BOULDER, Colo. — A retrial in a 2017 triple homicide in Boulder County has been pushed back several months because the DNA analyst on the case is under investigation.
A review at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation found scientist Yvonne "Missy" Woods manipulated data in more than 650 cases. This triple homicide is one of them.
The trial against Garrett Coughlin, now 31 years old, was supposed to start in April. A judge rescheduled it for July.
Coughlin was 24 years old when he was arrested in 2017 for shooting and killing three people in Coal Creek Canyon. The victims were Wallace White, his wife Kelly Sloat-White, and his brother Emory Fraker.
Coughlin was found guilty in 2019, but the conviction was tossed out in 2020 due to misconduct by two jurors.
Court documents say during an internal affairs investigation into Woods at CBI in late 2023, prosecutors in Boulder County learned there were anomalies in her work on Coughlin's case. A judge on Wednesday said a representative from CBI has retested the evidence. The prosecution said the reported anomalies did not impact the findings.
Defense attorneys for Coughlin don't trust that and expressed interest in doing more testing, which could take two months to complete. A defense attorney also told the judge they want time to review CBI's 94-page report on the internal affairs investigation. Prosecutors are getting a copy of the report too. It is not available to the public.
Attorneys had to fight for this report. In a rare move, the district attorney's office subpoenaed CBI to hand over the report.
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