Conviction in 1994 Boulder murder thrown out over flawed DNA work by Missy Woods

Marty Grisham A judge overturned the conviction in a Boulder murder scenario Friday because of flawed DNA testing by disgraced Colorado Bureau of Inquiry scientist Yvonne Missy Woods It s the first criminal incident to be thrown out since the CBI in discovered investigations in which Woods cut corners in her DNA testing a disgrace that has cost Colorado millions of dollars already and shaken the state s criminal justice system Boulder District Court Judge Nancy Woodruff Salomone vacated the first-degree murder conviction of -year-old Michael Clark who has been serving a sentence of life without parole since being convicted in in the cold-case shooting death of Boulder city employee Marty Grisham A hearing is scheduled for June at which Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty is expected to announce whether or not he will retry Clark on charges stemming from the killing This is a really good day reported Adam Frank Clark s attorney Michael Clark s conviction is gone Dougherty had filed a motion late Friday afternoon asking the judge to vacate Clark s conviction because Woods interpretation of the DNA testing in the Grisham matter is now in question after an independent lab retested crime scene evidence Based on those results as well as the essential declares of juror misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel our office determined that the conviction must be vacated Doughtery explained in a comment It is the right thing to do after considering all three issues In light of the charges in this episode we will rigorously and thoroughly analyze all the evidence to determine the right and just outcome The juror misconduct claim involved the discovery that one of the jurors ignored the judge s instructions and visited the crime scene during the trial according to the DA s motion With the conviction vacated Clark s bail is reinstated according to prosecutors He is expected to be transferred to the Boulder County Jail from the Fremont Correctional Facility on Monday and is eligible to be published if he posts bail He is married and has three children We want to get him home to them as soon as humanly practicable Frank disclosed Yvonne Missy Woods a forensic scientist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigations testifies in a Boulder courtroom on July during the trial of Kevin Elmarr who was accused of killing his ex-wife Carol Murphy in Elmarr was convicted in the trial but that verdict was later overturned because jurors had not been allowed to hear evidence of alternate accused He was convicted again following a second trial in Marty Caivano Daily Camera Clark was dependably a suspect in the killing but investigators only had circumstantial evidence at the time It was Woods DNA testing of a Carmex lip balm container unveiled at the scene that led investigators to conclusively charge Clark in the cold situation in Doughtery s motion to vacate reported an independent lab retested Woods original analysis and created a new sample from the Carmex container It was testing of that new sample that exposed new results that could statistically exclude Clark There could be a number of reasons for these results including the advances in DNA mechanism the DA s motion stated Regardless of the reason this is new evidence Grisham who worked as the city of Boulder s information services director was shot four times on the night of Nov after he answered a knock at his apartment door The killer fled before Grisham s girlfriend could see him Related Articles Former Colorado Bureau of Study scientist under review for anomalies in DNA testing Inside the inspection of a CBI scientist s years of misconduct God forbid we have someone in prison that shouldn t be Missy Woods DNA analyst at center of CBI embarrassment charged with felonies New DNA testing in Boulder murder supports innocence claim defense attorney says The killing was a cold matter for nearly two decades before Boulder police reopened it in In Woods took DNA samples from the Carmex container and determined they excluded of the world s male population but could include Clark Clark was charged with first-degree murder and convicted by a jury in He already had brought up the DNA testing in an appeal of his murder conviction saying his defense lawyer never hired another DNA expert to challenge Woods conclusions Then the CBI discovered in that Woods had mishandled hundreds of DNA samples and covered up her shortcuts by altering deleting or omitting content from lab work skipping protocols that are in place to ensure accurate results Woods was charged with felonies in January That development is pending Her shoddy work has rattled Colorado s justice system While Clark becomes the first person to successfully challenge a conviction others are expected to follow The CBI estimates Woods misconduct has already cost the agency more than million a figure that includes state funds allocated to pay for re-testing and compensate district attorneys offices across Colorado to address wrongful-conviction contends tied to Woods work Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day