The John Tonge Centre, DNA evidence and miscarriages of justice - Part 5

In another case Jeffrey Pierce was released after serving 15 years of a 65-year sentence for a 1986 rape conviction. Gilchrist’s junk science had placed him at the scene of the crime but independent DNA evidence proved he was not the rapist. In response to the miscarriage of justice that occurred in the Pierce case, Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating launched a review of every one of the thousands of cases Gilchrist touched between 1980 and 1993 starting with 12 in which death sentences were handed down. It was too late for another 11 cases that Gilchrist had testified in - the defendants had already been put to death.

Generally the courts have accepted the reliability of DNA testing when they have allowed DNA tests into evidence. However, DNA profiling is controversial in a number of areas; the accuracy and interpretation of the results, the cost of testing and the possible misuse of technique.

Some of those concerns were reinforced in a 500-page report issued in April 1997 by Michael Bromich, the Inspector-General for the US Justice Department, who criticised the work conducted by the FBI in their forensic laboratories. Bromich found errors in testimony and substandard analytical work had resulted from deficient practices employed by FBI laboratory technicians.

The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 is one of 18 high-profile cases mentioned in the 1997 report that revealed forensic bungles had occurred. The explosion killed 168 people and resulted with Timothy McVeigh being arrested, convicted and subsequently executed despite those forensic bungles.

The double-murder case against former US National Football League player O. J. Simpson was also on the list of 18 cases the FBI forensic laboratories mishandled.

The Justice Department investigation resulted from exposure by whistleblower, Frederick Whitehurst, who alleged FBI laboratory specialists and technicians fabricated or suppressed evidence, gave perjured evidence and obstructed justice in thousands of cases to favour the prosecution.

Investigators from the Inspector General's Office interviewed dozens of FBI agents during the course of their 18-month investigation and during that time they turned up evidence of a prevailing lab culture which one agent likened to a “fraternity”. It was a “shoot from the hip” culture favouring the prosecution rather than a culture of objective science or an honest search for the truth.

Michael Strutt, a Sydney criminal justice activist who specialises in forensic science, sees the inherent culture of scientists in forensic testing laboratories as one of the main stumbling blocks to the delivery of unbiased DNA testimony in Australian criminal trials. Strutt explained:

… These people turn into advocates for a particular side and it totally distorts the scientific picture because you get them not doing tests that might undermine what they are trying to say. Like in the case of Button where they didn’t test the sheets because they decided they were only going to do tests that were going to implicate him and not to try and exonerate him.

Mr Strutt was also critical of the way prosecutors employed the use of DNA evidence in Australian courtrooms saying:

We know from the Joy Thomas case (The Queensland Arnott’s extortion case) that the Crown was sitting on evidence that would have let her off. They wouldn't have done a thing if the defence had not had enough resources and determination to discover it themselves.

Australian criminologist, Professor Paul Wilson, argues that DNA evidence is equally effective for defence lawyers as it is for prosecutors. He said: