The swabs were rejected on 9th August
here is a list of swabs taken :
(6) Hand swabs taker, at 1120hrs on Sheila Caffell’s right hand
(7) Hand swabs taken at 1120hrs on Sheila Caffell’s left hand
(
Hand swabs taken at 0230 pm on Sheila Caffell’s right hand
(9) Hand swabs taken at 0230 pm on Sheila Caffell’s left hand
(10) Hand swabs taken at 0315 pm on Sheila Caffell’s right hand
(11) Hand swabs taken at 0315 pm on Sheila Caffell’s left hand
When were they re-submitted to the lab under the new reference number? Did they have a full explanation about why they could be re-submitted when the lab had rejected them?
The clerk at the lab refused to take them because he felt there was a risk that the firearms they had been conveyed with could have transferred GSR onto the swabs.
There is an absolute right to resubmit them anytime police want and they did so on September 13.
The COLP investigation fully explored it as did the 2002 the Appeal Court which rejected the complaints related to it as meritless. Given the claims were already rejected on appeal and can't be raised again I wonder why people keep bringing it up.
Here is the most important part of the appeal decision relating to it:
"Mr Wingard explained that the rejection of the item would be made by the police liaison officer acting upon standing instructions that where swabs were submitted having been in the vicinity of firearms they should be rejected. The liaison officer would not necessarily consult a scientist before making such a decision. He rejected the suggestion that once rejected in this way, there would be no way in which the laboratory would examine such items thereafter if it was aware that they had been resubmitted. He explained that there was a significant difference between an examination of the swabs required to provide evidence that a person had discharged a firearm where the testing could as a result of the contamination produce a false result suggesting that the person had had contact with guns, and a test the purpose of which was to provide evidence that a person had not been in contact with a gun. In the latter case the issue of contamination ceased to be a factor since it could never decrease any findings only add to them.
Mr Wingard was asked whether in any event he would expect to see a record of the rejection in the statements provided by the scientists. He said that it would very much depend on the reason for the rejection and its possible effect on the outcome of the tests. It was not normal to recount the history unless it had a bearing on the evidential value of the conclusions. If rejection might in any way invalidate conclusions that might be drawn from the evidence of the tests, then he would expect that it would be recorded. However, that was not the situation here since there was no way in which contamination by proximity to firearms could have decreased the quantity of lead found on the swabs from Sheila Caffell's hands. The rejection, and the reasons for it were, therefore, not relevant to the inference suggested from the testing that Sheila Caffell had not been responsible for the repeated handling of the bullets. He made clear that the testing was for the presence of lead, and was not testing for firearms residue as such.
Mr Wingard said that it was commonly the case that items were resubmitted to the laboratory with a different serial number to the original submission, and scientists paid little regard to this number. The identifying feature upon which they relied was the Identifying Mark. This would first and foremost be on an exhibit label which would be attached to the item itself on submission, and would also appear on the HOLAB 3 accompanying the submission.
The next witness called by the court was DS Lovell, the liaison officer at the laboratory involved with the August rejection. He explained that no item would be submitted to the laboratory without first being seen by him or one of the other liaison officers. Where a scientist received an item directly as had happened with the swabs on resubmission, the scientist would come to the reception area and collect the item directly but the liaison officer would still be responsible for checking it in. It would simply avoid the item going through the normal internal process of delivery to the scientist but it would not avoid the liaison officer being involved in checking it in. He had played such a part on the resubmission because his writing was on one of the copies of the HOLAB 3 form. Thus the suggestion that the swabs had gone directly to the scientist to avoid DS Lovell so that he would not notice that it was a resubmission was clearly wrong.
DS Lovell explained that three copies of the HOLAB 3 would accompany the item to the laboratory. The laboratory would retain two copies and the third would be endorsed by the receiving officer and handed back to the person delivering the item by way of receipt. A part of his responsibility would be to check the items received by the laboratory against the HOLAB 3 form by reference to the identifying mark that they bore. He had not noticed a discrepancy in this regard on this occasion either between the item and the HOLAB 3 forms or between the three copies of the forms. He looked at the three copies of the form that have been traced. Each had been stamped by him with his personal stamp and with the laboratory date stamp. Examination showed that two of the copies of the form gave the identifying mark as DRH/33 and one gave it as DRH/44. He could be sure that he had received each from the stamps. The DRH/44 was one of the two copies retained by the laboratory since it bore hand-written notes that he had made.
