Legislators want power over SBI, change to crime lab. Critics see steps backward.

Republicans in the North Carolina House are seeking to reduce the governor’s influence over the State Bureau of Investigation and give legislators more power over the bureau.

They also want to move the State Crime Lab out of the attorney general’s purview, which some defense attorneys and lawmakers oppose.

A draft House budget released Wednesday proposes moving the SBI from Department of Public Safety, whose secretary is part of Gov. Roy Cooper’s Cabinet, to a separate, cabinet-level department.

The proposed changes were revealed after SBI Director Bob Schurmeier testified on Tuesday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He said Cooper’s administration pressured him to resign amid a discrimination claim and interfered with his hiring decisions, WRAL reported.

Cooper’s office, on the other hand, insists it has legitimate concerns about Schurmeier’s leadership.

“Our office has expressed concerns to Director Schurmeier about his leadership and the culture and practices at the SBI, including complaints that he alluded to at the General Assembly today and the need for an outside review,” Cooper spokesperson Jordan Monaghan wrote in an email.

Monaghan did not respond to a request for specific information on concerns about the SBI he cited in the email.

The SBI investigates and prepares evidence for criminal cases, election law violations, environmental crimes, when police officers shoot civilians and more. If assists local law enforcement in some cases. It also provides background checks for state agency employees, people who work with children, people with disabilities and others.

Calls for change

Appointed by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in 2016, Schurmeier called for the General Assembly to protect the bureau’s independence through changes in state law, which is what the proposed budget calls for.

Currently, the director can be fired by the governor, but the proposed change would also allow the state Senate and House of Representatives to remove an SBI director by a three-fifths vote.

The bureau has nine appointed positions, including the director. Schurmeier said he has to negotiate those hires with the governor’s office, which sometimes was slow on related paperwork, WRAL reported.

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Jake Johnson, a Henderson County Republican, said Schurmeier’s allegations are concerning.

“Appointed leadership positions have inherent split loyalties between the Governor’s office and Department leadership, especially when politics do not align,” he wrote in a statement emailed to The News & Observer. “Director Schurmeier made a clear case for a completely independent SBI.”

Johnson also wrote that committee members want to hear from the governor’s staff.

In 2014, after two previous attempts, the Republican-led General Assembly moved the SBI from the Department of Justice to the Department of Public Safety, which runs several agencies including Emergency Management, Homeland Security and several law enforcement agencies. At the time, Republican budget writers said it was an efficient and logical place to put the agency.

The bureau, which had a budget last year of nearly $75 million, now has about 404 full-time employees, including 247 agents.

It used to run the State Crime Laboratory, which remained in the Department of Justice after the SBI was moved.

The State Crime Laboratory operates three labs across the state, where employees assist in collecting and examining evidence free of charge to public law enforcement agencies in the state, as well as provide expert testimony in court.

Rep. Joe John, a Raleigh Democrat who ran the crime lab from 2010 to 2013, He opposes placing it under the SBI again.

When it was affiliated with the SBI, lab results were constantly being questioned in court. Defense attorneys were worried criminal investigators could influence the lab’s results or what they decided to test.

“We learned nothing from history,” he said, adding that the SBI is “the wrong place for an independent, scientific agency.”

Some defense attorneys have pushed for the crime lab to be independent starting around 2005, said Christine Mumma, head of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. In 2009, the National Academies, a leading advisory group on sciences, engineering and medicine, urged states to make the lab independent of law enforcement and prosecution.

Additional concerns followed Greg Taylor, who was convicted of murder in 1993, being freed in 2010 after evidence showed an SBI employee misrepresented crucial evidence that favored Taylor.

Soon afterward, an independent audit found that lab analysts failed to report completed testing that favored defendants in more than 200 cases, The N&O reported then.

In response, the General Assembly created a committee to study lab processes, then passed a series of changes in the years that followed.

Despite the changes, the crime lab’s lack of independence from prosecutors has continued to be problematic, Mumma said.

The House will vote on its budget bill next week, which is just one step on the way to a final budget for the state. In May, the Senate is expected to release its version of the budget.

The two chambers must then pass a compromise budget to send to Cooper, who will sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature after 10 days.

Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.

News & Observer reporter Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan contributed this report.