Former Ohio death row prisoner Kevin Keith (pictured) has filed a motion seeking a new trial to clear his name after evidence has emerged of systemic bias and erratic behavior by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) scientist whose testimony helped put him on death row. Keith and James Parsons, who also was convicted of murder and was sentenced to a term of 15 years to life in prison, have challenged the work of BCI analyst G. Michele Yezzo, who testified at dozens of trials over her 32-year career. Yezzo’s credibility has been questioned by two former Ohio attorneys general, a judge, a former BCI superintendent, and an FBI expert. Keith was granted clemency, but not fully exonerated, in 2010 after retired FBI expert William Bodziak said Yezzo’s methods and conclusions in his case were baseless, and defense attorneys presented evidence that may implicate another suspect. Bodziak said, “There is nothing to support the conclusions she made, nothing at all. If I had been working on that case, I would have pointed out all those discrepancies and would not have made any conclusions. But it appears she was giving investigators the conclusions they wanted, and that’s the really bad part of this case.” Lee Fisher, Ohio’s Attorney General from 1991 to 1995, said, “I would call for an investigation into every case where her findings and conclusions were instrumental in the final result of a case. We have an obligation to the integrity of the criminal-justice system to investigate every case. We have to determine whether her findings or conclusions were suspect.” A review by the Columbus Dispatch of 800 pages of Yezzo’s personnel records disclosed numerous behavior problems, including threatening fellow employees, throwing a metal bar at a co-worker, and using racial slurs against a Black scientist. She was suspended in 1993 as a result of her abusive behavior, but prosecutors continued to use her analysis of evidence in many cases with little oversight of her methods or conclusions. In Parsons’ murder case, is alibi that he was at work at an auto repair shop when his wife murdered held up for 12 years. Yezzo began investigating the case in 1993 and, without documenting her methods or properly explaining her findings to the jury, concluded that blood patterns indicated that Parsons’ wife had been killed with a wrench that prosecutors claimed belonged to Parsons. He was convicted and spent 23 years in prison before the Ohio Innocence Project took on his case. Judge Thomas Pokorny dismissed the murder conviction and released him, saying, “What has weighed most heavily on the court’s mind is the testimony from Ms. Yezzo’s superior that the integrity of her analysis and conclusions may be suspect as she ‘will stretch the truth to satisfy a department.’”

(M. Wagner, J. Riepenhoff, L. Sullivan, and E. Rinehart, “Questions about ex-BCI scientist may cast doubt on convictions,” The Columbus Dispatch, October 30, 2016.) See Innocence.

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