A senior judge has raised "serious concerns" for Northern Ireland's criminal justice system after the validity of forensic evidence was called-into question for the second time in less than a month.
Judge Denise Kennedy yesterday (Tuesday) stopped the trial of Belfast man William James Nelson (32) after alleged DNA evidence linking him to a robbery was found to be non-existent.
The judge was told that Mr Nelson had been charged with the December 2001 robbery of a woman pensioner after his DNA had allegedly been found on cigarette butts taken from the scene.
However, when an independent forensic scientist for the defence examined the cigarette butts it was found that none of them had been tested for DNA.
When they were eventually tested nothing was found to connect them to Mr Nelson, the court was told.
"I think this is a serious matter and if this sort of thing happens in the forensic laboratory then people will lose their trust in the lab and that will have extremely serious consequences for the criminal justice system," Judge Kennedy said.
The warning came just weeks after Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan was asked to investigate a claim made by one of Northern Ireland's leading forensic scientists, Ann Irwin, that officers had att-empted to coerce scientists into 'covering up' mistakes made in investigations.
Mrs Irwin told a Belfast court last month that officers had attempted to interfere with the work of forensic scientists over many years to cover up police mistakes. She said that all attempts at coercion had been rejected.
Following the scientist's claims, Lord Justice Nicholson warned that the serious implications of the allegations meant that he would be raising the allegations with the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Robert Carswell.
A police spokesman last night denied that any malpractice had occurred in the robbery investigation.
A spokeswoman for the Forensic Science Agency for Northern Ireland said that a "systems error" had led to incorrect evidence being provided against Mr Nelson.
The spokeswoman confirmed that the inaccurate DNA evidence had been discovered by Mr Nelson's defence team and not by the agency itself.
The spokeswoman said the agency had since taken steps to eliminate the possibility of a similar error recurring. But leading Belfast solicitor Joe Rice last night called for the ombudsman's inquiry to be expanded to investigate the Nelson case, warning that there may be fresh demands for a large number of previous convictions to be re-examined.
"I believe that there are a significant number of people who have previously been convicted on largely circumstantial and forensic evidence in the past who may now ask for their convictions to be revisited," he said.
