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National

Queensland police inspector tells DNA inquiry 'shelved' murder scene samples yielded results with further analysis

A police officer giving evidence at the inquiry into Queensland's troubled forensic laboratory says "it was alarming" that samples from a murder case, which had been "shelved", later yielded DNA results after further analysis.

The commission of inquiry is holding public hearings into the state-run forensic testing service after a bombshell interim report released last week.

The report from Walter Sofronoff KC found "untrue" or "misleading" statements had been issued to the courts.

The statements related to some crime scene samples, which were reported as having "no DNA detected" or "DNA insufficient for further processing", when in fact further testing might have yielded results.

It has led to fears of miscarriages of justice and highlighted the need to review DNA samples from potentially thousands of major crimes, including rapes and murders, dating back to 2018.

Queensland Police Inspector David Neville gave evidence on Tuesday afternoon and told the inquiry about an unsolved murder case that was being investigated in November 2018.

Inspector Neville said 15 samples from the crime scene were submitted under the most urgent priority for processing and four of the samples were reported to police as containing "DNA insufficient for further processing".

When those four samples were resubmitted to the lab and underwent a process of further testing known as micro-concentration, three of them then returned a DNA profile.

The DNA information did not aid the police investigation, but raised serious questions about whether other results had been missed when samples were not fully tested.

"It was alarming that 75 per cent of the small number of samples actually yielded a result," he said.

Inspector Neville said he then emailed a manager at the lab named Catherine Allen because it was his understanding samples from all priority-one cases received the highest level of testing.

"If this process has been removed from P1 workflow, could it please be re-introduced as it will stop delays in obtaining results that are considered urgent," he said in the email.

Prediction of DNA testing success rate 'inappropriate'

Inspector Neville said Queensland police agreed to cease the automatic micro-concentration testing of priority-two cases in February 2018, but that it was not supposed to extend to priority-one cases.

He said police were told in an options paper presented to them by staff at the laboratory that there would be "less than a two-per-cent reduction in the number of usable results if the step was eliminated."

But he said he now believed the success rate of further testing was much higher.

"I think the success rate is in excess of 30 per cent," he said.

"The two per cent, I don't know how that was derived, I believe it was inappropriate because it discounts the probative value of evidence that might come."

Inspector Neville is due to continue his evidence at the commission of inquiry on Wednesday.

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