John Snyder
Snyder also called on Attorney General Roy Cooper, who oversees the SBI, to establish nationally recognized scientific standards at the lab. Science at the lab should be as rigorous as that practiced in the university and corporate labs that have made the state a leader in medicine, biotechnology and other fields, he said.
“The irony is, we have the best science being made in North Carolina, but down the road at the SBI lab we have bad science being used to take away someone’s liberty,” said Snyder, whose district is on the South Carolina border near Charlotte.
Snyder said he was reacting to the ongoing News & Observer series about problems at the SBI.
On Tuesday, the N&O reported on bizarre experiments conducted by the SBI’s bloodstain pattern analysts introduced in a first-degree murder trial in Davie County.
Nationally known experts described the experiments as junk science. An SBI analyst had secretly changed conclusions in his reports to fit a prosecution theory; the jury foreman labeled that behavior “fraud.”
The agency’s chief bloodstain pattern analyst, Duane Deaver, has come under fire in previous cases for not reporting test results pointing to innocence or testifying about bloodstains when he had not run tests proving the stains were blood.
In a 2009 ruling, a federal judge criticized Deaver for false and misleading testimony in a Johnston County case.
The N&O interviewed SBI director Robin Pendergraft in late July about several cases, Cooper suspended the work of the bloodstain pattern analysts and removed Pendergraft from her job.
Cooper’s spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday that the SBI and the Attorney General’s Office stood ready to help Snyder and every other district attorney in North Carolina.
“Although the SBI Crime Lab has nationally recognized certification …, the Attorney General has ordered the new SBI director to conduct a thorough review, make necessary improvements and obtain any additional certification that is appropriate,” according to a statement issued by Noelle Talley.
In February, a three-judge panel declared Gregory Taylor innocent of a 1991 murder, in part because Deaver failed to report test results favorable to Taylor.
He later testified that his supervisor taught him to exclude negative tests from his lab reports.
Cooper, a Democrat, commissioned an outside audit of the lab’s blood analysis unit. The audit is ongoing.
Snyder said his office would review all prior homicide convictions where the defendant had not made a confession, which would probably total 100 to 200 cases.
Snyder, a Republican who is nearing the end of his first term, criticized agents and lab analysts who would craft reports to fit a police or prosecution theory.
“That’s not science, that’s creation,” he said.
Joseph Neff and Mandy Locke
Charlotte Observer Staff Writers
Monroe Scoop News Partner
John Snyder is a liar and criminal. He’s allowed the unlawful prosecution of untold numbers of innocent Union County citizen’s who’s rights have been violated by both corrupt law enforcement officers, and vindictive women who file false charges against innocent men in order to “get them back” for whatever sick reasoning’s they have. I’m currently in the process of exposing John Snyder’s involvement in aiding the Stallings Police Department in covering the crimes they commited against me in 2008. And oh don’t you know I have the evidence to back up my allegations of criminal corruption against Union County DA John Snyder AND the Union County Courthouse! I’m looking SO forward to the day I can confront that gutless SOB and tell him to his face what I think of him and his corruption! I’m currently trying to seek audience with a national news agency so I can sit down, reveal the evidence, and name the names, and John Snyder’s is on the top of the list! So do us a favor, and quit trying to make that punk look like some sort of hero, because he’s not ! He’s liar, and deceiver, but he’s no hero to NO BODY!