JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Inside of a crowded Jefferson County courtroom on Tuesday, Yvonne "Missy" Woods, the former Colorado Bureau of Investigation forensic scientist charged with manipulating evidence for years, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Woods pleaded guilty in June to four counts in Jefferson County Court. The plea agreement reversed course from Woods' original not guilty plea in February, following multiple delays in the case.
The charges she ultimately pleaded guilty to include cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. The other roughly 100 remaining counts were dismissed as part of the deal between her defense attorneys and prosecutors.
Judge Andrew Poland handed down the 10-year prison sentence connected to the cybercrime charge. The other three charges received prison sentences as well, but will be served concurrently.
For the first count of cybercrime, the punishment range was between eight and 16 years in prison.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka began his presentation on Tuesday morning by explaining a number of cases prosecutors believe demonstrate Woods' misconduct in lab reports.
In one of those cases, Kafka said Woods was “content to ignore the lack of certainty in results." In another, he said it was "appalling to consider how cavalier" Woods was when it came to seeking justice for a victim in a rape case.
Prosecutors played a video to the courtroom, showing a portion of an interview between Woods and investigators. In that clip, Woods says “what’s going on in my brain that’s making me do this? Because… I don’t really know why I was doing it.”
Kafka said that because of Woods actions, countless others will ask “can we trust our criminal justice system? Or even to some, can we trust science?"
“Sowing this doubt will be Missy Woods' legacy," Kafka said.
Defense attorney Thomas Ward requested Woods receive eight years behind bars, arguing that his client has accepted accountability in this case. Ward told the courtroom her misconduct was not equally spread among her career, which spanned almost three decades, and instead was clustered close to the end of her time with CBI.
Ward continued to tell the court that Woods' identity became "fused" with CBI. He argued she broke the rules, but that her motivation to do so was ensuring CBI was processing cases as quickly as they could. Ward told the court that productivity within CBI was not an informal expectation, but an explicit requirement.
Calculations done by the defense team estimated Woods processed an average of 338 cases a year, but attorneys noted there were a handful of years where that average was essentially doubled.
Woods made choices knowing they were wrong, according to Ward, but this "did not happen in a vacuum."
Her defense team told the judge Woods was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after being exposed to repeated details of traumatic evidence that included rape, homicide, and child abuse.
"The things she did in this case are serious, and merit punishment... but they do not erase all of the good things she did," Ward said.
Ward concluded his comments by saying Woods is "extremely remorseful."
The defense team also called a handful of character witnesses for Woods, with one saying she is a great human being but "humans make mistakes."
Woods also addressed the courtroom, and emotionally said she knows she failed in her responsibility, and for that she was deeply sorry. She said her job was to provide people with answers, and instead, she gave individuals reason to doubt the criminal justice system. While Woods said she cannot undo her actions, she said the consequences of her conduct are constantly on her mind.
Woods, 66, was originally charged with a total of 102 felonies: 52 counts of forgery, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, and one count each of perjury and cybercrime, for misconduct that impacted more than 1,000 cases between 2008 and 2023.
An affidavit for an arrest warrant outlined those 58 criminal cases, which included homicides, sexual assaults (including two involving a child), arson, child trafficking, robberies, burglaries, missing persons and more in Denver, Wheat Ridge, Englewood, Lakewood, Jefferson County, Black Hawk, Boulder, Boulder County, Loveland, Lafayette, Arapahoe County, Adams County, Broomfield, Arvada, Aurora, Longmont, Fraser/Winter Park, Westminster, Thornton, Larimer County, Greeley, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Fremont County and El Paso County.
Woods was first charged in January 2025, following a CBI announcement in late 2023 that she was no longer employed at the agency and was facing a criminal investigation after anomalies in her work were discovered. Woods worked with CBI for 29 years.
The state has allocated about $7.4 million to CBI to address the fallout of the investigation, Denver7 Investigates found.
The affidavit read that Woods' alleged misconduct cost more than $11 million.
