Forensic scientist admits Lawrence evidence blunder

A forensic scientist today admitted she had blundered over labels and notes of key Stephen Lawrence murder trial evidence.

Yvonne Turner carried out tests on a jacket and cardigan siezed from the home of suspect Gary Dobson after the murder in April 1993.

Ms Turner told the court she had muddled the case reference number with a different robbery case and wrote the wrong number on the Dobson jacket file.

She later wrote the correct number over the top of the wrong one.

"I was not concentrating and I was not focused at that stage when I wrote the case number but I clearly got to grips with the case and made the correction," she said.

But she also wrote in October 1993 on her notes of the examination of the cardigan and the jacket "no tapings made" in reference to tapings of possible fibres on the garments.

By the time the case was reviewed in August 1995 in preparation for an ultimately unsuccessful private prosecution by the Lawrence family the tapings were in existence. But Ms Turner said she did not know when the tapings had been made.

"Either way it seems you have made a mistake," said Mark Ellison QC, prosecuting.

"Yes," she replied.

However Mr Justice Treacy intervened to suggest that regardless of what date the tapings were taken the evidence of what was found remained unaffected.

A cold case review in 2007 found one billion to one DNA evidence of a minute trace of Stephen's blood on the jacket collar, the court heard.

There was also allegedly a fibre on the cardigan which could have come from Stephen's clothing.
But the intial forensic examination in 1993 only found "weak" evidence.

The court has heard that the case against Dobson and co-defendant David Norris is based on the new scientific evidence.

Defence lawyers have attacked the possible contamination of the evidence seized from the defendants' homes and stored in the same disused police cell as Stephen's exhibits. The case continues