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GIST: "On December 18, 2012 the Queensland Police Service's then-Commissioner Ian Stewart, held a highly unusual press conference. By his side were Assistant Commissioners Mike Condon and Ross Barnett. As revealed by Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, what the three senior men of Queensland policing had to say that day was both extraordinary and disturbing.
They announced that a report containing new evidence, obtained by cutting-edge forensic techniques, meant 49-year-old Graham Stafford should be retried for the murder of 12-year-old Ipswich girl Leanne Holland in 1991.
Condon's actual words were: "I can confidently say there is not a scintilla of evidence that identifies any other person involved in this investigation."
The disturbing aspect of this press conference was the "naming and shaming" of Stafford, who had not only been acquitted on appeal of the crime almost three years before, but whom the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions had twice refused to retry for the murder.
The Under Investigation panel discusses the Leanne Holland case. (Under Investigation)
Speaking to Under Investigation, retired NSW Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy KC described the police press conference as "disgraceful".
"It's not the job of the police to make an announcement to say that somebody's been proved guilty because of a report that they have done," he said.
"That has to be done by the courts after a trial and when someone has been convicted by a jury because the jury is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt."
The original police and prosecution case against Stafford, which led to his conviction, was that he had killed Leanne, his girlfriend's young sister, in the bathroom of the family home while she was dying her hair.
No motive was spelled out by the prosecution, but the heavy intimation was that Stafford, who also lived in the house, had allegedly assisted Leanne with her hair-dying and bludgeoned her to death in an outburst of passion.
Leanne's mutilated body was found three days after going missing, by which time investigators had already interviewed Stafford twice.
The murder weapon was never found, although again it was suggested by police to be a hammer owned by Stafford, which showed no forensic trace of having been used in the killing.
Central to the police case was the supposed discovery of large quantities of blood in the bathroom and other areas of the house, including on a mop and bucket Stafford allegedly used to clean up the murder scene.
Jurors at Stafford's trial were shown police videos of the QPS forensic officer using multiple blood swabs that seemingly tested positive - turning a distinctive green colour.
This blood evidence was the only evidence suggesting Leanne was killed in the family house and would be discredited before Stafford's trial even began, as the swabs were only presumptive tests, which also turned green after contact with a variety of chemical and organic substances.
But Stafford's jury was not told the blood swabs only indicated "possible" blood, nor that laboratory analysis before the trial had actually ruled out all but a few spots of blood on the front stairs of the house and on items in Stafford's car as Leanne's.
Those specks of blood were later considered by Under Investigation's forensic specialists to be more consistent with a cut Leanne was known to have sustained on her foot weeks before her death.
The videos of the blood testing were highly effective in the trial, leading the jury to believe there was "blood everywhere" in the house, according to Stafford's lawyer Joe Crowley.
"Of the 66 (blood) swabs that were taken, five of them turned out to be actually human blood," Crowley said.
"So, it created this impression at the trial that there was blood everywhere.
"And we know what the jury thought, because one of the jurors subsequently came forward and said he thought there was blood everywhere.”
On March 25, 1992, Stafford was convicted of Leanne's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Stafford's acquittal in 2006 after serving 15 years behind bars was largely due to a bombshell report by Queensland's then-chief forensic scientist, Leo Freney, who concluded the police evidence of blood throughout Leanne's home, which had been central to the prosecution case, was essentially flawed and worthless.
Freney confirmed to Under Investigation's Liz Hayes: "The murder … didn't happen in the bathroom. It didn't happen anywhere in the house."
He also pointed out that police had found no forensic evidence indicating the bathroom and house had been cleaned of what would have been a massive amount of blood caused by Leanne's injuries, a task police alleged Stafford had accomplished (as well as the murder itself) in less than 90 minutes.
Freney also noted that despite it being agreed by police Stafford had not changed his clothes that day, no trace of blood was found on him, his clothes, or his footwear.
"He would've been covered in blood," Freney said.
"There'd be blood all over him. In his hair, on his face, and on his clothes, everywhere.
"A huge amount of blood.”
Freney's report helped win Stafford's freedom and in light of it, the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions decided against retrying him for the crime.
It was a decision that clearly rankled within the ranks of Queensland Police, where a decision was swiftly made to launch an exhaustive review of the original murder investigation.
The review would take two years, involve significant public cost, and apparently employ the scientific resources of at least two international forensic laboratories.
