Despite DNA testing, injustices will continue without proper investigation

In the USA, over 120 defendants in capital cases have had their sentences reduced or quashed because of DNA testing. But despite the growing number of university "innocence" courses and projects in Australia (I run one myself at Bond University) only a handful of convicted prisoners have been able to overturn their convictions because of DNA testing. The costs of carrying out prolonged investigations, the difficulties of actually obtaining original bodily samples for analysis and the problems and expense inherent in mounting legal challenges are just some of the reasons for this meagre result.

In any event, the potential that DNA has to reverse miscarriages has to be balanced against the error rate in DNA testing. After the Frank Button case, Queensland's Crime and Misconduct Commission raised serious concerns about how the John Tonge Centre stored and secured samples and other concerns about the labelling and possible cross-contamination of DNA material.

These concerns coincide with British and American reports suggesting that human error occurs in 12 out of every 1000 tests. Yet as in the past with controversial forensic techniques like blood splatter analysis, ballistics evidence and even fingerprinting; judges, juries and the lawyers themselves are often bedazzled by the aura of infallibility that forensic experts project onto their techniques.

If Australian police emulate their American counterparts by abandoning traditional law enforcement investigative techniques and trawling through DNA databases looking for DNA matches without supporting evidence, then the potential for miscarriages is in fact only increased further.

The pressure for them to do so is enormous. A law-and-order mentality prevails in this country, as is shown by the rhetoric of many politicians and an imprisonment rate out of all proportion to the increase in crime. Gripped as we are with a growing fear about crime, coupled with a determination to solve it by processing as many people as possible through the justice system, a belief in the infallibility of new forensic technologies is tempting. Such a belief, however, guarantees an increasing number of miscarriages of justice, most of which will go undetected and uncorrected.