The 41-page report issued by former FBI assistant directors Chris Swecker and Michael Wolf, serious concerns were raised about reporting methods used from 1989 to 2003.
The review identified 230 cases in which analysts with the State Bureau of Investigation's blood analysis filed reports that, at best, were incomplete. Of those, 190 resulted in criminal charges.
Those convicted include four currently on death row, three who've been executed and five that died in prison.
Freddie McNeill pled guilty to second-degree murder on Oct. 15, 1997 on allegations he brutally raped an 81-year-old woman on the Oct 21, 1992 who died three days later from injuries received in the assault.
Eyewitnesses told officers they saw someone fitting McNeill's description at the woman's home. He lived a few blocks from the woman's home.
The audit says the blood analysis report used in his prosecution "does not reflect inconclusive confirmatory and species origin test results."
The test results were used to show the presence of blood on McNeill's shirt and other items that may have been that of the victim.
Robeson County District Attorney Johnson Britt, told the Fayetteville Observer that the public should not assume that all cases called into question were false convictions.
"A single blood test isn’t going to lead to someone being convicted or pleading guilty," said Britt.
Another local case – that of Everette L. McCrimmon – was also called into question.
The man was accused of sexually assaulting a 23-year-old Laurinburg woman. McCrimmon told the woman he needed food and shelter, then raped her once she let him into her home, according to newspaper reports on the Aug. 2, 1990 incident.
He pled guilty to assault on a female on Jan. 23, 1991 and was given a two year sentence. He was released on March 6, 1991.
The audit said that a lab report "does not reflect the inconclusive confirmatory test result or the fact that testing was unable to confirm the presence of blood" on an item used as evidence.
Lab reports for the cases against McNeill and McCrimmon were both prepared by Lucy Milks, a former SBI blood analyst who now does contract work for the state's drug lab. She is one of eight current and former SBI agents whose work was questioned by the report, released Wednesday
"It was determined that during the relevant time periods lab files were not routinely
produced to an accused defendant," the report said. "None of these files contained documentation that relevant lab notes were provided to the accused for review at the time they were charged or before trial."
The audit did not determine if anyone was falsely convicted on the charges, but raised concerns that civil liberties may have been violated.
"This review did determine, however, that omitting negative or inconclusive confirmatory test results for the presence of blood in final laboratory reports and especially incorrectly reporting those results had the potential to lead to violations of the Federal Constitutional and North Carolina discovery laws by not reporting information that might have been helpful or material to the defense of the accused," the report said.
The report was the result of a five-month probe called for by state Attorney General Roy Cooper after Gregory Taylor was exonerated of a 1993 murder conviction earlier this year because of omissions in a lab report.
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