA for 20 years, I can tell you that this makes no sense. Even if new testing is done with more sophisticated means — which happens more and more — then the written reports to the attorneys and the court should be updated.
When Botchin brought this to the attention of the judge in the Bean trial, the judge ordered the SBI to prepare a corrected report so that the jury would know the truth. The judge should not have to order this. The SBI should have a policy in place for correction or modification of its findings. Unfortunately, the SBI has a policy that is directly contrary to this. The acting SBI lab director, Gregory McLeod, in a recently released memo says it is up to the attorneys to figure this out. McLeod and his boss, Attorney General Roy Cooper, are publicly defending this policy. This is wrong. We need to bring science — and fairness — back to the crime lab. Fifty percent of the 273 inmates freed by DNA in the last two decades suffered because of invalid scientific reports. With these SBI policies in place, I fear that thousands of inmates did not get fair trials because the attorneys and the court were not told the truth.
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