It seems that the defence’s DNA expert witness, Brian McDonald is not such an authority on the subject as he may have portrayed himself to be.
This is not the opinion of this author or anyone in Malaysia but the findings of four Australian judges in a landmark DNA statistic case R v Bropho. In the Bropho case the court had to solely on DNA results and DNA statistics to determine the paternity of a child, Brian Mc Donald’s expert evidence was excluded by the court. The judge, Goetze, DCJ in paragraph 45 said:
“At the end of Dr McDonald’s evidence-in-chief, I did not know from who or from where Dr McDonald obtained his claimed expertise in DNA and molecular genetics. I still don’t know what it is that Dr McDonald knows or does not know about DNA and genetics, and importantly, about population statistics, which his regarded as a “rather esoteric little classification” (T203)”