In relation to the rejection in August, DS Lovell explained that he would have consulted a scientist before rejecting the item. He could not remember the circumstances of its resubmission because it was so many years after the event but because of the nature of the case and the contact that there had been between the police and the laboratory relating to it, he thought that he may well have been expecting it back when it arrived
Having received the explanations given by the witness, Mr Turner completed his cross-examination without suggesting to the witness any impropriety on his part and without challenging the explanations that had been given. Mr Temple, on behalf of the prosecution, queried whether this was inadvertence on the part of Mr Turner or whether in the light of the evidence given, Mr Turner now accepted that the allegations of improper conduct could not be sustained. Mr Turner told the court that it was not through inadvertence. The court was not surprised by Mr Turner's altered position because the evidence appeared to us to be manifestly truthful. Thus the calling of the witnesses far from supporting the conspiracy had caused the appellant's counsel to see that it could not be maintained.
Mr Turner asked the court to call one further witness in this regard, the scientist who had examined the items. We queried what he hoped to achieve by cross-examination of the witness and he indicated that he wanted to establish that the witness was unaware of the earlier rejection of the swabs when he examined them. That evidence was available in statement form and we were prepared to accept that proposition without the need to hear oral evidence. However, it has to be said that any proper examination of the file by the scientist would have revealed that fact because it is clear from the laboratory notes that the scientist had checked the identifying labels of the item and was fully aware that he was dealing with DRH/33 in respect of which there was information on file about its earlier rejection.
The allegations made in opening that there was evidence to show gross criminal misconduct by the police in respect of the swabs have thus turned out to be wholly groundless to the point where the appellant's counsel felt no longer able to maintain them. Quite apart from the evidence of DS Davidson, there were a number of reasons why these allegations were patently wrong:
i) The evidence of the contamination was not in any way damaging to the prosecution case. As Mr Wingard pointed out, it could not, even if known, adversely affect the inference that the prosecution sought to draw from the tests.
If the swabs had become contaminated that would point towards Sheila Caffell having had contact with the gun rather than away from it. Any results, therefore, might give an increased reading that might favour the defence but could not adversely affect the defence. Whilst we accept that a corrupt police officer might go to extreme lengths to cover up evidence helpful to the defence, it makes no sort of sense for such an officer to commit serious criminal offences to hide evidence that which is either neutral or favours the prosecution.
ii) The suggestion that Detective Superintendent Ainsley sought to conceal the fact of the rejection in his final report cannot be right. He had raised it with the laboratory staff at the meeting on 18 September requiring a statement to be made to explain why the hand swabs had not been examined. Since the hand swabs were at the laboratory awaiting examination at the time, this is inconsistent with the allegation that he was trying to hide the earlier rejection from the scientists.
iii) There would be no point in submitting a HOLAB 3 form with the false reference to DRH/44, whilst at the same time submitting another copy with its true identifying mark recorded and with the item labelled with the correct mark, as it clearly was from the scientist's note. A moment's thought would have caused any police officer to realise that the examining scientist would inevitably look at the exhibit label, not least to sign it so that he could later identify the item that he had examined.
iv) The documentary evidence about the keeping of the swabs did not lead to the suggested inference. It did not record the return of DRH/33 after the initial rejection and DS Davidson said that he had not seen the item again after it was sent to headquarters in August. Between August and resubmission, it must, therefore, have been at headquarters and as such would not have appeared on the documents produced.
We have not the slightest doubt that the only failing by the police revealed in their dealings with the swabs are some relatively minor form completing mistakes by DS Davidson. On these relatively minor failings the whole edifice of a conspiracy theory was constructed and unsurprisingly when tested it came crashing down.
Thus the only true complaint that can be made is that the defence were not told at trial that the initial submission of the hand swabs had been rejected. We have to ask ourselves whether this in any way invalidates the jury's findings.
We ask ourselves what possible use could have been made of that fact if it had been known to the defence. They could not have used it to challenge the findings from the test of the swabs because, as already explained, it could not have affected the results in any way adverse to the interests of the appellant. They could not have used it to make any collateral attack on the care taken by the officers in the case because the sending of the item at the same time as other items unconnected with the case was in no way the failing of the officers involved in the inquiry but rather that of the officers dealing with the onward transmission at headquarters. Thus we are satisfied that even if this information should technically have been disclosed, the failure to do so can have had no impact upon the jury's verdicts."
