In her time working for the Oklahoma City police, Joyce Gilcrest gave expert testimony at over 3,000 criminal cases.  As an expert on the DNA samples at crime scenes, her testimony, scientific and irrefutable, was often the deciding factor in the jury’s decision to convict.  Now an investigation by the F.B.I. suggests that Gilcrest has both misled jurors and lied during testimony, casting doubt upon the guilt of the 3,000 suspects she helped imprison.
Among those convicted, twenty-three were sent to death-row.  Eleven have since been executed.  The F.B.I. studied eight cases at which Ms Gilcrest had testified.  Investigators found that at five she had misidentified evidence or given improper testimony.  Governor Keating of Oklahoma has temporarily halted any further executions until Gilcrest’s role in the each of the cases can be reviewed.  The State Attorney General’s office is also reviewing the case of Malcolm Johnson, executed last year for murder in an attempt to determine whether Gilcrest’s testimony might have led to an innocent man being executed.
Dan Mahoney, a spokesman for Governor Keating, stated that the governor believes that, regardless of Gilcrest’s testimony, the 11 inmates were convicted and executed based on overwhelming evidence.  Though the case of Malcolm Johnson is being reviewed, Attorney General Edmonsun stated that it was only from a desire to more thoroughly examine the case.
In a time when DNA evidence is increasingly becoming the most crucial part of a criminal prosecution, the investigation in Oklahoma city is threatening to overturn a large number of convictions.  James Bednar, executive director of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, stated, "Ms. Gilcrest touched 3,000 cases.  This is a mammoth deal. We may find 200 in which her testimony made the difference.  Who knows?" The investigation is expected to be "time consuming."
Gilcrest had been criticized for many years by both lawyers, judges, and other DNA experts.  John T. Wilson, chief forensic scientist at the crime laboratory in Kansas, stated in 1987 that Gilcrest’s opinions were "not justified by the evidence," and made positive identifications, "based on the slightest bit of circumstantial evidence."  Gilcrest had also been expelled by the Association for Crime Scene Reconstruction for unethical behavior.  Gilcrest has made no comment on the allegations, but her lawyer has stated that she stands by her work and expects to be vindicated by the investigation.
The investigation came after lawyers representing a man convicted of rape based on semen found at the crime scene, requested another set of tests.  The new results showed that the DNA did not match despite the certainty expressed by Gilcrest.  This resulted in the Oklahoma City Police Cheif M.T. Berry requesting an F.B.I. investigation into a sample of Gilcrest’s work.  The resulting memo was damning.  Investigators found that Gilcrest’s labnotes "were often incomplete or inadequate to support the conclusions."  The report also found methodological errors in five of the eight cases studied.  The District Attorney, so far, has refused comment, and Bob Macy, a longtime DA who has put 54 people on death row, resigned recently, though he did not cite the Gilcrest case in his reasons.  Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Program, calls the case "a real failure of oversight by the District Attorney’s office."  The police department has made no public comment on the case, and refers to it as "a personnel matter." The results of the investigation, however, could raise serious questions regarding both the handling of DNA evidence and the responsibility of the testers.