Colorado forensic scientist sentenced to 10 years for misreporting criminal evidence

Prosecutors filed more than 100 charges against former crime lab scientist Yvonne Woods after an internal investigation uncovered irregularities calling into question a decade’s worth of lab test results.DENVER (CN) — A Colorado judge on Monday sentenced a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist to 10 years in prison after she pleaded guilty to four felonies related to mishandling criminal evidence.“I have been thinking about this sentencing since the day Ms. Woods entered her guilty plea. This case is about trust, and the profound amount of trust the public has given her,” said First Judicial District Judge Andrew Poland.In January 2025, the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office filed more than 100 criminal charges against former CBI forensic scientist Yvonne Woods after investigators found she misreported DNA results in dozens of criminal cases spanning from January 2008 to September 2023.Woods, now 66, initially pleaded not guilty in February. In exchange for prosecutors seeking dismissal of 100 charges, Woods pleaded guilty to four felonies: cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery.Prosecutors agreed not to seek a prison sentence longer than 16 years.Poland sentenced Wood to 10 years for cybercrime, three years for forgery and six years each for perjury and attempting to influence a public servant. The sentences will run concurrently.“Trust in the justice system matters, and the justice system must protect that trust,” said Poland, who was appointed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis.The issue came to light in 2023 after a CBI intern noticed discrepancies in Woods’ samples while reviewing old cases.Prosecutors ultimately found Woods had misreported data in 53 cases involving sexual assault of minors, robbery and first-degree murder investigations. Woods did not falsely implicate defendants, but she incorrectly reported “no male DNA found” in some samples when the data indicated male DNA was present or that the samples should have been retested.Prosecutors said the misleading results led law enforcement to stop pursuing some investigations that might otherwise have resulted in charges or a conviction.“Ms. Woods lied on a document police rely on to determine next steps for an investigation,” Deputy District Attorney Jacob Matthews said. “All of this created a myriad of confusion and distrust that I suspect will continue for years to come.”The state has spent an estimated $11 million on retesting DNA samples and providing legal aid to address the fallout from Woods’ conduct.“Her conduct has cost the state millions of dollars to fix, but the real cost is to the people,” Matthews said.Defense attorney Tom Ward urged Poland to sentence Woods to eight years, arguing that she took responsibility and helped investigators identify her mistakes.Ward said Woods began misreporting cases when she was handling more than 600 cases a year — twice her career average and nearly six times her workload during her early years.Ward said Woods’ identity revolved around her 35-year-career. She never called in sick and took only two weeks off to recover from a mastectomy for breast cancer and one week for each hip replacement, he said.Rathe than laziness, Ward said, Woods was motivated by her devotion to her job.“She was working the most overtime out of any analyst, she was there in the evenings, she was there on the weekends,” Ward said. “Her ultimate motivation was to get CBI to process these cases as quickly as possible."Ward said Woods focused on cases in which evidence samples were less likely to produce results investigators could use.While Woods declined to address the court, prosecutors played an interview in which she told investigators she did not know why she misreported the results.“I don’t have an answer, it’s almost like there was a disconnect,” Woods told investigators. “The disconnect was ‘make it go away, make it go away.’ I don’t really know why I was doing it. We can sit here and theorize and come up with some reasons, on that day, at that time, but I don’t know.”Woods’ work has also figured into appeals involving criminal convictions.After the Colorado Court of Appeals vacated Juan Manuel Castorena’s 2022 murder conviction based on separate issues with a police lineup, his attorneys sought information about Woods’ involvement in his case. The question of how defendants could obtain information about her work across judicial districts was ultimately sent to the Colorado Supreme Court.In May, Castorena pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.Woods’ testimony also played a role in the 2012 trial of Michael Clark, who was convicted of the 1994 murder of Marty Grisham. Due to her involvement in the case, 20th Judicial District Attorney Michael Dougherty filed a motion last year seeking a new trial for Clark.Clark, 50, is now on bond and asking the court to dismiss the case entirely.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads