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PHOTO CAPTION: "Journalist Hedley Thomas, forensic scientist Kirsty Wright and Shandee’s mother, Vicki Blackburn, at the inquiry into DNA testing"
COMMENTARY: "Shandee's story shakers the pillars of power," but Reporter Matt Conlon, published by The Australian, on October 2, 2022.
GIST: "This story has gone from Boddington St in the northern Queensland cane town of Mackay to George St, Brisbane, home to the state’s citadel of power.
It began with the horrific and bloody murder of a young woman just 100m from her home, and has now produced a government inquiry with potentially monstrous implications for Queensland’s criminal justice system.
The story started with the very public death of Shandee Blackburn, just 23, and after several years has taken us beyond the veil of ordinarily private scientific research and into the previously hidden machinations of public servants and government departments.
When The Australian newspaper’s national chief correspondent Hedley Thomas began investigating the 2013 murder of Blackburn, his belief was that this cold case could ultimately be solved and justice be brought to her family.
So he began an investigative podcast, Shandee’s Story.
Blackburn had been in a relationship with a man named John Peros, a fit and talented athlete with a seemingly good nature – loyal to a fault.
He and Blackburn had had difficulties over his tendency to jealousy and possessiveness, but was he a ruthless killer?
Detectives initially set their sights on a local methamphetamine dealer and user.
Thomas rightly assumed that DNA would be an important factor in the murder investigation, and indeed soon came to understand that it had a profound significance.
Incredibly, police crime scene samples sent to Queensland’s forensic testing laboratory in Brisbane failed to identify the presence of DNA where there should have been plenty – including from a pool of Blackburn’s own blood, and from Peros’s vehicle.
This defied explanation. How could this young woman’s blood at the very least not reveal Blackburn’s own DNA profile?
Peros was ultimately charged with Blackburn’s murder, tried, and found not guilty.
A subsequent inquest ruled that Peros did indeed kill Blackburn but the double jeopardy rule precluded a new trial. Peros has always denied killing her.
Indeed, at the time of the trial there was a belief in the Mackay community that the DNA of another suspect, an Indigenous man, had supposedly been found on Blackburn’s body.
At this point in his investigation, Thomas became suspicious. He explained this turning point to Claire Harvey, host of The Australian’s daily news podcast, The Front, last month.
“One of the reasons John Peros, the former boyfriend of Shandee Blackburn, was found not guilty was because of doubt over so-called DNA evidence,” Thomas said. “And John’s defence lawyers mounted a very powerful argument that the real killer, an Indigenous criminal with a history of violent crime, could be potentially linked to the murder scene with his DNA.
“Now, to a mostly white jury in Mackay, when they were looking at the possibility of the real murderer having walked free, and the accused in the witness box not being responsible … that’s why I went to Dr Kirsty Wright, who’s a forensic biologist because I just wanted to understand whether the DNA that the defence lawyers were talking about when they were telling the jurors in the murder trial how the real killer had escaped justice, whether that so-called DNA was actually viable, relevant, probative or whether it was a bit of a beat-up and really shouldn’t have been taken into account at all.”
Dr Wright shared Thomas’s curiosity in relation to the so-called DNA analysis conducted in the case. Why were such rich sources of DNA yielding no meaningful results?
Dr Wright proceeded to study documents, data, DNA statistics from Queensland’s DNA analysis unit in Brisbane – where she had once worked – and came up with some shocking analysis. She believed she detected not just gross negligence but possible corruption that affected not just Blackburn’s story but also potentially thousands of other criminal cases.
She then wrote to Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission.
It took the Queensland government months to publicly recognise the seriousness of this situation, and in June this year it finally relented, announcing a royal commission-style hearing into the state’s forensic testing and the wider implications for Queensland’s criminal justice system, headed by Walter Sofranoff KC.
Those formal hearings began last week in an unremarkable room in Brisbane’s magistrates court building in George St.
A young woman. A death in a country town. And nine years later, a monstrous chasm opens beneath the pillars of power in Queensland.
What a story it is."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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