In the first case to be directly impacted by the recent DNA scandal at a government lab, a man accused of first degree triple murder pleaded down to second-degree murder in Boulder to the disappointment of the victims' family.
Garrett Coughlin, 30, was sentenced on Thursday to 42 years in prison for the 2017 murders of Wallace “Lance” White, his wife, Kelly Sloat-White, and his brother Emory Fraker.
Coughlin will get seven years credit for time served, which would make him eligible for parole after 24 years.
It was Coughlin’s second trial.
In 2019, he received the state's most stringent possible sentence of life in prison with no possibility for parole, but that verdict was overturned when it was discovered that at least one juror during that trial lied during voire dire.
The 20th Judicial District went for a second trial, which was to begin this summer. But that trial imploded when the new developments regarding Yvonne “Missy” Woods’ alleged anomalies came to light.
“Her credibility is in serious question. That’s an understatement,” said 20th Judicial District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
Prosecutors said they made a deal with Coughlin because, with no eyewitnesses, no confession, and now without the boost from Woods’ testimony, chasing the higher charges was a roll of the dice.
“The actions by Ms. Woods will have long term damaging impact on criminal cases that we’ve prosecuted over the past few years," Dougherty said. "There will be more to come."
Woods, a veteran forensic scientist at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, resigned last fall amid controversy over omitting facts and tampering with DNA evidence.
She was the subject of a scathing 94-page Internal Affairs report released by the CBI on Wednesday.
State crime lab employees for years repeatedly tried to warn their superiors at CBI that Woods had become a rogue employee who was cutting corners. But officials failed to respond forcefully until last year, when an intern at the lab found new anomalies, an internal affairs investigation found.
It was Woods who performed all of the underlying DNA testing on evidence in the triple shooting in Coal Creek Canyon, which horrified Boulder County seven years ago.
Chief Trial Deputy Catrina Weigel was frustrated that CBI knew of Woods’ anomalies in 2018 but didn’t warn the prosecution team about them before the 2019 trial.
“There are concerns about failure of CBI to act when they learned what was happening with her years and years ago,” she said.
White, his wife Sloat-White and brother were shot to death on April 13, 2017, at the Whites’ home. Their bodies were found in various rooms of the house, two of them face down, and money and packaged marijuana from their grow operation was missing.
Woods' testimony in the 2019 trial was crucial in that she developed a DNA profile belonging to Coughlin and three other people on a chair leg and Coughlin’s DNA on the holster of the murder weapon. Those findings were not in question.
What was in question was Woods’ decision not to record male DNA, which turned up during Sloat-White’s autopsy and that was mixed with her blood.
Instead of noting the extra male DNA on a forensic work chart, Woods removed the reference to it, according to a motion to dismiss the case filed by defense attorney Mary Claire Mulligan.
Based on the faulty forensic work, Mulligan filed the motion to dismiss Coughlin’s case May 6.
“Ms. Woods removed the DNA reference to avoid doing the troubleshooting protocols she would have had to have done otherwise,” said Mulligan, who blamed the organization for letting Woods continue to work even after it found problems with her work as early as 2014 and 2018. “CBI needs to lose their accreditation, in my opinion.”
In addition to Woods’ inadequate work, the CBI ballistics expert dodged efforts to get him to testify.
Even the judge weighed in with the families on the seven years they have spent riding with the twists and turns of the case.
“What you have gotten today must feel like closure without any justice,” said Judge Nancy Salomone. “The system and its processes doesn’t feel remotely like justice.”
Dozens of relatives attended the plea either in person or virtually on WebEx. The victims’ family has been caught up in a seven-year case, which rarely seemed on track.
This latest CBI debacle hit the family hard.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg, and my heart goes out to the other families and victims that are going to come after us with this CBI mess. Murderers. Rapists. It’s devastating,” said Sloat-White’s sister, Kathy Eppler.
“Because of the incompetence of the CBI, (Coughlin) has been offered lesser charges,” said White's niece Jasmine Eppler during victim impact statements.
Coughlin, who shrugged and said, “I guess,” when the judge asked him if he had been forced to plead guilty to second-degree murder, apologized to the relatives of his three victims.
“We’re here today to take account for my guilt and I do have much guilt. I’m sorry for everything that happened,” he said.
He nodded to his dad and stepmom.
"Thanks for coming," he mouthed to them.
The families used to be close. He was Sloat-White's godson.
"I'm heartbroken for both sides. We'll never see our son again," said Tamara Coughlin.
For Michael Dougherty, Coughlin’s trial was star-crossed for two reasons.
“I’ve never seen jurors lying under oath. I’ve never seen CBI analysts altering data and tampering with evidence. We have both things happening in this one case,” Dougherty said. “So, at a time when these families needed the justice the most the justice system really was at its worst.”
