Brit Dee, Contributor

LGC Forensics’ managing director Steve Allen boasts that the company provides “capacity and faster turnaround times for DNA analysis than in most other countries”, and their evidence has been central to many high-profile British murder convictions — including the convictions of David Norris and Gary Dobson in January, for the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

We have previously detailed the many serious questions surrounding the forensic evidence that was central to Norris’s and Dobson’s convictions. During the trial, judge Justice Treacy even directed the jury that they should acquit both defendants, unless they were sure that scientific evidence tying them to the murder scene was not the result of contamination.

Earlier this month we reported how further doubt had been cast on the soundness of the convictions, after a rape trial collapsed following LGC Forensics’ admission that a sample in its possession had become so contaminated during testing it could no longer be presented in evidence. The accuseds’ DNA, taken in connection with another incident, had been allowed to contaminate a sample from the crime scene — a location the man said he had never been anywhere near. This serious error led a “senior source” quoted in The Guardian to warn that:

Potentially this has national implications. Hundreds of cases will have to be reviewed. We have no idea what the parameters will have to be. It’s serious – it’s dealing with the credibility of the system.

Yesterday it was revealed that yet another serious error has been made by LGC Forensics, this time in connection to the bizarre case of the so-called “spy-in-a-bag” — math genius and MI6 worker Gareth Williams, who in August 2010 was found dead at his London flat, his naked body zipped inside a sports holdall that had been padlocked from the outside.

At yesterday’s interim hearing into Mr Williams’ death, ahead of a full inquest next month, the court heard how a “mix-up” had been made over DNA found at the crime scene. The police believed that a sample of DNA found on his hand was their best lead in discovering who had locked Mr Williams into the bag, but as reported in yesterday’s The Telegraph

Earlier this month, during a review of the evidence, police discovered the DNA belonged to one of the forensics officers who had worked at the scene. A typographical error by a worker at the forensics firm LGC meant a numerical code for the DNA sample had been wrongly fed into a computer, meaning the sample was marked as unidentified.

That this is the second serious error by LGC Forensics to have been identified in a very short period of time is alarming. We do not know how many other mistakes have been made by the company, nor how many innocent people may have been found guilty based on their forensic evidence. A serious investigation needs to be conducted into procedures at the company, and cases in which people have been convicted on their forensic evidence clearly need to be urgently reassessed.





Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy This includes the murder convictions of Gary Dobson and David Norris, currently serving 14- and 15-year sentences based on evidence that could well have been contaminated, as the defence convincingly but unsuccessfully argued earlier this year, during testing at LGC’s laboratories. This article first appeared at Resistance Radio. Brit Dee runs an independent online radio station called Resistance Radio, which broadcasts daily news, views and analysis challenging the lies of our corrupt political and financial leaders, and the controlled corporate media, at http://www.resistradio.com.