The exoneration of Greg Taylor last month by the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission has prompted calls for an independent review of the State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab that played a key role in Taylor's wrongful conviction that sent him to prison for 17 years a for a murder he did not commit.
It ought to prompt a lot more than that.
A report by SBI analyst Duane Deaver used at the 1993 murder trial said that human blood was found on Taylor's truck, a claim that prosecutors stressed repeatedly in making their case to jurors.
The investigation by the commission revealed that only the preliminary test found that the substance on Taylor's truck was blood and that further testing by the SBI lab indicated that it was not human blood at all, a fact left out of Deaver's report at the trial.
Attorney General Roy Cooper says he has ordered a review of the lab, but that's not good enough for defense lawyers and Christine Mumma, the Director of the N.C. Center for Actual Innocence, who has called for an independent investigation to see if other cases have been affected by similarly misleading reports.
An independent review seems the least the state should do after sending an innocent man to prison based on a finding that the SBI knew was wrong when he was convicted. That there is any dispute about an outside investigation is impossible to comprehend and reflects an even greater problem with the criminal justice system—the seeming inability of many prosecutors and investigators to admit they made a mistake.
Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said during the commission's hearings that it was his job to defend the conviction and argued that there was no new evidence pointing to Taylor's innocence. After the commission's three-judge panel ruled that Taylor had been wrongly convicted, Willoughby told Taylor that he was sorry and that he wished he'd had all the testimony about his innocence in 1991 that the commission heard.
That provided another head scratching moment. Hearing all the testimony now didn't stop Willoughby from defending the wrong decision made 17 years ago that sent Taylor to prison.
That is a pattern that has become familiar in cases of wrongful convictions. The most famous example is the wrongful conviction that sent a Wilkes County man to death row in 1993 based on testimony from an eyewitness that memos later revealed the prosecution knew could not have been telling the truth.
SBI Director Robin Pendergraft is still defending Deaver actions during Greg Taylor's trial, pointing out that he violated no polices of the SBI.
But Deaver' report said that blood was found on Greg Taylor's truck even after he had conducted tests that showed it was not blood. Apparently SBI policy is more important than preventing the conviction of the wrong person for murder.
Pendergraft predictably opposes an outside investigation of the crime lab. That would apparently violate policy too.
It is probably a good to remind the director and the prosecutorial community that their job is to pursue justice on our behalf. That not only means convicting the guilty, it means protecting the innocent.