The revelation of the scope and scale of the QPS review underpinned Commissioner Ian Stewart's 2012 press conference.
Questioned by Under Investigation, the Queensland Police Service refused to disclose how much the review cost taxpayers.
But in 2012, police framed it as public money well spent in the pursuit of a suspected killer.
The executive summary of the QPS review stated authoritatively: "There is significant incriminating forensic and circumstantial evidence that Graham Stafford murdered Leanne Holland on 23 September 1991."
The review recommended a retrial of Stafford, but Stewart admitted that the DPP had again ruled against a retrial only a "few days" before his press conference.
It made many observers wonder why, and on what grounds, the commissioner had decided to release the review's findings publicly, when doing so served no judicial purpose - achieving only to damn an acquitted man in the eyes of the public.
What made it even more curious was the commissioner's subsequent refusal to release the full QPS review publicly or even to Stafford's lawyers for independent verification of its methods and conclusions.
"None of that evidence has been tested in a proper trial and in court proceedings," Anthony Whealy KC said.
"So we don't know how much of it is even valuable. You just can't tell.
"It's not really for the police to say, 'We are now stating publicly that this man is guilty of the crime because of material we have here in a report which we're not going to show anyone.'
"That's not, under any sense of fairness or justice, the way in which it should be done.
"That's why I have grave suspicions about this report."
Two years after Stewart's 2012 press conference, the QPS review, which apparently had very limited circulation amongst senior police officers and was deemed "confidential", was leaked to Channel Seven's crime program Murder Uncovered.
It remains unclear how the report was leaked.
Host Michael Usher and his producers used the document as the basis for a one-hour TV special.
Said Anthony Whealy KC: "Here was a report that was never shown to (Stafford), never shown to his lawyers, never shown to anyone but somehow or other leaked to Channel Seven.”
Given the QPS review's seemingly unimpeachable new forensic testing, which doubled down on key police evidence proving Stafford's guilt - even scientifically resurrecting the blood evidence previously discredited by Leo Freney - Channel Seven understandably treated the report as fact.
Agreeing to appear on the TV program, but unaware it had obtained the QPS review, Stafford was forced to defend himself against findings whose veracity he and his team had no chance to verify.
It would only be years later that lawyer Joe Crowley obtained a redacted version of the QPS review after multiple court actions.
Frustratingly for him, the names of the scientists who had carried out the forensic testing were redacted.
The tests, methods and conclusions were not.
That was the window Under Investigation used to put the QPS review to its own review by independent, world-renowned forensic scientists at Perth's Murdoch University - Professor of Forensic Science James Speers and Professor of Forensic Toxicology Dr Robert Mead.
So what of the QPS review, which caused such "grave suspicions" to Whealy?
After three months of painstaking analysis, what the Murdoch University team would find was nothing less than shocking.
When the Murdoch University report was presented to Under Investigation's host Liz Hayes, she asked Speers: "Is there a single piece of evidence (in the QPS review) that tells you Graham Stafford has a case to answer?"
Speer's succinct and damning reply: "In a simple answer, no."
Broken down into its component claims, the Murdoch University team of Speers and Mead revealed the QPS review to often be unsupported by the actual scientific work done.
Perhaps the most outlandish claim was that hair analysis "proved" Leanne was murdered while in the process of dying her hair.
The QPS review states: "A peroxide product was applied to Leanne Holland's head hair and was in the process of being spread through the hair when the process was inexplicably stopped. This gave the inference that Leanne Holland or someone else was in the process of spreading the peroxide through her hair when she was fatally assaulted."
The Murdoch report completely contradicts this finding, stating: "This is utter conjecture. The uneven distribution of the bleaching agent cannot be interpreted as evidence of an interruption to the bleaching process ... Experts did not find bleaching paste in her hair, post mortem. Instead … microscopic visualisation suggests that the paste had been largely washed out of Leanne's hair, leaving behind only microscopic remnants. This is not consistent with the peroxidation process being unexpectedly interrupted."
Speers was asked by Hayes: "It simply didn't happen according to the forensic evidence you have?"
"That's correct," Speers replied.
The second headline conclusion in the QPS review was its alleged discovery of "projected human blood" on the original shower curtain from the Holland bathroom, through DNA testing.
