Saying No to the Culture of Death

I have been following the news reports about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and I prefer keeping an open mind about what might have happened to the little girl. What has caught my attention though, is the way in which there seems to be a repeat of the Azaria Chamberlain case.

 It is amazing to me how there are parallels that spring to mind between these two cases. Azaria Chamberlain disappeared at a campsite near Uluru in the Northern Territory where her parents and others were camping. The campers were attending to their dinner, when a dingo entered the camp. Lindy Chamberlain uttered a cry "The dingo's got my baby", and from that moment the search for the baby began, but the child had completely disappeared. Once the rumour mill got working, the Chamberlains began to face a barrage of prejudice because they were members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Some people even cruelly claimed that Azaria was offered up for sacrifice (something that has never been a part of SDA beliefs). 

Eventually, the Northern Territory police began to focus on the Chamberlains and they took away various items for testing, plus they tested stains that were found in the Chamberlain's car. The forensic lab technician in charge of the case made a number of errors, and compounding her errors, she threw away vital samples relating to the case. These errors went unchallenged by the press, who were prepared to believe that Lindy Chamberlain had murdered her child, and then cried wolf (make that dingo). A case was built up against Lindy Chamberlain as a result of rather suspect blood test forensic results, and she was charged, tried, and found guilty of a murder she did not commit.

What I find alarming now, is that the Portuguese police have repeated the same kind of reasoning that was used in the now discredited case against Lindy Chamberlain. They are now trying to claim that the McCanns had overdosed their daughter with a sedative, and accidentally killed her, that Kate McCann hid the body, and then removed it several weeks later. The McCanns have now been named as suspects. What is really creepy is that the change has come about as a result of the tests on DNA samples found in the apartment where the McCanns had been staying as well as DNA found in a car that was hired several weeks after Maddie's disappearance.

I am keeping an open mind until Maddie is found, either dead or alive because I question the accuracy of the forensic testing. The blood samples found in the apartment have not been proved to be a complete match with the DNA of Maddie. What is more shocking is that the scientists who developed the test used by the British laboratory have come out stating that there ought to be a caveat upon relying too much on those results:

The scientists warn that where this DNA is being used in a trial, "specific caveats are written into court statements" and they point out that it is not possible to make conclusions about how the tiny traces of DNA are deposited.

They also warn that there is a danger that the DNA can be moved from oneindividual to another and then on to an object.

Experiments showed this transfer could take place weeks or months and, in the case of one item tested, a glove, two years later.

For the McCanns, this leaves open the possibility that Madeleine's DNA was transferred by them or by an item impregnated with her cells, like an item of clothing or her cuddly toy bunny, which Kate McCann has carried constantly since her daughter's disappearance.

The revelation once again puts the spotlight on dangers of overreliance on forensic evidence which has led to a string of miscarriages of justice in the UK and disquiet about the safety of convictions in other high-profile cases.

Recently there have been questions about the guilt of Barry George, serving life for killing the TV presenter Jill Dando, because of doubts over the forensic evidence in the case.

He has been given leave to appeal after a review of the case said "too much significance" was placed on a single, tiny speck of shotgun residue - invisible to the naked eye - found in George's coat, and that there is a "real possibility" his conviction could be quashed.

The House of Commons called for more scepticism about scientific evidence in court after paediatrician Sir Roy Meadows was discredited over evidence he gave in a number of cases involving baby deaths.

His "Meadow's law" on cot deaths "that one in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder" formed part of the case against Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of killing her two sons.

But perhaps the most high-profile case where forensic science has been called into question is the conviction of six men for the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.

They spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the murder of 21 people but were released after it was discovered that the forensic evidence used to convict them, which suggested they had handled explosives, was unreliable and gave a false positive result when people touched household items such as playing cards.