The discrepancies found in her work, as outlined in the affidavit, included:
- Some of Woods' cases were listed as having a certain value for part of the DNA extraction process, but the actual number was missing. Once that DNA is extracted, it is assigned a "quantification value" automatically. A scientist would need to manually delete it.
- Several instances where Woods manipulated data "by lowering the quantification value to make it appear that either no DNA was present, or the amount of DNA located was too minimal to be amplified."
- Woods appeared to have re-ran entire batches of DNA through equipment, but did not provide documentation about doing this process. The tests had values on the first round, but were manipulated when it was processed a second time.
- Woods deleted specific values on sexual assault DNA samples, indicating no male DNA was found on the sample, when it was there.
Once a scientist finishes analyzing a DNA batch, their workbook is submitted for a "technical review," the affidavit reads, and officials at CBI said had it not been for that review, most of the discrepancies in Woods' work would not have been found.
A forensic scientist who worked with Woods found that Woods purposefully deleted specific values in the DNA testing "in order to skip the 'amping' of that particular sample," the affidavit reads. When that forensic scientist told Woods that she would not sign off on the review and explained what she had found, "Analyst Woods didn't say anything and had a 'befuddled' look on her face," the document reads. Another forensic scientist reported that she had noticed inconsistencies with Woods' work back in March 2014. That person's manager instructed Woods to correct the errors, and she "did not ask any questions or provide any explanation as to why the data was missing when confronted," the affidavit reads.
Woods left the agency in Nov. 2023, just before CBI's announcement about the anomalies.
CBI announced that day in 2023 they had started an internal affairs investigation in Sept. 2023.
The results from that were completed and publicly shared in March 2024. The report reads that Woods altered, manipulated or deleted data in DNA testing in hundreds of cases. She omitted material facts in official criminal justice records, tampered with DNA testing results by omitting some results, and violated CBI’s Code of Conduct and CBI laboratory policies, CBI reported, adding that the manipulations appear to have been intentional, but no motive was named.
Since her arrest, one conviction in a 1994 Boulder murder case was thrown out as a result of the investigation into Woods. Michael Clark, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 connected to a 1994 Boulder murder, was released from prison in April 2025. Clark is currently heading for a retrial, as Denver7 first reported in Sept. 2025, but those proceedings are on pause as both sides work through disclosure issues.
CBI has previously said that Woods’ misconduct did not affect the DNA testing in Clark's case.
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One of the charges Woods pleaded guilty to involved the 2014 murder conviction of Ryan Hicks. In that case, prosecutors said Woods lied on the stand while testifying about DNA evidence during the trial.
The state has allocated more than $7 million to deal with the fallout from the case.
Another case Woods is accused of mishandling is the murder of Roger Dean nearly 40 years ago.
The man accused of murdering Dean received a lighter sentence than typical, and the district attorney said Woods' alleged mishandling of DNA was to blame for the lesser penalty.
Dean's daughter, Tamara Harney, told Denver7 earlier this year that she wants to see justice in the case so she can move forward.
“I'm just ready to get things moving. Just let's get it on, you know, get it moving forward, get it finished, and then finally put this to bed,” Harney said. “[Woods] needs to realize the impact that she had on so many people by her actions.”
CBI released a statement in June stating that Woods' actions "constituted intentional criminal fraud carried out by a single individual. The conduct violated the law and professional standards of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. It was not reflective of CBI’s institutional practices or mission."
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As a result of the intensive investigation into Woods, a backlog of sexual assault evidence kit testing at CBI was exacerbated. After Woods retired in Nov. 2023, half of the lab work done in 2024 at CBI was dedicated to reviewing her cases.
According to data from the CBI, over 1,400 sexual assault cases were caught in a historic evidence testing backlog at this time last year. Survivors were forced to wait more than 500 days for their results.
Three million dollars' worth of funding from state lawmakers was granted to CBI to help clear the backlog of DNA evidence and sexual assault kit tests with the assistance of private, external labs.
CBI originally estimated reaching their goal — a 90-day turnaround timeline — by April of 2027. The agency is ahead of schedule, and now reports hitting that turnaround time by Nov. 2026.
