The John Tonge Centre, DNA evidence and miscarriages of justice - Part 3

The Nick Lisoff Case

In NSW the spectre of planted DNA evidence surfaced when Nick Lisoff and two other men were arrested over a brutal 1996 bashing in which the victim lost a considerable amount of blood and required urgent blood transfusions to survive. The victim was rushed to hospital in a critical condition where he received a life-saving blood transfusion. Police went to the hospital and took a sample of the victim’s blood to assist their investigations.

When the three men were arrested two of them pleaded guilty to the attack but Lisoff continued to protest his innocence. Police confiscated the track-suit pants Lisoff was wearing on the day of the attack to determine if there was any DNA evidence that could tie him to the crime.

An inspection of the track-suit pants revealed traces of blood splashed on them and when NSW forensic scientist, Bob Goetz, compared samples from the track-suit pants with that from the victim by using an automated DNA profiling system he concluded that the sample from Lisoff’s track-suit matched the sample from the victim. Goetz calculated that the chance of the blood on Lisoff’s track-suit coming from someone other than the victim was less than one in ten billion. It was conclusive and irrefutable scientific evidence but Lisoff continued to challenge it and protested his innocence with an alibi to the crime.

Lisoff’s lawyers solved the impasse by hiring an independent DNA specialist, Dr Brian McDonald, to analyse the blood samples. McDonald analysed the blood samples using a different DNA profiling technique called “silver staining” and compared the victim’s blood taken at the hospital, the blood from Lisoff’s track-suit pants and blood taken from the victim several months later.

Dr McDonald discovered two weak bands indicating another person’s DNA present in the samples taken from the victim in hospital and the same two weak bands were present in the sample from the track-suit pants. Those two weak bands were not present in the blood sample taken from the victim months after the attack. McDonald concluded that the two weak DNA bands came from the person who donated blood for the victim’s blood transfusion because the police had taken their blood sample at the hospital after the blood transfusion had been performed.

Dr McDonald’s scientific conclusions raised serious questions about the quality protocols and storage of DNA evidence. How did the victim’s post transfusion blood sample get on the track-suit pants after he had been taken to hospital?

Lisoff’s defense lawyer, Phil Hogan, summed up the situation during the June 27, 2002 ABC TV Catalyst program “A Shadow of Doubt”:

To put it in a nutshell, people don’t have a blood transfusion immediately before being assaulted and so the theory was that the blood on the track pants could only have got there after the victim had had the blood transfusions because the presence of all the extraneous DNA and therefore again the theory was that those blood traces on the clothes must have been planted. But how? For two weeks the track pants and the blood sample from the victim had been stored in the same police evidence room.

In the end it was decided that the scientific evidence was too complicated for a jury to decide upon so the case was heard before a single judge. The judge felt that there was a theoretical possibility that the evidence could have been tampered with although there was no firm evidence that a police officer had tampered with it. The judge determined he could not be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt and he acquitted Lisoff.

The Janine Balding Case

Twenty-year-old Sydney bank teller, Janine Balding, was abducted, raped and murdered in 1988 by a group of street kids. Stephen Wayne “Shorty” Jamieson is one of three men convicted for the crime but Jamieson has consistently denied any involvement in the murder. Those assertions are supported by two other men convicted for the crime who have also consistently claimed from the time of their 1988 arrest that it was not “Shorty” Jamieson who was with them when Janine Balding was murdered.

They have claimed it was another street kid named “Shorty”’ Wells but investigating detectives were convinced they had the right “Shorty”’ when they arrested Jamieson on the Gold Coast and extradited him back to NSW.

“Shorty” Jamieson was not convicted on forensic evidence. He was convicted on the testimony of a prison informer who has since died, the transcript of a police interview signed by Jamieson but disputed by his defence lawyers in court, and an eyewitness who said he had seen Jamieson with the co-offenders after the attack.