The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) is a state-level law enforcement agency in North Carolina. The agency has statewide jurisdiction and investigates homicides, robberies, property crimes and cases thought to be serious. The agency usually enters local cases at the request of the city police or county sheriffs. In 2014 the governor signed a budget bill by the legislature that also removed SBI from the Department of Justice, under the State Attorney General, and transferred it to the Department of Public Safety. Operationally SBI is now headed by a political appointee who is confirmed to an eight-year term by the legislature, and reports directly to the governor's office. The second Director, Bob Schurmeier, was sworn in during July 2016, after the first director resigned on April 1 for personal reasons.
In 2010 the state attorney general, Democrat Roy Cooper (elected governor in 2016), ordered an audit of the SBI Crime Lab after it was learned that officials had withheld exculpatory information in the Gregory Taylor case. Taylor was exonerated in 2010 by the governor after the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency, overturned his conviction in 2009. He was the first inmate freed in the United States by an independent innocence commission.
Released by Cooper in August 2010, the audit revealed a far-reaching scandal dating to the 1990s. For nearly two decades, certain agents in the department regularly withheld negative or inconclusive findings in cases, did not keep up with scientific standards, and slanted results toward the prosecution, potentially affecting convictions in 230 cases. Three persons convicted in such tainted cases have been executed, and 80 were still serving time in prison when the audit was released. They were the priority for state re-investigation of forensic and other evidence in their cases.
The SBI has paid large settlements in the 21st century following suits by persons found to have been wrongfully convicted because of actions of its agents in investigations and in operations of the Crime Lab. In 2013 it paid $4.625 million to Taylor for his wrongful conviction. It also paid $7.85 million to Floyd Brown, held for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital based on a false confession developed by an SBI agent. In 2009 the state paid $3.9 million to Alan Gell, wrongfully convicted of murder after prosecutors suppressed exculpatory evidence and sentenced to death. He was acquitted in a second trial, after spending nine years on death row.
In 2012, the SBI received its fifth reaccreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.
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History
Early history
In 1925 the North Carolina General Assembly created the State Bureau of Identification. At the time it was attached to the newly formed Department of Corrections. The deputy warden H. H. Honeycutt was designated as the director of the new Bureau. A fingerprint laboratory, along with the office space for the Bureau, was located on prison ground. The funding for the bureau would come from appropriations made to the prison system. The bureau's main responsibility was to keep track of police and criminal records within the state and to receive and send information to other states. The bureau also conducted studies on the records they received.
The General Assembly 1937 passed legislation that established the State Bureau of Identification and Investigation (SBII) which was directly overseen by the governor. To finance the bureau, every criminal case finally disposed of in the courts had a $1 additional cost assessed and paid to the State Treasurer of North Carolina. One-half of this amount was to be allotted to the bureau. In 1942 SBI Director Fred C. Handy wrote this the following in the News & Observer about the early months for the agency.
"One year after the passage of the act, on March 15, 1938, the governor Clyde R. Hoey appointed a director with authority to proceed with the creation and operation of the bureau... On July 1, 1938, the first special agent was appointed, and during the same month a firearms identification and questioned document expert entered the services of the bureau. On Aug. 15, 1938, the first fingerprint expert was employed. Necessary scientific equipment for the bureau was secured during the following months and made ready for service to the enforcement agencies of the state..."
Two years later in 1939 the legislature authorized the North Carolina Department of Justice, transferring the (SBII) responsibilities, materials, and funds into the department. In the following decades, the General Assembly passed and enacted several laws giving new roles to the Bureau, which included authorizing private detectives within the state, and investigating arson and damage to, theft of, or misuse of state-owned property.
History since 1970
On Nov. 3, 1970, the people of North Caroline voted on seven proposed amendments to the North Carolina Constitution. Six were approved, including one that required the legislature to reduce the number of administrative departments within the state government, which totaled more than 300 at the time.
The legislature established the North Carolina Department of Justice, placing it under direction of the state's Attorney General. The states Crime lab and the SBI were also placed under the control of the Attorney General. During the following years, the state attorney general gave more responsibility to the SBI. The State Bureau now performs background checks of nominees needing confirmation for appointment by the General Assembly. They take charge in cases regarding the investigation of suspected child abuse.
