Former Colorado DNA Analyst Pleads Guitly to Manipulating Evidence

This doesn't seem to be the situation we've seen in the past of an "expert" altering test results to secure a conviction.

This woman deleted DNA evidence in rape cases.

She pled guilty to four counts of falsifying evidence to influence a public official but she was actually accused of 1,003 of deliberate alterations.

Former Colorado DNA analyst pleads guilty to manipulating data in agreement with prosecutors

A former DNA analyst with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation changed her plea to guilty in court on Tuesday to four charges, as part of an agreement in which prosecutors dropped 100 other counts she was facing.

Yvonne "Missy" Woods reached a plea agreement with prosecutors after she was accused of mishandling or manipulating data in dozens of criminal investigations, casting doubt on many cases in which she was involved. She pleaded guilty to one count each of cybercrime, perjury, attempt to influence a public servant and forgery.

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Woods agreed to a stipulated sentence of between eight and 16 years of prison as part of the guilty plea agreement.

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CBI said it launched an investigation into over 1,000 cases in which Woods had some sort of involvement. The agency said it looked at cases from 1994 to 2023, when she was placed on administrative leave and then retired.

According to an arrest affidavit, investigators said Woods intentionally left DNA samples out of tests or reports and sometimes would test samples until the results showed what she wanted....

Investigators alleged that Woods deleted some findings of what are called "specific values" in more than 30 sexual assault cases. She was accused of submitting reports that said no male DNA was found, when there was, in fact, male DNA or possible contamination that should have been retested.

Woods worked at CBI's Denver regional laboratory in Lakewood until the facility moved to Arvada in 2016, where she worked until she retired in 2023.

Her shoddy work resulted in a convicted murderer going free. I don't know if he was actually innocent and framed, or if this woman's incompetence freed a guilty man.

A Colorado man convicted of murder over a decade ago in Boulder was released from prison in April 2025 after his lawyers say DNA evidence in the case was mishandled by Woods. Michael Clark spent 12 years behind bars but always maintained his innocence in the 1994 murder of Marty Grisham.

The district attorney in Boulder, Michael Dougherty, says the DNA evidence wasn't the only problem with the case.

"The Clark case I look at somewhat differently, because in addition to the concerns we had about Missy Wood's involvement, we also had really significant concerns about juror misconduct, also ineffective assistance of counsel," said Dougherty. "But there are other cases where the DNA evidence played a really important role, and the misconduct by Missy Woods had an incredibly damaging effect on our ability to do justice for the case. And it's caused us to revisit different cases and open old wounds for victims and their families, and that's true in offices around the metro area."

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"She doctored testing results to avoid testing," pointed out Jud Lohnes, an attorney with the Korey Wise Innocence Project at CU Boulder Law. "And that has a dramatic effect on both defendants and victims. Defendants who may have been deprived of DNA testing that could have proved their innocence, and victims of crimes who, whose cases may have withered on the vine because she didn't conduct the DNA testing that could have brought the true perpetrator to justice."

This account says that she deleted DNA results not to swing an investigation one way or the other, but just because she was lazy and didn't want to do the additional steps needed if she admitted there was DNA present.

The bureau's investigation revealed that Woods' misconduct impacted a total of 1,003 cases. A second internal affairs investigation report, which says Woods admitted to purposefully deleting data, states she omitted facts in criminal justice records and tampered with DNA testing by altering or omitting test results from case files.

According to the CBI's investigation report, an intern found an anomaly in Woods' past DNA work during a research project on sex assault kits, which triggered the internal affairs investigation.

According to the 35-page arrest affidavit, Woods admitted to investigators that she deleted data in some cases to avoid taking additional steps. This included reporting she had not found male DNA in several sexual assault cases, despite having found small amounts.

Woods admitted she purposefully deleted data, according to an internal affairs investigation conducted by a team in Kansas. That investigation found she omitted facts in criminal justice records and tampered with DNA testing by altering or omitting test results from the case file. The internal affairs investigation did not find evidence Woods falsified DNA matches, but instead that she deviated from standard testing protocols.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 02:28 PM

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