Another forensic scientist has bitten the dust under cross-examination. And this time it was a proper one, not just someone with a correspondence course in handwriting or who studied hypnosis at the local library. That worldwide tradition began with Dr Alfred Taylor, whose evidence in the 1859 Smethurst case was said to have set forensic medicine back a generation. Yvonne ‘Missy’ Woods was a genuine DNA expert for the prosecution. Now she has received a 10-year sentence in Colorado for perjury.
The problem with some forensic scientists is that as they grow in stature, they believe in themselves and the ipse dixit system, and juries tend to go along with them. Barrister Andrew Rose exposed the greatest exponent of this in his biography of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who probably wrongly sent, or nearly sent, Sidney Fox, David Greenwood and Norman Thorne to the gallows.
Dr Alan Clift was another whose methods were cruelly exposed. More recently, Professor James Cameron was discredited in several cases, including the 1972 Maxwell Confait murder. Cameron’s incorrect testimony regarding the time of death led to the wrongful conviction of three youths. He was also lambasted over his evidence in the Chamberlain dingo case in Australia.
Cameron and his mentor Francis Camps were seriously at fault in what were called the Epping ‘Babes in the Wood Murders’ of 1970, in which two children were found in a sort of brush-made hide. Both said wild animals had ravaged the bodies, while the officer in charge of the case, Leonard Read, was adamant that the jeans of the girl could only have been torn off by a human.
In 1996, paedophile Ronald Jebson admitted to the murders, by which time he had killed another child. In his biography of Camps, Robert Jackson, referring to Read, wrote: ‘In every police force, there are men, many of whom have reached senior positions, who always know better than their chiefs – and the doctors.’
It also shows you need a strong, able and fully funded defence advocate.
James Morton is a writer and former criminal defence solicitor
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