The John Tonge Centre, DNA evidence and miscarriages of justice - Part 2

His legal team requested further DNA testing of the vaginal swabs and the bed linen from the crime scene. When scientists at the John Tonge Centre re-tested the semen taken from the young victim, a male DNA profile was finally discovered. That discovery resulted in the DNA testing of the bed linen, which revealed traces of semen matching the profile on the swab. The DNA profile from the swab and the bed-sheet was then entered into a database of DNA samples taken from prisoners and a match was recorded. The DNA profile on both the bed-sheet and the swab from the victim was not Button’s, it belonged to a prisoner doing time for another rape. He was a youth from the girl’s community who had been convicted of a separate assault.

The biologist who did the DNA testing was cross-examined by Button’s counsel and asked why he hadn't tested the bed linen prior to the trial. A forensic examination would have clearly established Button's innocence because the semen on the bed linen did not contain Button's DNA profile. According to the ABC's Four Corners, the biologist answered: “The tests were directed to try and implicate your client.”

On April 12, 2001 the Queensland Court of Appeal immediately ordered Button's release from prison after the new DNA evidence established he was innocent of the rape. The court's judgment contained a blistering criticism of the Queensland criminal justice system:

Today is a black day in the history of the administration of criminal justice. What is of major concern to this court is the fact that that evidence was not available at the trial. This court can do little so far as compensation to the appellant for the fact that he has had to suffer the ignominy of a conviction for rape which now proves to be entirely false.

Following Button’s release from prison the Queensland legal system went into damage control and the Director of Public Prosecutions requested Queensland’s Criminal Justice Commission investigate how the miscarriage had occurred. In January 2002 The CJC, now the Crime and Misconduct Commission, issued a press release saying there’d been no impropriety in the Button case. Police and scientists involved in the case were exonerated from any wrong doing. It was a happy ending for the Queensland legal system. No-one was to blame for Button’s wrongful imprisonment.

My continuing investigation of the Renton, Thomas and Button cases highlighted the flawed DNA testing processes that were occurring inside Queensland’s JTC as well as the scientific interpretation of DNA evidence offered to Queensland courts by staff from the JTC. In a chapter “DNA and The Justice Game” published in the June 2004 edition of The Griffith Review I revealed how possible miscarriages of justice were occurring as a result of those flawed processes. An edited version of that investigative report was published in On Line Opinion on October 8, 2004.

“DNA and The Justice Game” was recognised as an important critique of Queensland’s criminal justice system when it was short-listed as a finalist in the 2004 Queensland Media Awards - Best Investigative Report - All Media section, an award won by the A Current Affair program.

Despite my consistent ventilation of criminal cases that resulted from flawed DNA testing procedures at the JTC or the questionable interpretation of DNA evidence offered to Queensland courts by staff from the JTC, nothing changed. There was no investigation into the claims contained in my articles published in On Line Opinion or published in the Griffith Review. The Queensland Government and the John Tonge Centre remained silent on the subject. And Marc Renton remained in prison waiting for justice.