COLORADO, USA — An investigation into a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA analyst has prosecutors in open cases that she worked on trying to figure out what to do if she is unable to testify at trial.
About a year ago, CBI announced that Missy Woods, a DNA analyst who had worked for the agency for 29 years, was under criminal investigation after an internal process discovered anomalies in her work.
CBI has said Woods' misconduct is impacting more than 800 cases. A team has reviewed her cases from 2008 until present day. As of August, the review of paper case files from 1994 through 2008 was still ongoing.
It appears many of the cases with anomalies are closed. But some are still open, and could go to trial. Now prosecutors are trying to figure out what to do when their star witness may not be able to testify at trial.
One of those cases is the 1979 death of Kay Day. For more than 40 years, who killed Day was a mystery. Then there was a break in the case. Woods helped investigators in Weld County make an arrest, and the suspect, James Dye, has been behind bars and waiting for trial since 2021.
In court documents, prosecutors in Weld County have said they assume Woods will not be available to testify in this trial because her work is under "intense scrutiny."
"Prosecutors all over the state would love not to have their juries hear about the problems that Missy Woods is experiencing," 9NEWS Legal Analyst Scott Robinson said.
Because of Woods' credibility issue, other analysts have to retest the evidence. Prosecutors in Weld County hope someone other than Woods can testify about the DNA results from the additional analysis. They filed a motion asking the court to rule on the constitutionality of admitting DNA results for evidence initially handled by Woods but retested by another analyst.
"Can a substitute analyst either redo the results or testify about the results? And that raises questions under the Confrontation Clause of the United States Constitution," Robinson said.
Court documents show the prosecution in Weld County asked the court to rule ahead of trial on whether another DNA analyst at CBI will be allowed to testify to the results of his independent analysis conducted on solutions initially prepared by Woods.
According to court documents, the other DNA analyst at CBI reached the same or similar results as Woods after retesting evidence in Day's murder in 2024.
Robinson said cases become even more complicated if there are no longer samples to retest.
"The Missy Woods situation creates complicated and convoluted problems for prosecutors and for judges who are going to have to make very significant decisions about the extent to which substitute experts can testify about what a prior, now discredited, expert reached as conclusions," Robinson said.
After the investigation into Woods began, some cases where she could have testified never went to trial. At least two times, it appears this scandal encouraged district attorneys to offer plea deals to defendants accused of murder.