Shandee Blackburn’s ex-boyfriend John Peros could face retrial if DNA retesting implicates him

Draft laws would allow the ex-boyfriend of murder victim Shandee Blackburn to face a retrial if he is implicated in re-testing of DNA samples in her case.

John Peros was found not guilty of Shandee Blackburn’s murder by a jury in less than two hours. Picture: Michaela Harlow

An overhaul of Queensland’s double jeopardy laws would allow the ex-boyfriend of murder victim Shandee Blackburn to face a retrial if he is implicated in re-testing of DNA samples in her case.

Draft laws, introduced to state parliament on Wednesday, stipulate that DNA samples affected by horrific failures at the government-run forensics laboratory can be considered “fresh” if new evidence is found during retesting.

Under current double jeopardy exemptions, only people acquitted of murder can be retried and only if there is “fresh and compelling” evidence.

There had been concern from leading criminal lawyers that new laws would not trigger retrials in cases impacted by testing failures at the lab because the evidence was available at the time of the first trial.

More than 100,000 forensic samples from 37,000 criminal cases, dating back to 2007, are being considered for retesting after catastrophic problems at the lab were uncovered by The Australian’s podcast series Shandee’s Story, and confirmed by a major public inquiry.

Double jeopardy exemptions are also being widened to allow acquitted people to be retried for other crimes including rape, attempted murder, killing an unborn child and incest.

Clarification in the law, that evidence unearthed during retesting would qualify as “fresh”, comes a month after Shandee’s mother, Vicki Blackburn, made a direct appeal to Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath.

Ms D’Ath said changes will ensure evidence is “not precluded from being fresh solely because another person – for example an expert witness ­– failed to exercise reasonable diligence”.

On Wednesday, Ms Blackburn thanked Ms D’Ath and Health Minister Shannon Fentiman for rectifying major flaws in the state’s criminal justice system.

“I keep bursting into tears when I think about it, because I never thought this would happen, I didn’t think we would be able to see these double jeopardy laws change,” she said.

“(Previously) if we did get the results proving who did actually take Shandee’s life that night – and if it was John Peros – there would be nothing we could do about it.

“It is a huge sigh of relief that we could possibly get another chance at justice, but down the track in the future there are other people who will certainly benefit.”

Ms Blackburn’s 23-year-old daughter was left to die after a frenzied knife attack on her walk home from work in Mackay in the early hours of Saturday February 9, 2013.

Her ex-boyfriend, John Peros was found not guilty of her murder by a jury in less than two hours at his 2017 trial, but a coroner later found he did kill Blackburn. Mr Peros has always strenuously asserted his innocence

In 2020 Coroner David O’Connell concluded there was no “fresh and compelling evidence” required to charge Mr Peros with murder under the state’s double jeopardy laws.

Following revelations of DNA failures in the Shandee’s Story podcast, Mr O’Connell reopened his investigation in 2022.

During the initial murder investigation, Queensland’s forensic lab was unable to find any DNA on some swabs taken from Blackburn’s body and at the crime scene, including a large pool of blood in a gutter.

There was also no DNA found in samples taken from parts of the vehicle used by Mr Peros, the main police suspect, that had tested presumptively positive to blood.