Nobody Told Them: Georgia Convicted People on Science the FBI Disowned, Then Shut the Courthouse Door
The FBI disowned its forensic testimony and sent letters. Georgia's crime lab measured its own error rate and told no one. The habeas deadline shuts the door.
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Colorado sentenced a DNA analyst to 10 years. 1,045 cases passed through her work. Georgia has no equivalent notification law and no way to reopen old convictions. https://gps.press/nobody-told-them-georgia-convicted-people-on-science-the-fbi-disowned-then-shut-the-c...
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Yvonne "Missy" Woods altered DNA results in cases that sent people to prison. Colorado's legislature responded with the Forensic Science Integrity Act: mandatory reporting, notification to defendants, and a guaranteed evidentiary hearing. Georgia has no equivalent law. The state's habeas deadline runs four years and, as the Supreme Court of Georgia held in Stubbs v. Hall, there is no equitable tolling and no remedy when a court fails to tell a defendant the deadline exists. If Georgia's crime lab reviewed its own hair-comparison work and found an error rate of one in twenty, what would a person convicted before 2000 even do with that information?
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Colorado sentenced a DNA analyst to ten years after 1,045 cases passed through her work. The state's answer was a law requiring labs to report misconduct within seven days and notify every affected defendant. Georgia's answer, eleven years after the FBI disowned hair microscopy, is a four-year habeas deadline and a GBI file with no review in it. The courthouse door stays shut.
#GeorgiaPrisons #ForensicScience #WrongfulConviction #GBI #CriminalJusticeReform #GeorgiaPrisonersSpeak
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Colorado's Forensic Science Integrity Act, signed in June 2025, requires lab staff to report misconduct within seven days, mandates investigation within ninety-one days, and gives convicted people a statutory right to an evidentiary hearing. Georgia has no equivalent. Its habeas corpus deadline is four years, the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to recognize equitable tolling in Stubbs v. Hall, and constitutional claims cannot travel by extraordinary motion. The House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Criminal Post-Conviction Litigation meets Friday in Milledgeville. Colorado's experience suggests that a notification duty and a guaranteed hearing are the minimum infrastructure a state needs when its lab work is called into question.