The Unraveling, Part 2: ASCLD Defends the Indefensible in North Carolina

In my last post, I said that one of the trends you would see is that ASCLD’s new mantra is that they should not be judged by the standards of today for their failures of yesterday and nor should those that they protect. In one of the most egregious examples of this, ASCLD has come riding to the defense of the North Carolina SBI, not for cases that might be in the realm of justifiability, but for their most heinous cases of scientific and ethical depravity.

Duane Deaver was the North Carolina SBI’s now-infamous blood spatter guru who, for those of you who haven’t heard, was actually fired on January 7, 2011. But not before ASCLD defended Deaver’s actions- and the unthinkable policies that codified them- in the case that shocked and horrified North Carolina and the nation: the wrongful conviction and nearly 17 year imprisonment of Greg Taylor for a murder he did not commit.

The only physical evidence at Greg Taylor’s trial was Duane Deaver’s misleading report that a spot on Taylor’s truck was blood when, in fact, it was not blood. A report Duane Deaver wrote knowing that the confirmatory tests indicated that the spot on Greg Taylor’s truck was not blood. Deaver’s testimony has been called “misleading” by judges in other cases and “fraud” by the jury foreman in at least one other, but it is Greg Taylor’s case that gets the most attention.

Greg Taylor’s case is really the case of Jacquetta Thomas. Thomas’ body was found in a cul de sac near where Greg Taylor’s truck was stuck in a wooded area in September 1991. There was a reddish brown spot on Taylor’s truck that preliminarily tested positive for blood.

Confirmatory tests showed that the reddish brown spot was not blood. However, Duane Deaver’s report read that the spot “revealed chemical indications of blood”, without indicating that the confirmatory tests showed that the spot was not blood.

Prosecutors hammered away on this single piece of physical evidence connecting Greg Taylor to Jacquetta Thomas’ death. Greg Taylor was convicted and spent almost 17 years in prison. No one else has been arrested for Jacquetta Thomas’ murder.

In February 2010, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission took up Greg Taylor’s case. They discovered that the evidence that would have cleared Greg Taylor- that there was no blood on his truck- was never turned over by the SBI lab. On February 17, 2010, the Commission declared Greg Taylor innocent.

In spite of the fact that the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the first in the nation, was formed 4 years earlier in response to a growing number of overturned convictions, Greg Taylor’s case was only the second to reach the full commission and the first exoneration that the Commission issued. It shocked the state and drew national attention.

The aspect of the case that was most shocking was the blatant misconduct of the North Carolina SBI lab. The SBI lab came under more scrutiny in the press after a series in the Raleigh News & Observer. The state legislature began to sit up and pay attention. Hearings were convened and questions were asked.

It was finally revealed that, not only had ASCLD/LAB repeatedly signed off on the SBI lab’s unthinkable policies and failed to find mistakes in the lab’s work over the decades that ASCLD/LAB had been accrediting the SBI lab, but also that the two people most responsible for ASCLD/LAB’s day-to-day operations for the last fifteen years, Ralph Keaton and John Neuner, were also former lab directors and quality managers from the SBI. Keaton and Neuner were not only familiar with the problems at the SBI (if they saw them as “problems” at all), they had probably helped to put many of the policies in place.

At one of the state legislature’s committee hearings, one North Carolina lawmaker asked, “Does ASCLD have skin in this game? What’s their liability in this?” The outcome of that hearing was a recommendation that the SBI lab look for a new accreditation agency.

ASCLD and ASCLD/LAB were not going to go quietly.

ASCLD- not ASCLD/LAB, but ASCLD, the group that claims it is completely independent of ASCLD/LAB- sent Jill Spriggs, the Chief of the Bureau of Forensic Sciences for the California Department of Justice and the President-Elect of ASCLD, to defend ASCLD/LAB, the SBI, and Duane Deaver.

At a hearing before the state legislature, Jill Spriggs told lawmakers, “You can’t inspect with today’s standards for yesterday. Today, that would have been caught.” Sure it would.

In other words, it was deemed perfectly acceptable by ASCLD/LAB that the SBI’s policy –in writing, from 1997 to 2001- was that if a presumptive (preliminary) test was positive and the confirmatory (conclusive) test was negative, agents should write in their official reports that the tests “revealed chemical indications of blood” even though that test result meant that sample did not test positive for blood. Prior to 1997 there was no written policy; the creation of the written policy in 1997 was to put into writing what was already being done.

The year 2000 is evidently considered long-ago yester-year by ASCLD. A time during which it was OK to put out reports that were so misleading that they could and did send innocent people to prison. And perhaps it’s still OK to do that, according to ASCLD.

In response to a question about whether or not it was appropriate for Duane Deaver to put that statement- that tests “revealed chemical indications of blood” – in the official report in Greg Taylor’s case without mentioning that confirmatory tests showed no evidence of blood, Jill Spriggs, Chief of the Bureau of Forensic Sciences for the California Department of Justice and the President-Elect of ASCLD, responded

“That is an accurate statement. A lot of times you got no results. It didn’t mean it wasn’t blood; it meant you didn’t have enough sample, or maybe the sample was old. …What else is red-brown that will give you a positive presumptive test for blood? There’s nothing that I know.”

So, which is it, Jill? Are we not supposed to judge ASCLD, ASCLD/LAB, and the SBI’s failures of yesterday by the standards of today because “yesterday” was a whole 5 or 10 years ago? Or was Duane Deaver’s report that was written in 1991 perfectly alright, even by today’s standards, even if it puts an innocent man in prison for the better part of two decades?

After Jill Spriggs’ amazing quote was printed in the Raleigh News & Observer, Diane Savage, President of North Carolina Attorneys for Science and Technology wrote a letter to the editor saying

“Even SBI lab protocols, supposedly approved by ASCLD-LAB, state that the phenolphthalein presumptive test is considered to be highly reactive with plant peroxidases and can give positive false reactions to tomatoes, potatoes, horseradish and several other substances.

The lack of expertise of the new leader of ASCLD, the trade association of directors of crime labs across the U.S., is disappointing but no longer surprising.”

Phenolphthalein will also give a false positive with some oxidizing metal salts or hydroxides. Like maybe from a rusty spot on a car. Or, if you wait long enough, the solution on the swab can oxidize and turn faintly pink on its own if your solution is old enough. Who knows what was “presumptive” enough for Duane “That’s a Wrap, Baby” Deaver.

Duane Deaver’s attorneys, of course, find it deeply insulting that their client has been fired, calling it “pathetic” and “political.” At least they can rest easy knowing that they have the strong support of the nation’s crime lab directors and their accreditation agency behind them- and on the record- as they appeal his dismissal.