Queensland DNA inquiry begins with ‘hot tub’ hearings

Shandee Blackburn’s mother sat in the front row of the court’s public gallery as public hearings begin for the second DNA inquiry.

Vicki Blackburn, the mother of murdered 23-year-old Shandee Blackburn, leaves Brisbane Magistrates Court after the DNA inquiry on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / John Gass

At 10.01am on Monday science aficionado, university chancellor and retired Federal Court judge, the diminutive, the Honourable Dr Annabelle Claire Bennett, AC, SC, entered Court 40 of the Brisbane Magistrates Court as commissioner of another probe into Queensland’s failed forensic DNA laboratory, and in the short walk from the court’s back door to her chair promised zip, vim, and a much-needed dollop of colour to this saga.

Her skirt aflame with flashes of red (a tribute to Brisbane’s floral emblem, the poinsettia?), her pearl-like drop earrings wobbling with each move of the head, Bennett promised her examination into the forensic lab’s failed Project 13 automated testing system would be swift and time-efficient.

Anyone familiar with last year’s Sofronoff inquiry, also held in the Land Court on Level 8, would recall stupefyingly complicated tracts of evidence and cross-examination about DNA and all its workings.

Bennett on Monday not only seemed across the science straight off the bat (she has a long-held personal and professional interest in biological science), but appeared to be relishing it, almost rolling it about in her mouth like a boiled sweet.

She also proposed a novel way to hear witness evidence, namely, as she described it, the “hot tub” method. That is, multiple witnesses sworn in together and questioned as individuals and as a group. (With its lack of an actual tub, swirling water, heat and semi-naked clientele, it’s probably not what inventor Roy Jacuzzi had in mind.)

Thus at 10.23am, with the legal niceties and introductions over, the authors of a controversial 2008 report into the now notorious Project 13 robotic testing of DNA were tipped into the legal tub. Three sat together in court. Another three appeared via videolink.

Bennett instructed that anyone who wanted to raise a question at any time was free to raise their hand physically in the court, or electronically. If it gets unruly, she said, she’d ­indicate that.

Small technical glitches with the hot tub method emerged quickly. Bennett had to shift her gaze back and forth, from the in-house witnesses on her left, to the video witnesses on a screen high on the wall to her right, and the bauble earrings were in constant motion.

Occasionally, too, encouraged by the hot tub arrangement, ­witnesses actually began asking questions of each other, straying from guidance from the immaculately prepared senior counsel ­assisting the commission, Andrew Fox SC.

In the beginning Fox probed gently and respectfully. After the morning tea and lunch breaks, however, he had sharpened his questions with a pocket-knife. Then a hunting knife. He was ­assured and clear and authoritative. Time will tell if he becomes a fantastic Mr Fox.

Project 13 was the method used to test crime scene samples in the murder of Shandee Blackburn, 23, in Mackay in 2013. It failed spectacularly, unable to find a DNA sample in a pool of her own blood.

Her mother, the long-suffering Vicki Blackburn, sat in the front row of the court’s public gallery beside Dr Kirsty Wright, the brilliant forensic scientist whose analysis led to the calling of this latest commission of inquiry.

At times, Blackburn relied on the court wall next to her for support. And throughout, Wright whispered scientific translations of some of the more complicated evidence.

The testimony of the scientists lasted all day, questions and answers went round and round, and the hearing became captured, for good or ill, in the world of government reports and bureaucracy.

Through the fog of much of this was still Shandee, who today would be 34 years old, and her unresolved murder case, and of course her mother, there in the front row, representing her child, there until the end.

After a long day, Bennett thanked the witnesses for enduring the “possible novel” method of giving evidence and for “making the system work”.

Then at 4.07pm: “We’ll be having another hot tub tomorrow. Thank you. I’ll adjourn.”