PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "You don’t have to be an esteemed scientist to see that the Project 13 report is fraudulent to its core, or to pick up on the method’s glaring failure to recover DNA Graphs in the report make the vast differences between the results of the automated and manual methods blindingly apparent. As retired scientist Ron Grice has said, a high school student could have seen it. But the one senior scientist who was asked to examine the automated method for the Sofronoff inquiry, and who was provided the Project 13 report, Wilson-Wilde, didn’t mention any of this in her own expert report. Wilson-Wilde is now in charge of all forensic services in the state. She says she saw the issues but left them out of her report because she wasn’t asked to look at “yield”, or the recovery of DNA from samples It was left to Wright and this newspaper to raise questions about the effect on thousands of crimes. As a result, the government has said a staggering 7000 extra criminal cases are being reviewed, a development that would be a massive scientific scandal anywhere in the world. Now, a second inquiry begins Monday with all the powers, though not the time, of the previous inquiry."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
STORY: "Queensland DNA lab actions `a massive scientific scandal anywhere in the world, by National Crime Correspondent David Murray, published by The Australian, on October 29, 2023. (David Murray is The Australian's National Crime Correspondent. He was previously Crime Editor at The Courier-Mail and prior to that was News Corp's London-based Europe Correspondent. He is behind investigative podcasts The Lighthouse and Searching for Rachel Antonio and is the author of The Murder of Allison Baden-Clay."_
PHOTO CAPTION: "It was left to forensic scientist Dr Kirsty Wright and this newspaper to question the impact on thousands of cases.
-
GIST: "This is the inquiry we shouldn’t have needed but had to have.
We shouldn’t have needed it, because retired judge Walter Sofronoff’s first inquiry into Queensland’s DNA lab last year appears to have done everything right.
It hired a distinguished scientist to look into the introduction of an automated DNA extraction method.
Yet that expert, Linzi Wilson-Wilde, failed in her report to the Sofronoff inquiry to detail glaring issues that had serious and obvious ramifications for many thousands of criminal cases.
Project 13 tested a new, automated DNA extraction method on mock samples before it was let loose in 2007 on real Queensland crimes.
DNA testing delays were at the time causing the then-Labor government of Peter Beattie to be pummelled by the courts, opposition and public.
Millions of dollars of public money were thrown at the lab to deal with the crisis, and its answer was automation – introducing robots to rapidly extract DNA rather than relying on scientists laboriously doing it by hand.
Independent forensic biologist Kirsty Wright describes it as the biggest change in the lab’s history.
Obviously, it required the most thorough validation possible to ensure results were robust, and that victims and the criminal justice system weren’t let down.
Instead, according to a Project 13 report, the lab’s own limited verification process showed the robots were catastrophically recovering up to 92 per cent less DNA from samples than a manual method.
Despite this, the report falsely claimed in its abstract or executive summary that the automated and manual results were “comparable” and recommended it go ahead.
You don’t have to be an esteemed scientist to see that the Project 13 report is fraudulent to its core, or to pick up on the method’s glaring failure to recover DNA.
Graphs in the report make the vast differences between the results of the automated and manual methods blindingly apparent.
As retired scientist Ron Grice has said, a high school student could have seen it.
But the one senior scientist who was asked to examine the automated method for the Sofronoff inquiry, and who was provided the Project 13 report, Wilson-Wilde, didn’t mention any of this in her own expert report.
Wilson-Wilde is now in charge of all forensic services in the state.
She says she saw the issues but left them out of her report because she wasn’t asked to look at “yield”, or the recovery of DNA from samples.
It was left to Wright and this newspaper to raise questions about the effect on thousands of crimes.
As a result, the government has said a staggering 7000 extra criminal cases are being reviewed, a development that would be a massive scientific scandal anywhere in the world.
Now, a second inquiry begins Monday with all the powers, though not the time, of the previous inquiry.
Retired Federal Court judge Annabelle Bennett SC and her team will again demand documents and compel witnesses to give evidence, but will have only a lightning few weeks to provide a final report.
There are many questions for the inquiry to consider. How could the method be introduced when its failure was inevitable, and what if anything was done to fix problems over the next nine years that variations of it were used?
How could a senior scientist of Wilson-Wilde’s standing justify her expert report being silent on the biggest issue of the whole, horrible debacle?
And exactly what has been done, and when was it done, since the end of the Sofronoff inquiry to address the impact of the DNA recovery issues that Wilson-Wilde insists she saw last year?"
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
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;
—————————————————————————————————
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;
------------------------------------------------------------------
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
———————————————
