DNA and The Justice Game

I had just received double digits for the Brisbane National Australia Bank robbery when they transferred me into B Block at the Sir David Longland Correctional Centre (SDLCC) - a jail with the fearsome reputation as the killing fields of the Sunshine State. This New Age gladiator school of Queensland’s prison system had spawned a breed of violent younger prisoner the like of which I had never encountered during my years in southern prisons. They were fueled by a mixture of heroin and an insane desire to reach the top of the prison pecking order by killing each other. Their ascendancy was symbolised by the tattooed abbreviation NBK (natural born killer), which reinforced the reality of jail time becoming a terminal sentence inside SDLCC. In that feeding frenzy of reputation building I met Marc Renton.

Marc Andre Renton is no choirboy. A man in his late 20s who had already achieved a career criminal tag for armed robbery, Renton walked the hard yards after he led the 1992 Townsville prison riot in a quest for humane treatment and better conditions for prisoners. It cost him a few busted bones and more years on top of his sentence but it also earned him respect in the yard. It was not a respect fuelled by heroin, jail murders or NBK tattoos, but a healthy respect for a stand-up bloke who would not take shit from the screws or the wannabes.

Older crims took the young Queenslander under their wing. He was a reincarnation from their heyday. A man with principles who cannot be bought or sold with a $50 shot of heroin is rare in today’s maximum-security prisons. They showed their respect. Renton returned that respect by listening to the elder statesmen. He learned from their mistakes and benefited from their wisdom. Now it was his turn to ask for their help and advice.

I was one of the privileged to hear the story of a young man sent to prison for a crime he had not committed. A young man unskilled in the intricacies of a legal system that relied upon forensic scientists and their interpretation of DNA evidence to convict him, Renton simply said he had not committed the bank robbery he was in jail for. And I believe him.

Renton’s introduction to the forensic interpretation of DNA evidence came from the testimony of Kenneth Cox, a forensic scientist at Brisbane’s John Tonge Centre, whose evidence resulted in his conviction and imprisonment for 14 years on April 25, 1997.

Renton was convicted of robbing the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point National Australia Bank branches in mid 1996. He had also been charged with the Morningside bank robbery. Police said distinct similarities existed between the three robberies, consistent with a proposition that one offender had been involved in all three. The establishment of similar-fact evidence linking the Biggera Waters and Paradise Point bank robberies was discredited by Renton’s acquittal of the Morningside robbery. The case then relied on DNA evidence that allegedly linked Renton to the Biggera Waters bank robbery.

Kenneth Cox had originally examined a blue balaclava found inside the stolen white Ford Laser allegedly used in the Biggera Waters robbery in August 1996. During that examination he tested two areas of fabric in an attempt to isolate DNA that could originate from mouth cells via saliva. He found none. Cox testified at Renton’s trial that he had completed a second examination and isolated a stain that yielded a DNA sample.

Although Cox’s second examination on April 17, 1997, two weeks into Renton’s trial, did not correspond with his examination of the blue balaclava eight months earlier, Cox testified that the newly found DNA samples belonged to Renton, Festa and a third unidentified person.

The Crown’s circumstantial case was bolstered by the interpretation of the DNA evidence delivered by Cox. And the timing of its inclusion restricted Renton’s defence counsel from conducting independent tests. The trial judge allowed the DNA evidence to go before the jury untested. As a result, Renton was convicted.

When Renton returned to prison with a 14-year sentence, the Queensland Department of Corrective Services was determined to make him serve every day in the most punitive sections of the State prisons. It was payback for his participation in the 1992 prison riot. Queensland “prisoneaucrats” take their revenge options very seriously and because Renton was not legally or politically connected they acted with impunity. They showed no reluctance to make a man do hard time for a crime he said he didn’t commit.

Renton and I walked the yard inside B Block at SDLCC as I listened to his story. His sincerity had a ring of truth to it. DNA was the stumbling block I could not get my head around. Wasn’t DNA set in concrete - irrefutable proof that tied an offender to a crime? So why would an obviously intelligent young prisoner persist in his claim of being innocent?

I vaguely remembered that an independent examination of forensic evidence cleared Lindy Chamberlain. Renton needed that same independent scientific examination of the DNA evidence used to convict him. In the prison library I found a book that revealed the identity of the scientist who conducted the independent tests in the Chamberlain case. His name was Professor Barry Boettcher.

Barry Boettcher, professor emeritus of biological science at the University of Newcastle was the foremost DNA expert in Australia. He practiced and taught the principles of the scientific method involving DNA structure and its use in forensic work. He also taught courses on forensic biology including the use of variable DNA sequences that resulted in collaboration with overseas scientists to publish studies of variable DNA sequences suitable for use in forensic work.

Renton wrote to Boettcher and asked for his help.

