Parker
Questions have arisen about the agency’s investigative techniques after an independent review by two former FBI officials criticized its blood analysis division for withholding evidence in more than 200 cases from the late-80’s to 2003.
Primarily, the SBI is accused of reporting presumptive positive results for the presence of blood, but withholding further testing that revealed the substance either wasn’t blood or wasn’t human blood. These results are reported in an analysts “Bench Notes” accompanying reports.
District Attorney Michael Parker expressed his disappointment with the controversy surrounding labwork from state investigators, but said he believes the SBI Lab “will come back stronger and better than ever after this is all over.”
He said that he and other prosecutors place “a tremendous amount” of confidence in the lab reports they receive from the SBI, and use them to help build cases and secure convictions.
“What’s happened at the SBI lab is extremely disappointing and very regrettable,” Parker said in his office at the Richmond County Judicial Center Monday. “Right now, for example, we have three of those cases that have been identified in the SBI report and we are currently searching for the files to conduct a review of those cases.”
Parker was one of the first prosecutors in the state to express the need for an independent review of evidence when he hired the state’s first full-time forensics investigator who worked for a DA’s office, and made teaching forensics techniques to law officers a priority during his two terms in District 20A.
“I, and every other prosecutor I know, have the same view of scientific evidence in their cases - just tell me what it is,” Parker said. “Don’t change it to try to help my case. I just want to know the truth.”
He helped to found the Forensics Institute of the Carolinas, which provided training for policemen and deputies with nationally-renown forensics experts at Richmond Community College, and also lobbied for a crime-scene reconstruction room to be added in the new judicial center, though he wasn’t able to have an exhaust fan installed so lasers could be used to trace the trajectory of bullets.
Public confidence in the North Carolina SBI took a hit when a three judge panel, including Richmond County Resident Superior Court Judge Tanya Wallace, freed Greg Taylor, a North Carolina man wrongly convicted of murder in 1993.
Analysis of blood on Taylor’s vehicle revealed it wasn’t human, but jurors were only told blood was present.
The Taylor case is cited as the basis for the independent review, commissioned by North Carolina General Attorney Roy Cooper, in its final report.
More than 15,000 cases from the time period were examined, and 230 cases with lab reports similar to those in the Taylor case were identified.
In 40 of these cases no suspect was charged, but a total of 269 people were charged in the remaining 180 cases. Of these, 80 remain incarcerated for these convictions, and four remain on death row.
Parker said two of the three cases in question in District 20A were handled in Richmond County, while the other was prosecuted in Anson County.
The first Richmond County case was dismissed in 1988 when it was ruled a justifiable homicide by the district attorney.
However, in the second case the accused pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 1991, received a 12-year sentence and was released in 1995.
This case was categorized in the report as one of the “cases with lab files that contain reports that fail to mention one or more negative or inconclusive confirmatory test(s) and are thus incomplete.
In the Richmond County conviction, the SBI allegedly withheld a confirmatory test and a species origin test on blood identified at the crime scene, Parker said.
A third case involves an Anson County man who pled guilty to assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, received a five-year prison sentence and was released in 1993.
In both of the convictions, Parker said there was independent evidence pointing to the guilt of the accused, and both pled guilty.
“In the Richmond County conviction, we’re still examining the case files, but it doesn’t look at this point like the blood analysis in question was a major contributor to the conviction,” he said.
In the Anson County case, the files are still being searched for, which illustrates one of the difficulties prosecutors face in working backwards on these convictions.
“These cases are 20 years old, and we’re not even sure we have all these files anymore,” Parker said. “We’ve moved this office twice since then ... This prosecutorial district has been split and divided twice since then, so we’re depending on law enforcement agencies to these case files and provide them for us, but I hope to be able to conduct a thorough review of these cases before I leave office (in January).”
Another constraint is manpower, because assistant district attorneys have been asked to conduct the reviews and cases being questioned under the Racial Justice Act have hit at around the same time, in addition to their normal case load.
The state’s hiring freeze has also left the office down one assistant district attorney.
In the future, he hopes to see more emphasis placed on using cutting-edge forensics techniques and innovations to be sure law enforcement is collaring the right person, and that person is convicted by a jury of their peers if they incite their right to a trial.
“I think that district attorneys across the state are going to take a closer look at forensic techniques that are available, and the evidence that is being reported to us,” Parker said.
For the SBI, however, questions remain, even after the head of the lab stepped down.
“The part that concerns me is the fact that this analysis that was done of the SBI was only done on this particular department, and they have many departments up there,” Parker said. “They have DNA, ballistics and others, and district wide I am sending out a memo to my (assistant district attorneys) that in any case where you have a SBI report, I want you to get the bench notes that accompany it, whether the defense attorneys asks you to or not.”
Staff Writer Philip D. Brown can be reached at (910) 997-3111 ext. 32, or by e-mail at pbrown@yourdailyjournal.com.
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