Julie Szego - The Tainted Trial of Farah Jama

Then came the audits of crisis care units, working groups on this and that, interim practice arrangements for the provision of forensic medical examinations.

Furnishings, in particular, chairs/couches, to be made of impermeable material that can be easily wiped clean.

Equipment and materials required: single-use sachets of lubricating jelly.

Using Det-Sol 500 cleaning fluid and a disposable wipe wipe down any other non-disposable equipment you have usedphone, light source; sphygmomanometer, auroscope

The case had shed light on numerous problems; crucial problems, the professionals assured me, such as the still un-resolved turf war between the Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Centres Against Sexual Assault as to which body ought to control the fifteen crisis care units scattered across Victoria.

Each of the CASAs is a separate organisation thats either connected to a large hospital or is a community-based agency with its own Board of Management. The hospital-based CASA units were supposed to be cleaned by the same staff who attend to operating theatres and other rooms, but in reality there had been protocols, of varying formality, on who cleaned the rooms and when. Or, as the Institute of Forensic Medicine would contend, who cleared away the pizza boxes after the orderlies were done socialising. And even though the forensic doctors have since switched to sealed rape kits, even if they lock up their equipment, even if they now assume responsibility themselves for cleaning the examination room, theres still only so much the Institute can control.

Even in the time since the Jama scandal, for instance, the Institute has had to force the closure of the CASA crisis care unit at Sunshine hospital for three weeks, after finding dirt in the sink and dust on the ledges. The unit is only used about once a fortnight, the Institute says, and its the same with many others.

So the Institute argues for getting rid of most of these units, and handing it control over one or two centres of forensic excellence. The Institute questions whether an advocacy group should enjoy so privileged a position in our criminal justice system. (Vincent doesnt think so, and said as much in his report.) As someone from the Institute explained, rape counsellors would still remain on the scene to deliver victims critical advice, a cup of tea and a pair of trackies. Surely, the argument goes, rape victims deserve an assurance that the forensic evidence in their case will be handled with the utmost professionalism and surely for the sake of that assurance theyd be prepared to travel further to a medical examination.

The centres of forensic excellence model works for London so why wouldnt it also work for Melbourne? Because Melbourne is much larger than London, respond the counsellors of CASA, through their manager Carolyn Worth, a woman with a shock of blonde hair, who speaks in a soothing purr. Worth points out that the counsellors in the south-east region, where she herself is based, are spread from Portsea to Port Melbourne and down to Pakenham. As it is, a person who is raped in Sorrento has to travel at least an hour to get to Clayton. Force the victims to travel even further, and they may opt not to report the crime at all.

Worth is a veteran of Melbournes inaugural womens-only Reclaim the Night march and of the Womens Liberation Halfway House Collective, circa 1975. She remembers all too well the bad old days. She says we ought to resist hysterical overreaction. The Jama scenario was basically a one-off. With proper cleaning regimes and revamped examination rooms (and proper resourcing to bring about the latter) the risk of something like this happening again is remote.

These CASA units also host an after-hours family violence service. Sometimes, if theres no forensic doctor around, the counsellors will spend hours with a rape victim. A third of the people seen in the south-east region choose not to report to the police anyway, Worth says. It is imperative the victims are made comfortable. They dont want to feel like specimens in a petri dish. Because lets face it, Worth says, even when the police do become involved, the forensic evidence is rarely critical. Most of the time, according to Worth, the sexual assault allegation comes down to he said, she said. It has always been thus.

In the end, it was a footnote in one of the reports that commanded my attention more than anything else: The term patient may be interchanged with victim/survivor. Someone had clearly deemed this linguistic aside too important to omit.

I struggled to work up an interest in permeable surfaces. And in the post-Jama resurrection of the Victorian chapter of the Australian Academy of Forensic Sciences, re-established to broaden the understanding of lawyers and the public generally, in matters DNA. And even in the new procedures in the police labincluding the introduction of a checklist for police investigators when DNA is the only evidence in a case.

I tried to feel galvanised at hearing that, at the time of writing, there are still no national guidelines to prevent the contamination of forensic samples, even as police gain powers to obtain DNA for a wider range of suspected offences. Or that since Jamas case an analogous instance of contamination had occurred in a crisis care unit, yes, almost the same scenario, although thankfully this time no one went to gaol because of the mishap. Worth is plainly wrong when she says the contamination in the Jama case was a one-off.

We will never live in a pristine world. Mistakes will always happen. The outrage in Jamas case was not that a mistake happened. It was that no one saw human error as the only rational explanation. As Vincent remarked in his report, the DNA evidence had cast a spell over otherwise critical minds. Reluctantly, I had come to the realisation that this spell gained its potency from the nature of the accuseda black African, a Muslim, a young man who, to borrow a phrase from the prosecutor, was not like most of us. With Farah Jama in the frame, logic gave way to hypnotic suggestion. Those who condemned could only see a guilty man.

Six months after Jamas acquittal, DNA evidence in the US cleared an innocent African-American, Raymond Towler, who had spent nearly thirty years in gaol for a wrongful conviction of rape.

On YouTube, I watched the mans vindication in a packed Ohio courtroom. Towlers thick beard was streaked with grey. He sat very still, looking overwhelmed but dignified.

Youre free, said the judge, a matronly figure in spectacles. May the sun shine warm on your face May God hold you in the palm of his hand, now and forever. Choking back tears, she stepped down from the bench to shake Towlers hand. The gallery erupted in applause.

Thirty years.

The Attorney-General Rob Hulls came under pressure to give Jama a personal apology. The youth and his lawyer were demanding no less. Hulls wanted to say sorry but Jama was pushing the state for compensation, and he had to let that process run its course. Again, it was all a little sensitive.

In truth, the state was not obliged to pay Jama a cent. According to legal doctrine, no right of action exists for wrongful conviction: Jama retained qualified counsel, and theres no law against juries getting it wrong. But as Hulls told me, he wanted to do the right thing.