2010 evidence scandal
In 2009 the North Carolina Innocence Commission, an independent three-judge panel, voted to vacate Greg Taylor's conviction for murder. He was formally exonerated by the governor in 2010; his was the first exoneration by the independent commission, which was established following the exoneration of Darryl Hunt for murder. Taylor had served nearly seventeen years in prison after being wrongfully convicted for the first-degree murder of Jaquetta Thomas.
During the hearing, it was found that critical exculpatory evidence in Taylor's case was withheld by the Crime Lab of the SBI. North Carolina's Attorney General Roy Cooper ordered an audit of SBI lab operations after this discovery.
Cooper reported on the audit which he released in August 2010. It revealed that for two decades it had been common practice for certain agents within the State Bureau crime lab to withhold information, based on their own faulty reasoning. In addition, they resisted use of more sophisticated forensic tests of greater scientific accuracy, and regularly slanted results toward prosecutors. The two independent investigators Chris Swecker and Micheal Wolf cited 230 cases where information, chiefly test results, was withheld, tainting any convictions in those cases. This will require the state to go back to each of those cases to try to determine the effects of these actions on potentially innocent defendants. Three persons convicted in such tainted cases have been executed. According to Mary Pollard, executive director of Prisoner Legal Services, 80 of the defendants in these cases are still in prison and will need assistance in challenging their convictions.
In June 2011, Gregory Taylor filed a civil suit for damages against former SBI agents involved in his case. In 2013, the state and SBI insurers agreed to a settlement, to pay Taylor agreed to pay $4.625 million for his wrongful conviction in 1993.
SBI moved to Public Safety (2014)
North Caroline's Governor Pat McCrory signed the 2014-15 budget, which moved the SBI from the state's, Justice Department under the State Attorney General, to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety but reporting directly to the governor. In North Carolina, the State Attorney General is one of the top statewide positions that is elected independently of the governor, rather than being a gubernatorial appointee. Historically, it was a way for the legislature to limit the power of the governor's office.
The Attorney General was Democrat, Roy Cooper, who had served since 2001 and was being discussed as a probable nominee for the upcoming gubernatorial race. Commentators suggested that Republican Governor Pat McCory, along with the Republican-controlled General Assembly, were trying to reduce Cooper's influence. It was the third time the N.C. Legislature tried to move the agency, together with the State Crime Lab. The Legislature had first attempted this in 2011. Cooper had conducted an independent audit of SBI's Crime Lab in 2010 that revealed longstanding problems with agents withholding potentially exculpatory evidence and operating under wrong scientific standards.
In August 2014, State Attorney General Cooper was the likely Democratic nominee for the upcoming gubernatorial race. Some commentators suggested that the Republican action to move the SBI was politically motivated. Neither Governor McCrory nor Attorney General Cooper referred to this publicly.
Cooper said that this action could reduce the SBI's independence in cases where it had to investigate the executive branch, other state departments, and members of the General Assembly. "When a U.S. Attorney or a prosecutor calls on the SBI, they want them to be an independent agency that can help find the truth," Cooper said while talking to the Charlotte Observer in March 2014. Under Cooper, SBI agents helped make a criminal case against former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley and against aides of Gov. Bev Perdue, also a former Democratic governor of North Carolina. According to Cooper, when the legislature and Gov. McCrory moved the agency, the SBI was conducting investigations that related to legislators and the Department of Public Safety.
Gov. McCrory said that the State Bureau of Investigation should be completely nonpartisan. He suggested that no elected politician should directly oversee the department; rather it should be headed by a director, to be appointed to an eight-year term by the governor, in an effort to buffer the office from changes in administrations. "Wherever you put the SBI, there could be potential conflicts of interest, I think the goal is to keep the politics out of all investigating and as mayor and a governor we have done that," the governor said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer in March 2014.
The 2014-2015 budget bill signed by McCrory also gave a raise to most state employees, provided almost another million dollars in state-funded scholarships, and set up an education endowment fund which can accept donations from corporations and people who want to increase teacher pay. He has campaigned on these aspects of the bill in his reelection bid. In 2016 Roy Cooper was narrowly elected as governor of North Carolina.
In August 2014, the North Carolina legislature removed the SBI from the Department of Justice. For administrative purposes (i.e. human resources, payroll, etc.), the SBI was made part of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. But for operational and investigative purposes, the SBI serves as an independent agency that reports directly to the Governor. Under the 2014 legislation, the director of the SBI is appointed by the governor to an eight-year term, subject to legislative confirmation. As part of the same legislation, North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE) became a division of the SBI.
