The Lab Is F'd Up Recap Written by Brandi Abbott. This week’s episode starts with a quick reminder of where Priya, Jess and Keith left off last week. Duane Deaver had just revealed that he hadn’t reported tests confirming that the spot on Greg Taylor’s truck was not blood. Deaver said that the systems that were in place told him to write his reports the way he did and he was just following protocol. We’re reminded that in the NC SBI Crime Lab there was a practice in place wherein analysts could and would withhold secondary tests that confirmed a substance initially believed to be blood… was not blood. The Attorney General at that time, Roy Cooper, ordered an audit of the lab but that would take months to complete. During that time investigative journalists for the News & Observer had begun looking into the lab and published a 4 part series called “Agent’s Secrets”. The SBI director was quoted as saying, “if any questions are raised, at the time the SBI goes backs and checks. Our goal is to be accurate and find the truth. There is no hidden agenda.” She stated this in response to three other convictions in 2005 where the SBI Crime Lab had bungled evidence - five years before Greg Taylor was released from prison. At this time, lawyers filed a complaint accusing the SBI of royally F’ing these three cases up. One of the lawyers who was a defense lawyer in one of the three capital cases, Diane Savage was the chairman of the Forensic Science Task Force in the criminal defense section of NC Academy of Trial Lawyers. She hoped that there would be a full investigation and that they would shut down the lab until they came up with better quality control. One of the three aforementioned capital cases was a woman named Leslie Lincoln who lived in North Carolina and moved back in with her mother, Arlene, after she went through divorce. In 2002, she had finally started getting her life back on track. She had a job and a new place and everything was really looking up. On March 17th of 2002, Leslie went to do some errands and her mom and brother, Duffy, were at Arlene’s home watching basketball. Duffy left around 4:30. After her errands, Leslie stopped back in to see her mom. She left around 7:30 and stopped at Walmart for dog food on the way home, which was confirmed by several surveillance cameras. The next night Duffy went to his mother’s house where he found the door unlocked and poor Arlene Lincoln’s body in her bedroom on the floor. She had been stabbed over 30 times. At this point we know that the SBI is not unbiased. Priya gives us some background into the establishment of the SBI lab and tells us that the lab’s link to law enforcement plays heavily into all of the cases F’d Up will cover, but especially into the case of Leslie Lincoln. Arlene led a pretty active life. When her neighbors noticed she hadn’t been in her yard, they thought it was weird and called Duffy. Duffy went to check on her, discovered her body and called 911. There were three footprints in the blood by her body and quite a bit of evidence left behind. The police took several things from her home for evidence. They later learned that her credit card was missing. They discovered there had been no forced entry and the killer had had an intense fight with Arlene, one of the stab wounds to her neck was fatal. The police didn’t check Leslie and Duffy for wounds until later that week but they fond none. Duffy’s wife, Sharla said she can remember the day when Leslie realized she was the prime suspect. Initially there had been an inexperienced investigator on the case but within a few days he was replaced by Detective Ricky Best. He had a reputation as a detective who saw the big picture. For some reason, he locked onto Leslie as a viable suspect and about six months after Arlene’s death, the Greenville PD arrested her. She thought she was going in for questioning - then the police chained her to a wall and told her she was under arrest. Soon after the DA filed notice that he would be seeking the death penalty. Leslie was jailed under no bond. She said that for the first three days, they put you in isolation to make sure you don’t hurt yourself and she cried for three days straight. Those three days turned into three years. Priya takes over to tell us about how she and Jess have spoken with a few former SBI agents from the lab. One of the agents told her that he had been in law enforcement for over thirty years and “insinuated things would happen to her if she wasn’t on the up and up”. Jess mentions that it’s telling that he considers himself a law enforcement agent instead of a lab technician. Jess also remembers him saying that “he’s the one who wears the white hat”. This isn’t comforting as he’s supposed to be the guy looking at the evidence and pulling out facts objectively. In 2009, the National Academy of Science issued a report with recommendations, one of which was that forensic ...
