Yvonne Missy Woods, 66, “brazenly” altered DNA samples in her lab that may have affected dozens of sex assault cases for women and children between 2008 and 2023 by manually altering - and always reducing - the amount of DNA on sex assault investigation swabs, prosecutors said.
State officials say more than 400 cases of the 1,100 affected by Woods’ altering of data were sex assaults.
Prosecutors say they are unaware of any unjust convictions from those cases and say the vast majority of those seemingly protected attackers — or did not change the disposition in the case. Woods’ defense attorneys agreed with this assessment in court.
Because of this, her behaviors over more than a decade are completely confusing, Jefferson County assistant district attorney Darren Kafka told Judge Poland.
Tom Ward, one of Woods’ defense attorneys, told the judge that the vast majority of her data altering was done to move the cases along faster at the behest of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.