"WHEN THE STATE'S CRIME LAB IS COOKING THE BOOKS, NOBODY WINS. TAXPAYERS ARE NOT SERVED WHEN THEY'RE PAYING TO HOUSE AN INNOCENT PERSON; SAFETY IS COMPROMISED WHEN THE ACTUAL CRIMINAL IS OFF SCOT-FREE; AND MOST OF ALL, WHEN OUR SYSTEM OF JUSTICE IS COMPROMISED, WE ALL LOSE.
EDITORIAL: ASHEVILLE CITIZEN TIMES; (Wikipedia tells us that The Asheville Citizen-Times is a Gannett newspaper based in Asheville, North Carolina, U.S.A.. It was formed on July 1, 1991 as a result of the merger of the morning Asheville Citizen and the afternoon Asheville Times. Founded in 1870 as a weekly, the Citizen became a daily newspaper in 1885. Writers Thomas Wolfe, O. Henry, both buried in Asheville, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, a common visitor of Asheville, frequently could be found in the newsroom in earlier days. In 1930 the Citizen came under common ownership with the Times, which was first established in 1896 as the Asheville Gazette.)
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BACKGROUND: Seventeen years ago, Taylor was convicted of the September, 1991 murder of Raleigh prostitute Jacquetta Thomas, 26, whose body was found dumped on South Blount Street in Raleigh. Taylor, 47, said he spent the night of September 25, 1991 drinking and doing drugs with friends while he drove around southeast Raleigh to buy crack cocaine. Taylor said he believed police latched on to him for the murder because he and a friend drove along a dirt path off the same cul-de-sac where Thomas's body was found. Taylor and the friend smoked crack, but his SUV got stuck as they tried to drive away. They abandoned the SUV and walked to a nearby street to get a ride. Taylor testified they saw what they thought was a body but didn't report it to police. When Taylor returned in the morning to get the SUV, the police were already there. During several days of testimony, a parade of witnesses poked holes in the original evidence against Taylor. A SBI agent testified that while initial tests on some items from Taylor's sport utility vehicle were positive for blood, follow-up tests were negative. Those negative tests were not revealed to the jury that convicted Taylor. A dog training expert testified that the bloodhound that investigators said found the scent of the victim on Taylor's SUV was not trained in scent identification. A jailhouse snitch who said that Taylor confessed his involvement in Thomas's killing to him stood by his original testimony, but did admit that Taylor got the method of killing wrong. Johnny Beck, the man who was in Taylor's SUV on the night of the murder, testified neither he nor Taylor were involved in Thomas's death. Taylor had exhausted his appeals, but the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission reviewed the evidence against him last year and recommended the case to the three judge panel for further review. The commission is the only state-run agency in the country that investigates claims of innocence. Now the Commission has declared him innocent - the first time an inmate has been freed through the actions of the state's Innocence Inquiry Commission.
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"In recent weeks we have learned of one state initiative — the state Innocence Inquiry Commission — that works," the March 11, 2010 Citizen Times editorial begins, under the heading "State needs to get crime lab issues quickly resolved."
"And we've learned of another function — the state's crime lab — that in a least one instance didn't," the editorial continues.
"And that one instance was a doozy.
The saga of Greg Taylor isn't of a Boy Scout who was framed. Taylor reportedly spent the evening of Sept. 25, 1991, with friends doing drugs, drinking and driving around Raleigh. Stopping to smoke crack on a dirt road, Taylor managed to get his SUV stuck. He and a friend abandoned the vehicle and headed on foot to another street to get a ride. During the incident, Taylor says, he and his friend saw what appeared to be a body, but failed to report it to police. There was in fact a body, that of murdered Raleigh prostitute Jacquetta Thomas.
When Taylor returned to retrieve his vehicle the next day, the police were on hand. Taylor was tried and convicted in the murder, largely on an initial test from the state crime lab, which is managed by the State Bureau of Investigation, indicating blood on Taylor's vehicle. A follow-up test gave no such indication, but those results weren't shared with Taylor's defense team or the district attorney in the case.
Sharing evidence, particularly evidence that would indicate authorities were going after the wrong person in a murder case, is a no-brainer. Or so one would think.
Enter the Innocence Commission.
It took a series of high-profile exonerations in North Carolina for the commission to be established. Public pressure was applied through forums such as one held here in Asheville in 2004 at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. Speakers at the event included Darryl Hunt, imprisoned for 19 years for a murder and rape he did not commit; and Alan Gell, who sat on death row for nine years for a murder.
Gell's case was singularly embarrassing; at the time of the murder, Gell was, according to 17 witnesses, in jail.
The commission, an entity unique to North Carolina, sets a rightfully high bar for inmates attempting to show they were wrongfully convicted. The inmate must provide “clear and convincing’’ evidence of innocence, in the form of “credible, verifiable evidence of innocence that has not previously been presented at trial or considered.”
An eight-member panel considers claims, and out of more than 600 cases reviewed, Taylor became just the second to reach a panel of three judges, and the first exoneration.
State Attorney General Roy Cooper has responded by ordering an independent review of crime lab practices, led by two former assistant directors of the FBI. SBI policy in the 1990s, which didn't call for the forwarding of data such as involved in the Taylor case unless explicitly requested by defense attorneys or prosecutors, could mean thousands of cases need to be reviewed.
Cooper also filed a pardon request with Gov. Beverly Perdue, a request she pledge to pursue “aggressively.’’
That is as it should be. When the state's crime lab is cooking the books, nobody wins.
Taxpayers are not served when they're paying to house an innocent person; safety is compromised when the actual criminal is off scot-free; and most of all, when our system of justice is compromised, we all lose.
Obviously, Greg Taylor lost most of all — by his count, 6,149 days, or 17 years, of his life lost for a crime he did not commit.
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That's not acceptable.
In a judicial system that was never fully funded, a system that now almost certainly faces the sort of corner-cutting all state agencies face in the era of the Great Recession, the crime lab review has to set things right, or there could be many more Greg Taylors in our future."
The story can be found at:
http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100311/OPINION01/100310034/1006
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
