Fitted-In » the Forensic Science Service

Procedures

Satish Sekar — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 22:45:00 +0000

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (May 27th 2011)
Prevention
It’s been over 20 years since Lynette White was brutally murdered in the Butetown district of Cardiff. A lot has changed, including the use of forensic sciences and how advances in these disciplines are utilised. It’s unlikely that the errors that plagued the Lynette White Inquiry could occur again, but that doesn’t excuse them completely. DNA testing systems were not sufficiently developed to make the telling contribution that it did to this case in the late 1980s. That was nobody’s fault.
However, various crime-scene, forensic sciences and investigative techniques could have prevented the inquiry from going awry if only they had been applied as they should have been. This was an entirely preventable miscarriage of justice, and sadly, it is far from unique in that respect.
Standards
“We’re in a very different world now and, since 1995, so post-dating this investigation, the forensic science laboratories in the UK have all adopted an international standard for testing calibration laboratories”, said the Forensic Science Regulator, Andrew Rennison. “This standard was first introduced in 1995. The Forensic Science Service, which was then the leading laboratory in the UK, led the way towards the adoption of this standard, ISO [International Standards Organisation] 17025”.
Among the standards that it assured are: “an independent assessment of the robustness of the management systems of the laboratory, including the core management systems [and] it assesses the competence of the scientists and equally importantly – in fact probably most importantly – it demands clear evidence of the validation of the methods employed, so if you are a DNA laboratory, you will apply for accreditation against ISO 17025 for the DNA methods you are employing”, Rennison said.
Cold Comfort
He believes that the procedures that have been introduced now would prevent repetition of the case of the Cardiff Five, but that is cold comfort to the many victims of that particularly vexed inquiry. It is a case that should never have been allowed to drift so badly off the rails. There’s no doubt that ISO 17025 is a very significant step in the right direction for all sides. It provides the standards that must be met, by which forensic scientists will be judged. It will therefore protect those who meet the standard and expose those who do not. This alone will make repetition of the forensic science failings that helped to secure this and other notorious miscarriages of justice.
However, these new procedures do not deal with what happened in this case and without thorough investigation of it to establish exactly how the forensic science was manipulated, or went awry, it is impossible to establish if there is a generic problem or not. Although the methods used may vary from inquiry to inquiry, there are sad examples of forensic science being manipulated into saying the opposite of what the science actually suggests.
That happened in the Lynette White Inquiry. Sadly, it is not an isolated example and there are still glaring flaws in the procedures.
“It will never deal with a difference of opinion”, Rennison says. “You’re always going to have to trust the judgement of the experts in the day, but what you have behind that now are far more robust validation processes and standards they have to work to, so they’re far more accountable now than they ever were”.
Insufficient
But one of the crucial problems in this whole process was the role of expert witnesses. Dr John Whiteside was the expert relied on by the Crown at the original trials of the Cardiff Five in 1989 and 1990 (John and Ronnie Actie were acquitted after the second trial and the Cardiff Three – Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller and Tony Paris – were wrongfully convicted. Abdullahi’s defence instructed an expert to challenge the cocktail hypothesis, but their expert, Dr Patrick Lincoln, could not rule out the possibility that it had happened, although he thought that it was improbable.
For reasons to be detailed in my forthcoming book The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt, that opinion was far too conservative. That expert was a blood expert, but the expertise required to debunk Whiteside’s opinion was scene of crime and blood distribution pattern rather than the likelihood of blood mixing. The wrong expert opinion or wrong choice of expert could, and in this case, did, have dire consequences, and, in fact contributed to a major miscarriage of justice.
Reconciliation
“It’s taken a number of years for the standards to creep through the laboratories”, Rennison says. “Since ’95 a whole new quality standards framework is in place, though I have to say you still have to rely on the judgement of experts and there’s always going to be arguments around that even nowadays. That’s what court trials are for. Court trials are invariably resolving the differences between experts in evidence and there’s no standard you can ever create that will carve its way through that. What you do demand is that when experts give evidence that they are using evidence that is robust; it’s tested; it’s valid, peer-reviewed and they’ve got to be prepared, more so than they were in 1995”.
But that simply didn’t apply in the Lynette White Inquiry and it still doesn’t. Trial is far, far too late in the process to reconcile differences of opinion on the science. That should have been done long before cases come to trial.

The Partial Truth – Damage Limitation

Satish Sekar — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:45:44 +0000

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar January 19^th 2009

The Review

The review of the error made by forensic scientist Sian Hedges, then of the Forensic Science Service (FSS), in the Damilola Taylor Inquiry after the conviction of the Preddie brothers (Ricky and Danny) for the manslaughter of Taylor served a purpose – a log and dishonourable one. It took the previous miscarriage of justice off the agenda for a while at least.

It was conducted by emeritus professor in forensic science at Strathclyde University Brian Caddy and Alan Rawley QC. Both were appointed by the Home Office because Hedges missed crucial blood-staining that originated from Taylor on clothing and footwear of the Preddie brothers during the original inquiry.