Eighteen months after Renton was convicted Professor Boettcher reviewed the evidence presented at Renton’s trial: trial transcripts, DNA profile collation sheets, gene scan analysis print-outs and two statutory declarations sworn by Ken Cox on October 14, 1996 and April 17, 1997. He concluded that the DNA evidence used to convict Renton was scientifically incorrect and that the methodology used by the Crown’s DNA expert was wrong.

In a statutory declaration Professor Boettcher explained his conclusions: “The DNA in the sample came from more than one person since normal persons have only one or two FES Alleles. The simplest explanation is that the DNA in the sample came from two people possessing the pairs of Alleles: 10/11 and 12/13 or 10/12 and 11/13 or 10/13 and 11/12 (Renton possesses the FES type 12/12).

Although Professor Boettcher’s interpretation of the DNA cleared Renton of bank robbery, the Queensland government was not convinced it was sufficient to release him from prison or institute an inquiry into his conviction. The options for Renton had run out. He had already lost an appeal to the Supreme Court based on points of law, and Queensland only allowed one appeal against conviction.

When the ABC-TV Catalyst programme began to examine the interpretation of DNA evidence used in Australian criminal trials it discovered further discrepancies in the DNA evidence used to convict Renton. Catalyst researcher, Robyn Smith, made a formal request to interview Renton in the maximum-security block of Townsville prison after he had been transferred there in 2000.

“Renton was convicted primarily on the DNA evidence,” Smith recalled. “Renowned forensic scientist Professor Barry Boettcher later investigated that evidence and felt that the interpretation by the Queensland forensic scientist was flawed, and there was a good chance that Renton had been wrongfully convicted. We were featuring Renton’s case in our June 27, 2002 programme. We wanted to do an interview with him but we were denied access.”

QDCS refused permission on the grounds that Renton was a dangerous prisoner - a convicted bank robber who had participated in a prison riot.

The Catalyst team was undeterred, and went ahead with the investigation. When the programme, “A Shadow of Doubt”, was broadcast in June 2002, presenter Karina Kelly interviewed both Boettcher and Cox. It revealed a chilling insight into how the interpretation of scientific evidence can be tilted to favour the prosecution.

Boettcher explained that there were four peaks of DNA in the forensic analysis that was presented during the Renton trial. Those peaks were best interpreted as DNA coming from two people and excluded Renton because his DNA was not present. The evidence presented in court assumed the four peaks came from three people because that interpretation favoured the prosecution case against Renton.

Cox was asked why he had concluded there were three people present in the DNA profile but he denied that he came to that conclusion. Kelly dropped a bombshell. She confronted Cox with the transcript of his evidence in the Renton trial.

The Catalyst team uncovered another disturbing factor - the DNA evidence presented at Renton’s trial could implicate 94 per cent of the white Australian population.

The interpretation of DNA evidence used in Queensland criminal trials became a matter of concern when Professor Michael Moore, the then Director of Queensland Health and Scientific Services, revealed to the media in May 2002 that the John Tonge Centre (JTC) had not received accreditation by the National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) until 1999, two years after the Renton trial. However, even with that accreditation, the JTC continued to bungle DNA evidence used in other serious cases including the 1997 Arnott's biscuit extortion case and the Frank Button case in which Button was convicted of rape and served 10 months of a 7-year-sentence before independent DNA testing proved he was not the rapist.

Renton’s conviction for a bank robbery he claims he did not commit still rests on the disputed DNA evidence used at his trial. Boettcher’s scientific conclusions support Renton’s claims but as the legal processes have been exhausted he enters his seventh year of walking the yard inside the maximum-security block at Townsville prison. Renton’s case reinforces the jail yard philosophy that there’s no sympathy for an innocent man doing hard time inside the Queensland prison system. The only sympathy you will find in the Queensland incarceration process remains in the dictionary - nestled somewhere between shit and syphilis.

I left the Queensland prison system and was paroled back to NSW in October 2000. I continued my journalism studies but the Renton case and the interpretation of DNA evidence in criminal trials kept niggling at me, like an itch you can’t get at. An innocent man doing hard time, I could relate to that. They “fitted me up” for an armoured van robbery in 1991. I wasn’t good for it, but they kept me in prison until they arrested two other blokes and then told me: “Whoops, we made a mistake. Sorry about that,” before letting me out again.

That’s how the game was played in my day. If they didn’t get you for what you did then they put you in jail for what they thought you did. As a career criminal I had experienced the “fit-ups”, the “verbals”, the “pay-offs” and the jail time. It was all part of the game. Like playing cops and robbers when you’re a kid - someone has to be the goodie and somebody has to be the baddie. But when you’re a kid the game ends after your mother calls you in for dinner.

The game never ended for Marc Renton. They are still playing with his life in the game they call justice and the scientific interpretation of DNA in Queensland.