State Forensic Laboratory 'unwilling to accept test results', says scientist

A leading scientist has told a rape trial that he believes the State Forensic Laboratory is “unwilling to accept” the results of a test which appear to contradict the prosecution’s case.

The doctor told the jury that he believed the State was trying to come up with explanations for the negative result even though the result was “unambiguous”.

He was giving evidence in the trial of a man accused of raping a woman while she lay beside her boyfriend in a Tipperary hotel bed.

The 26-year-old accused has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to raping the woman (aged 34) at the hotel after a wedding function on July 7, 2008.

The trial previously heard that the woman alleges she was awoken by someone performing oral sex on her. She said she assumed this was her boyfriend so helped to take her underwear off. She said the person then started having full sex with her and it was only when she felt her boyfriend stirring beside her in the bed that she realized she was being raped by the accused.

The accused admits her had sex with her but claims it was fully consensual and that no oral sex was involved.

Earlier the prosecution called several witnesses from the State Forensic Laboratory to testify that they analysed the woman’s underwear and swabs taken from her genitals and mouth.

Ms Marcy Lee Gorman told prosecuting counsel, Mr Enna Molloy SC, that there was semen on the swabs that likely came from the accused. However she stated there was no evidence or saliva on the vagina or the woman’s underwear.

Ms Lee Gorman said this indicated that no oral sex took place but it could also be explained by three other possibilities; that the saliva was removed when the woman used the bathroom, that it was wiped away by clothing or that it was removed during the penetrative sex that followed the alleged oral sex.

Witness for the defence, Dr Karl Reich, stated he developed the test used by the State to check for saliva. He said he ran a private laboratory in the United States called Independent Forensics which develops forensic tests used by agencies around the world.

He said the saliva test is so accurate that it could easily detect amounts of saliva one-thousandth the size of a droplet of water.

He said he thought the laboratory was trying to find reasons to explain away the negative result.

“In my professional opinion the laboratory has gone out of its way to find an explanation for the result,” he told defence counsel, Mr Michael Delaney SC.

“The result is negative and there is an unwillingness to accept that and additional reports were presented to try and explain it.”

Dr Reich said he believed that it was unlikely that the saliva could have been removed by clothing, using the bathroom or penetrative sex. He added it takes saliva a few minutes to dry into skin and once it does, it requires warm water and soap, “and volumes of both” to remove all traces of it.

“The test is more than sensitive enough to detect it, it didn’t detect it.”

Evidence has now finished and the trial is entering its closing stages before Mr Justice Paul Carney and a jury of six men and six women.