Terms of Reference

The terms of reference of the review were: to conduct a review of the forensic examination of evidence conducted by the FSS during the Damilola Taylor Inquiry; to establish an agreed set of facts and time-line of the FSS examination of this evidence and to make recommendations to the Home Secretary on whether re-examination of forensic evidence in other comparable cases is required.

It was also tasked to make recommendations to both the Home Secretary and board of the FSS on whether changes are required to its examination procedures, recruitment, training and management of forensic scientists by the FSS. Finally, it had the power to make whatever recommendations it deems necessary on the future role of the Forensic Regulator in overseeing applicable standards to all suppliers of forensic services to the criminal justice system within the UK.

ʻIndependentʼ

However, the ʻindependentʼ review did not specifically investigate whether Hedges committed perjury in the trial earlier this year that resulted in the acquittal of Hassan Jihad on all charges and the Preddie brothers of murder and robbery. It is also unsatisfactory as it does not view the case as an integrated whole.

The Sentamu Inquiry, which was chaired by the Archbishop of York John Sentamu, looked at the treatment of vulnerable witnesses in isolation and this did the same regarding the scientific evidence.

The review did not consider how the Damilola Taylor Inquiry was mishandled in the first place. Hedges’ error does not explain how the original defendants were allowed to stand trial in 2002. Despite being obliged to deliver best value, neither the Metropolitan Police, nor its police authority have any plans for an inquiry into what went wrong – errors that almost derailed justice permanently.

We should be told how relying on a clearly unreliable witness (Bromley) without testing how such a witness would stand up to cross-examination delivers best value to the public, rather than placing an inexcusable drain on public resources that could have been put to far better use. The role of the CPS needs to be scrutinised thoroughly.

Lack of Interest

There seems to be no interest to establish what went wrong in the original investigation beyond the scientific evidence. That will not suffice. Had wrongful convictions been obtained in the original trial through highly dubious methods there would have been no cold case review which discovered Hedges’ error and the truly guilty Preddie brothers would never have been brought to justice.

The original inquiry was riddled with errors and questionable conduct which included sending a round robin invitation to inmates at Feltham Young Offenders Institution to make incriminating remarks about the original defendants that might be used to convict them. There was a review into the use of child witnesses, but the original defendants were not invited to participate. They have never been given the opportunity to participate in these inquiries, let alone one that looks at the whole case in the light of knowledge that is now available.

The Partial Truth – Errors of Judgement

Satish Sekar — Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:18:04 +0000

by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar January 11^th 2006

Failure

Ricky Preddie and his brother Danny were nineteen and eighteen years old respectively when they were convicted in August 2006 of the manslaughter of ten year old Damilola Taylor, which occurred in Peckham on November 27^th 2000.

Shortly after the verdicts were brought in the Home Office announced a review of the error that caused justice to be delayed. Sian Hedges, then working for the Forensic Science Service, missed crucial blood-staining that originated from Taylor on clothing and footwear of the Preddie brothers.

It did not investigate whether Hedges committed perjury in the trial earlier this year that resulted in the acquittal of Hassan Jihad on all charges and the Preddie brothers of murder and robbery regarding her work on the case, which resulted in a miscarriage of justice as four boys were wrongfully accused of the murder of Damilola Taylor.

In 2002 they were either acquitted by the jury or on the orders of the trial judge, a then Mr Justice (Sir Anthony) Hooper. The accusations against those four boys and that the truly guilty (Preddie brothers) evaded justice until now is a miscarriage of justice despite wrongful convictions not occurring.

No Answer

When originally confronted with her error, Hedges had no answer other than that she had missed it. She repeated this in evidence. When pressed by Orlando Pownall QC, Hedges said: “I’ve been thinking about it overnight and I think it’s unlikely that I wouldn’t have seen it.^¹ My explanation is that I would have KM-tested^² it and produced a negative result”.

This suggests that either the staining which was clearly visible to the naked eye was not there when she examined the trainer, or the presumptive test was negative. Both interpretations are fanciful at best. Original photographs show the stains clearly and if the KM-tests were negative, where are her laboratory notes of the tests that she claims she would have conducted and why did she fail to come up with this explanation earlier?

The question of how a presumptive test for possible blood-staining on a large area that was in fact blood could test negative also seems to have escaped her. Although false negatives can occur, they don’t in the circumstances of this case. It is a rare phenomenon that is unlikely to only be remembered as an afterthought years later.

Innocents

Four innocent boys stood trial for the same crime in 2002. That trial collapsed due to the unreliability of the key witness referred to as Bromley. John Sentamu, now Archbishop of York, headed an inquiry into police handling of vulnerable child witnesses like Bromley that resulted in recommendations.

The Home Office review focused on how the vital evidence that secured the convictions was missed in the first place. There was no investigation into how the Damilola Taylor Inquiry was mishandled in the first place. Hedges’ error does not explain how the innocent original defendants were allowed to stand trial years ago.

Neither the Metropolitan police, nor its police authority have announced any plans for an inquiry into what went wrong – errors that almost derailed justice permanently. Indeed, had wrongful convictions been obtained then through highly dubious methods, the Preddie brothers would never have been brought to justice.

1 The stain on the heel of Danny Preddie’s trainer.

2 Kastle-Mayer is a presumptive test for possible blood-staining.