B. W. Collier II was the first SBI director appointed and confirmed under the 2014 law. He took office in 2015 but in January 2016, announced that he would retire as of April 1, saying he wanted more time with his family. His early retirement enabled Gov. McCrory to select a new nominee and gain legislative approval before the end of his term. He appointed Bob Schurmeier, who took office in 2016.
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Activities
The SBI assists local law enforcement with criminal investigations. They work closely with local police, sheriffs, and district attorneys, as well as federal investigators and federal prosecutors.
The SBI has statewide jurisdiction and assists in criminal cases at the request of the local department (municipal police department or sheriff's office), district attorney, or judges, usually for serious cases such as homicide, robbery, and property crimes. The local department maintains original jurisdiction over these cases. The SBI has original jurisdiction in cases involving drug investigations, lynching, arson investigations, election law violations, child sexual abuse in day care centers, theft and misuse of state property, and computer crime investigations that involve crimes against children. The SBI also charged with investigating organized crime and vice activities.
Since 2009, the state and SBI have paid large settlements to persons wrongfully convicted due to actions of SBI agents. In 2009 the SBI and its insurers state paid $3.9 million to Alan Gell, wrongfully convicted of murder after the prosecution withheld evidence from the medical examiner. He served nine years on death row before being acquitted at a second trial in 2004.
In 2013 the SBI paid $4.625 million to Gregory Taylor for his wrongful conviction for murder. (See above "2010 Evidence scandal"). In 2013 it also paid $7.85 million to Floyd Brown, an intellectually disabled man held for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital based on a false confession to a 1993 murder, a confession that was strongly influenced by an SBI agent. Critics described the confession as "fiction", involving details far above Brown's level of mental functioning. Brown reached a separate, sealed settlement with Anson County, where the sheriff's department lost physical evidence in the case; the SBI Crime Lab had found that none of this evidence implicated Brown in the crime.
Organization and districts
SBI headquarters is located in Wake County. The bureau has several divisions:
- Special Operations Division: Operates seven specialized investigative and operational units: Air Wing Unit, Computer Crimes Unit, Criminal Information and Identification Section, Diversion and Environmental Crimes Unit, Intelligence and Technical Services Section, and Special Services Unit.
- Field Operations Division: Conducts most of the SBI's criminal investigations. More than 200 field agents and clerical personnel are employees in the Field Operations Division, including specialized investigators working in financial crimes, computer crimes, and Medicaid fraud. There are eight district offices across the state. Field operations also include SBI Field Procedure and statewide coordinators for arson, polygraph, and crime scene search.
- Professional Standards Division: Conducts sensitive investigations involving public corruption and government misconduct, investigations for the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission, and cases involving theft and misuse of state property, and SBI internal affairs activities. The Division has two units within it: Financial Crime Investigations and Case Records Management.
- Administrative Services Division: Oversees recruitment and training of SBI agents and analysts and conducts work on human resources, budget, purchasing, communications, physical security, accreditation.
- Crime Laboratory Division: Oversees crime laboratory activities. The main SBI Crime Lab is in Raleigh. The Western Regional Lab is in Asheville and the Triad Regional Lab is in Greensboro.
The eight districts within the Field Operations Division are:
- Capital District is based in Raleigh and serves Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Granville, Harnett, Johnston, Orange, Person, Warren, Vance, and Wake counties.
- Coastal District is based in Jacksonville and serves Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Duplin, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, and Pender counties.
- Northeastern District is based in Greenville and serves Beaufort, Bertie, Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Edgecombe, Gates, Greene, Halifax, Hertford, Hyde, Lenoir, Martin, Nash, Northampton, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Pitt, Tyrrell, Wayne, Wilson, and Washington counties.
- Northern Piedmont District is based in Greensboro and serves Alamance, Caswell, Davidson, Forsyth, Guilford, Montgomery, Randolph, Rockingham, and Stokes counties.
- Northwestern District is based in Hickory and serves Alexander, Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Burke, Caldwell, Catawba, Davie, Iredell, Surry, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yadkin counties.
- Southeastern District is based in Fayetteville and serves Bladen, Cumberland, Hoke, Lee, Moore, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson, and Scotland counties.
- Southern Piedmont District is based in Harrisburg and serves Anson, Cabarrus, Cleveland, Gaston, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Rowan, Stanly, and Union counties.
- Western District is based in Asheville and serves Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, McDowell, Mitchell, Polk, Rutherford, Swain, Transylvania, and Yancey counties.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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