'I became fascinated by Indelible Evidence as a child, now I'm a forensic scientist who worked on the London bombings case and supports Silent Witness on TV'

Innocent Andrew Malkinson was wrongly jailed for 17 years, left to “rot” behind bars, he says, by the real culprit of the rape in one of the worst cases of a miscarriage of justice in British criminal history.

“The impact of miscarriages of justice on public trust is massive,” reflects forensic expert Jo Millington. “It’s really important that when there are these catastrophic events that we act really appropriately to ensure that they don’t happen again.”

“For me, thinking that an offender could be at liberty causing others harm whilst an innocent person is jailed for their offences is unconscionable,” adds ex police intelligence analyst Sam Robins. “The public needs a justice system they can rely on.”

The women both work with Inside Justice, a charity that brings together experts including retired judges, legal representatives, academics and scientists, who work pro-bono on behalf of individuals or their families when it is believed there has been a victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Later this month, the pair will be hosting Access Unlocked in Leeds, a live crime investigation experience exploring how evidence is used in real cases and how miscarriages of justice can happen.

The Inside Justice event, supported by The Shoosmiths Foundation, will see the audience follow the development of a criminal case as evidence is presented and analysed, and explore how investigative decisions can influence outcomes in the justice system.

“If you look in the newspapers, we’ve had so many high profile miscarriages of justice that it’s really important to bring that to the fore,” notes Jo, originally from West Yorkshire. “So that if you’ve got a person who is a friend or a family member who you feel has been subject to a miscarriage of justice, they know where to come if they need that help.”

Inside Justice conducts investigations on behalf of people who claim they’ve been wrongly convicted, reviewing cases where evidence may have been missed, misunderstood or never examined.

If it is believed there’s questions to be answered, the charity can apply to the Criminal Case Review Commission and if that independent body finds something wrong with a conviction or sentence, it can then send the case to the Court of Appeal, which decides whether there’s merit to quash a conviction or take the case to a retrial.

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Jo specialises in blood pattern analysis and for more than 25 years, has been involved in the forensic investigation of hundreds of major and critical incidents.

“It’s absolutely critical that you take an open mind into your investigations because as soon as you start carving off possibilities because you think you know the answer, you’re in deep trouble really quickly,” she says.

“If you’re going to put science in the courtroom where it can be very influential and people are effectively hanging on every word that you might say, you have to absolutely make sure that the science is 100 per cent nailed in.

“If you go to court and you start over interpreting or misinterpreting the evidence, then suddenly you’re in a position where you can totally set things in motion in the wrong direction.”

Jo set out upon her career path in her early teens, after watching Ludovic Kennedy’s Indelible Evidence on television. “There were only a few episodes and essentially they looked at cases back in the 1980s that had been solved because of forensic science. I remember watching this programme with my mum and when we finished, I was like, ‘I want to be a forensic scientist’. Every single decision I made from then on was with the view that I would become one.”

After undergraduate study in biology and a master’s degree in forensics, she began her career with the Lothian and Borders police in Scotland. Afterwards came roles with the Specialist Forensic Services division of the Metropolitan Police Service, the Forensic Science Service (London) and Jo is now in the private forensic science sector, running her own consultancy as well as an education and training company.

She’s also a forensic science advisor to the media, currently working on the long-standing television series Silent Witness. “I absolutely love it. The people who work on it are amazing. But also, forensic science is almost considered a character in the show. They take it really seriously in terms of ensuring that the science and the evidence is properly represented and portrayed and their eye to detail is off the charts.”

Away from television, one of the most high profile real cases Jo has worked on was that of the London bombings of July 2005. Jo examined the vehicle that three of the attackers took from Leeds to Luton, before they met their fourth accomplice and headed into the capital by train.

“I recovered some DNA that helped to identify one of the bombers and then that obviously led out to lots of different lines of inquiry and their network and everything,” she explains.

“I don’t think you can properly explain the impact of that case on everybody that worked on it. The thing about forensic science and crime scene work is no one ever tells you what it’s really going to be like.

“When you start out in forensics there’s this attitude towards forensic sciences of ‘oh it’s really interesting and it’s really cool’ and of course it is. But the other side of the coin is you are thrown into some spaces in which people have done some really horrible things to each other and you’re expected to pick that apart, collect evidence and then go back to the laboratory.

“Sometimes you find yourself stopping for a minute thinking this is not good. This is a really challenging space. So, put that into a terrorist situation where you’ve got individuals who have been subject to the most horrific injuries and you are trying to unpick forensics out of it. It’s pretty horrible really.”

Jo also worked on the case of the murder of Nikki Allan, whose killer was eventually snared by DNA advances

“When I started, we needed a blood stain the size of a 10 pence piece to get any sort of genetic information from it. And we didn’t have the national DNA database, we didn’t have the DNA tests that we have available to us today,” she reflects.

“So even in my career, there has been that absolute technological development that now means that we can get DNA profiles from material that is invisible to the naked eye. It means that we can go back to cases like Nikki’s and recover DNA that’s been retained and generate profiles…with new techniques.”

But, she cautions, “you need to make sure that you’re interpreting it properly because let’s say for example if I recover DNA from an item we need to think very carefully about how that DNA might have got there because our DNA is everywhere…That contextual evaluation is really important. But these advances do mean that we can look at cases that are ostensibly cold, reinvigorate them and find justice, which is really important.”

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For intelligence manager Sam, even after nearly 30 years in the profession, the work is fascinating. “The idea that you can take a situation where you know absolutely nothing and through the collation of evidence, you can build an entire picture about how people, events and locations have come together, will never get old,” she says.

Sam works in the field of murder investigation but sensitivities mean she can’t disclose exactly what she does. She was drawn to the idea of policing by her grandad, who was a police officer during the war, and whilst studying for a degree in psychology became fascinated by psychological offender profiling.

Her career has been in intelligence and data analysis and over the years, Sam has worked on many high-profile cases including the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the abduction and murder of schoolgirl Amanda (Milly) Dowler.

“Many investigations take painfully detailed work which can have you sitting at a computer for hours on end, often in the early hours of the morning, processing data and searching for anything which might unlock a case,” she reflects.

“There may be information which comes into an investigation which might not seem relevant but discarding it would be a fatal flaw. Everything is parked until the picture becomes clearer and you can see how things fit together and how events have unfolded.”

Miscarriages of justice can come about “disturbingly easily” she claims. All it takes is one “weak link” in an evidential chain and an investigation can be sent off in a different direction.

Access Unlocked is an event that aims to raise awareness of the issue - to highlight that when a miscarriage of justice happens, the consequences are profound, for individuals, for families and for confidence in the justice system.

“People should be held accountable for their actions and in the same breath, to be incarcerated for a crime you have not committed and to have your liberty and life robbed from you is unthinkable and yet, here we are,” says Sam.

“Absolutely anyone can become a victim of miscarriage of justice. Inside Justice is a tiny charity in a David and Goliath landscape.”

The Access Unlocked live crime investigation experience will take place at Leeds Conservatoire on the evening of June 25. For tickets, visit eventbrite.co.uk/e/behind-the-scenes-of-a-criminal-investigation-with-inside-justice-leeds-tickets-1986987005622