Scientists responsible for disastrous Project 13 could be hauled before inquiry

A second DNA inquiry has been given wide-ranging powers to investigate scientists responsible for a disastrous DNA extraction method that has jeopardised evidence in thousands of Queensland criminal cases.

Queensland Health Minister Shannon Fentiman on Thursday. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

A second DNA inquiry has been given wide-ranging powers to investigate scientists responsible for a disastrous DNA extraction method that has jeopardised evidence in thousands of Queensland criminal cases.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman has commissioned a new public inquiry into a catastrophically flawed DNA extraction method that has been blamed for forensic samples failing to identify Shandee Blackburn’s killer in 2013.

The timesaving method using robots to recover DNA rather than scientists doing it by hand was introduced in 2007, despite the government-run lab knowing it was failing to find DNA in some crime scene samples.

Ms Fentiman said retired Federal Court judge Annabelle Bennett SC, appointed to lead the six-week inquiry, would have the power to call the scientific architects of the extraction method, known as Project 13, to give evidence under oath.

“The commissioner’s power is unrestricted, so she needs to get to the bottom of what happened with Project 13,” Ms Fentiman said.

New and serious allegations against the lab have emerged since the end of retired judge Walter Sofronoff’s commission of inquiry last year, triggered by painstaking investigations by forensic biologist Kirsty Wright and The Australian’s podcast Shandee’s Story.

The new scientist in charge of the lab, Linzi Wilson-Wilde, has been drawn into the scandal because she examined the extraction method for the Sofronoff inquiry and failed in her expert report to detail the serious problems it was having in recovering DNA.

In her work for the inquiry, Professor Wilson-Wilde reviewed a “Project 13” report from August 2008 that showed the automated method was recovering up to 92 per cent less DNA than a manual method. The report’s executive summary falsely claimed the automated method was “comparable” to the manual method.

Ms Fentiman said Professor Wilson-Wilde would continue in her role as head of the DNA lab while the new inquiry was under way. “The purpose of this commission of inquiry is so everyone can have confidence in the professor and the lab going forward,” she said. “She will absolutely participate in this … inquiry and give evidence, and then we will see what the findings are from that.”

At least 37,000 major crime cases have been impacted by testing problems at Queensland’s DNA lab since 2007. Of those cases, at least 7000 would likely never have been identified if Dr Wright had not exposed problems with Project 13.

Dr Wright said it was essential the new inquiry call the scientists responsible for Project 13 to give evidence. “Scientists need to be asked under oath by the inquiry how such a catastrophic failure was kept so well concealed from the courts, police, victims, the government, and other scientists for over 15 years, and how it continued to be concealed during the 2022 inquiry which was triggered by the failed samples in Shandee’s case,” she said.

Shandee’s mother, Vicki Blackburn, said the probe into Project 13 could have greater impact than the initial inquiry and thanked Dr Wright for her dedication. “Thanks to her unwavering commitment to unearthing the truth, every victim may now hopefully have their long overdue chance at justice and future victims will no longer be compromised,” she said.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli, who had been calling for the inquiry to be reopened, said the significance of the new probe could not be overstated.

“The knowledge that perpetrators of the most heinous crimes could be walking our streets because of failures at the lab, and that this government kept its head in the sand again for so long, will have infuriated Queenslanders to no end,” he said.