The time to process a rape kit in Colorado has now nearly doubled, leaving victims in limbo due to the continuing scandal at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the director of the embattled agency told lawmakers Wednesday.

In November 2023 it took an average of 275 days to analyze the DNA evidence in a sexual assault case at the forensic lab, it now takes on average 517 days, admitted CBI Director Chris Schaefer in testimony before the legislature’s joint judiciary committee.

“This is unacceptable,” Schaefer acknowledged.

He and Stan Hilkey, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which oversees CBI, and who also testified, laid the blame for the backlog and delay squarely on Yvonne Woods, the agency’s once most-revered DNA analyst.

Woods, who goes by Missy, has been at the center of the CBI crisis ever since it was first revealed to the public in November 2023 that throughout her 29-year career she had deleted data, skipped steps, or otherwise compromised results in her DNA testing of criminal cases in more than 1,000 cases dating back to 1994.

Schaefer testified that nearly 10%, or 1,003, of the 10,786 cases Woods has worked on through the years have now been found to have “anomalies” or problems in her procedures or conclusions.

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The scandal has thrown the Colorado judicial system into chaos at most every level and could take years to untangle. And while a CBI spokesperson said on Thursday the agency’s internal review is now complete and it is not expected that more problems in Woods cases will be found, he also admitted it could not be ruled out. There will be no final public report, the spokesperson said.

The biggest concern among legal and scientific experts is that faulty conclusions by Woods could mean not only are there an unknown number of people wrongly convicted and now imprisoned, but that true culprits remain at large.

Schaefer said that since the scandal broke, at any given time roughly half of the CBI forensic lab has had to be diverted to reviewing Woods cases, which has led to delays in processing rape evidence.

Miranda Spencer, 34, told lawmakers Wednesday she was drugged and raped after an online dating encounter in November 2023. And although evidence from her rape kit was turned over to CBI soon after the attack, she said it still has not been tested.

“This is a threat to public safety,” she said in an interview, adding that because of the delay her attacker is still at large and potentially victimizing others.

Schaefer said it is his hope that the time to test sexual assault DNA evidence in the state lab can eventually be reduced to 90 days. Several lawmakers voiced both alarm at the current backlog and skepticism it will be fixed anytime soon.

Woods was allowed to retire just before the wrongdoing became public. Although her work had been flagged by co-workers as problematic in both 2014 and 2018, she continued to be considered the state’s go-to expert, especially in difficult cold cases involving DNA extraction.

In an interview with CBI investigators after being caught in 2023, she did not deny deleting data or skipping steps leading to compromised results but rather remained vague saying she either did not recall or that it “was possible.”

Initially CBI said it found roughly 650 cases with problems in her work. That number grew to more than 800 cases and then to 1,003.

Tristan Gorman, policy director for the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, said Thursday she thinks the number of affected cases is much higher than what CBI has claimed; in part, she said, because the agency was allowed to do its own review to determine and define how many and which cases were affected.

She said the full scope of the judicial crisis remains elusive because so much about the faulty testing has been shielded which makes it almost impossible to know which cases should be reopened.

Last year, the Colorado General Assembly authorized $7.4 million to pay for retesting of tainted DNA findings and to reimburse costs for district attorneys to review cases.

As of this week, just $67,687.52 of that total has been spent, a CBI spokesperson said Thursday, although he expected it to rise.

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And it is up to district attorneys who prosecute cases to ask for retesting. So far there have only been 37 such requests, the CBI spokesperson said.

State Rep. Michael Carter, a Democrat representing Adams and Arapahoe counties and vice chair of the committee, was incredulous in his questioning of Schaefer and Hilkey:

“What have you done to either contact these individuals who may be, uh, have certain rights, that may be incarcerated because of this? And what have you done to contact these victims who may have thought you had closure but at this point their case is still ongoing?”

Hilkey replied it was unlikely that any of Woods’ testing anomalies would lead to an exoneration.

Schaefer said CBI has notified district attorneys about potentially affected cases and left it up to them to tell defense attorneys or defendants. He added it was unknown how many did so because that was outside the agency’s role.

Carter shot back: “There are people who could have taken some kind of jail plea or could have gone to trial on this faulty information, and they don’t even know it’s faulty? And your answer it ‘We told the DA?’”

So far there have been no criminal charges against Woods or anyone at CBI. The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation was given the case to determine if charges were warranted. A spokesperson for that office said on Thursday its investigation is now finished, and the findings have been forwarded to the District Attorney’s office in Jefferson County where the CBI lab is located.

A spokesperson for that office confirmed Thursday it had received the South Dakota findings and was still reviewing them to determine if charges should be brought. The spokesperson said the office has requested additional information from CBI before any decision is made.

In addition, a small Wisconsin firm will begin its review in the coming days of the policies and procedures at the CBI lab over the past two years.

Critics have questioned why only the last two years are being reviewed when the scandal dates back decades.

Still, reverberations are starting to be felt:

In June, Boulder County prosecutors offered a plea deal with a lighter sentence to Garrett Coughlin, who had previously been sentenced to life without parole for a triple homicide.

He was granted a new trial because of juror misconduct, but before that could occur the district attorney gave him 42 years in prison on a lesser charge of second-degree murder since the prosecution could no longer call Woods to testify to the DNA findings in the case, and it did not want to risk the chance of an acquittal or dismissal in a new trial because of the damage to CBI’s reputation.

Similarly, in November in Weld County, James Herman Dye, who had been in jail since 2021 awaiting trial for murder and rape, was freed from custody after his defense attorney said a DNA retest excluded rather than implicated him. 

Previously, Woods had concluded Dye’s DNA was on the murder weapon that led to his arrest. But after the scandal at CBI broke, the district attorney asked for a retest. At the hearing in which Dye was offered a plea deal, his attorney said she received results from the retest that showed different results from Woods’ analysis. Dye pleaded no contest to felony manslaughter and was released after given credit for time served.

On Friday, weeks after that hearing, CBI disputed that the retesting of the belt used to strangle the victim excluded Dye. “Variations of specific retesting results is common,” a CBI spokesperson said in an email statement to The Gazette. “DNA consistent with Dye’s profile was found on a relevant piece of evidence.

The agency added that the full retesting of evidence in the case showed “consistent results with previously reported results” by Woods. However, CBI did not immediately disclose what the retesting found or the relevant evidence.

And later this month, a hearing in the Michael Clark murder conviction in Boulder will be held after the district attorney there asked for the DNA evidence analyzed by Woods be retested. Clark’s attorney has asked for the conviction to be vacated after a defense expert said Woods conclusions in that case were wrong.

Christopher Osher contributed reporting to this story.