The QPS review's executive summary states: "The blood, of which there were about 50 spots on the blue outer side of the curtain and 10 on the white inner side of the curtain up to a distance of approximately 180cm above floor level, was confirmed as projected human blood. Only Leanne Holland's DNA was identified from that blood."
As revealed by the Murdoch University team, this was a gross overstatement of both the scientific method employed by the QPS eeview, and of the conclusions thereof.
Firstly, the executive summary of the QPS review failed to disclose that the DNA testing undertaken was for "trace" DNA - and that only one of the supposedly "50 spots" on the shower curtain was actually blood.
Professor Robert Mead told Under Investigation: "The amount of DNA that was present in the one spot that was analysed was very, very small. It's what we call a hundred pictograms, which is just a tiny, tiny amount."
An amount, according to the Murdoch team, consistent with the bleeding of a cut in the shower and entirely inconsistent with the massive bleeding that would have resulted from the injuries Leanne suffered.
It was, as previously stated, well-known to police investigators that Leanne had suffered a cut to her foot in the weeks before her death.
Significantly absent from any mention in the QPS review was the report by Queensland's chief forensic scientist Leo Freney discrediting the police blood evidence - which had led to Stafford's acquittal of the crime.
The Murdoch University team reached the view that all the key findings in the QPS review were erroneous or overstated, and that few if any would be accepted as evidence in a modern murder trial.
The Under Investigation-Murdoch University report also robustly criticises the original Queensland Police murder investigation, highlighting a failure to use the appropriate experts in analysing key evidence.
"At no time within the investigation did (the police) actually bring in the appropriate experts to undertake the examinations," Speers said.
Speers also told Under Investigation that deeply flawed crime scene management by police investigators at the time meant basic forensic protocols were ignored.
"There was no scene preservation undertaken within any of the particular scenes," Speers said.
"The house itself is a scene, the car is a scene, and the body deposition site is a scene. In normal forensic serious crime investigation, these are treated separately.
"They have separate personnel undertaking forensic investigations within those scenes, and they are isolated from non-participants or non-acting forensic people as part of that.
"That was not part of what happened in this investigation … and that compromised both the recovery of the evidence and potentially created an issue around contamination, particularly with trace evidence and blood."
Coupled with that assessment, Professor Robert Mead is a world authority on "confirmation bias" - where tunnel-vision by investigators convinced of a person's guilt, seek out information that confirms their belief (confirmation bias) and at the same time reject or ignore evidence that is contrary to that belief (cognitive dissonance).
"If there is forensic evidence that is pointing in a different direction, you tend to reject that or ignore it because it is not in line with the theory," Mead said.
"Such that you can end up painting what looks like very convincing evidence of guilt when really, you've come up with a scenario that is a long way from the truth."
Mead believes the Leanne Holland investigation is a classic example of this insidious approach, which he believes infected the police investigation from the start and which, together with the poor crime scene protocols employed by investigators, has probably made this case unsolvable.
Speers and Mead concluded the QPS review, far from being an independent analysis of the original police investigation, had as its objective "to reassert their belief that Graham Stafford was the perpetrator of the crime".
Furthermore, Mead said, "the quashing of Stafford's conviction rendered his guilty verdict null and void and innocence is therefore presumed".
"Neither the police or the QPS review appear to recognise this basic component of the legal system," he said.
Under Investigation has supplied copies of the Murdoch University report on the QPS review to Queensland Premier Steven Miles, Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath, and current QPS Commissioner Katarina Carroll.
At the time of publication, none has responded to the Murdoch report.
The Queensland Police Service made this statement: "The QPS would support a coronial inquiry into the disappearance of Leanne Holland, which is an unsolved case within the Cold Case Investigation Team."
Barrister Joe Crowley agrees that an inquest is urgently required.
"The benefit of coronial inquest in this case is it could look at both who possibly might be the killer, but it could also look at why the police investigation was so wrong in 1991 and why it was compounded again (by the QPS review)", he said.
The Queensland Police Service's motto is "With Honour We Serve" but as revealed by Under Investigation, in the case of their public campaign against Stafford, a man acquitted by Queensland's Appeal Court, that honour is in question.
The entire story can be read at:
https://9now.nine.com.au/under-investigation/without-honour-queensland-police-vs-graham-stafford/43f1fdee-0a97-4286-90fc-8ab3467b776d
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/
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/
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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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-12348801
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