The civil liberties solicitor, Ms Gareth Peirce, said yesterday that the Lockerbie trial should be viewed with a questioning eye as lessons learned from other cases showed that scientific conclusions were not always what they seemed.
Speaking in Dublin Castle at an international conference on forensic science, Ms Peirce said she observed with interest the opening of the Lockerbie trial and some of the circumstances which, she said, had in the view of the prosecution dramatically affected the case.
She asked herself questions particularly relating to circuit boards which featured in the Lockerbie case and also in a case that she took on behalf of Mr Danny McNamee, whose conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions in connection with the Hyde Park bombings was eventually quashed. She asked herself whether the same procedures were involved.
"I ask myself if anybody knows differently, would anybody ever stand up to be counted," she said.
She was asked if in view of what she had said about the Lockerbie trial, she would be inclined to share her experience.
She replied: "I will dodge the question because if I communicate with the defence lawyers, it would be confidential to them."
Ms Peirce, who was involved in the cases of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, Mr Giuseppe Conlon, the Maguires, Ms Judith Ward and Mr McNamee, spoke about the forensic evidence in these cases.
She said each of these cases was solved accidentally from the day Mr Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, wrote to her about his case and she took it up.
It was clear these cases which had been solved, if you could call it solved with the lives that were damaged, the generations which suffered, and people who had died like Mr Giuseppe Conlon, were never intended to be.
Ms Peirce said the defence was wholly disadvantaged in making its case as the forensic experts it was able to call to give evidence in court might be retired and might on cross-examination be shown not to have up-to-date information.
She referred to the issue of building databases of information and warned that they could be used to the advantage of the prosecution.
"If you build databases to consolidate a monopoly of knowledge that you then intend to keep behind an impregnable fortress in such a way as was done in the Birmingham Six and Maguires case and Danny McNamee and Judith Ward, that's not a database, that's something else, that's an attempt to privatise to the disadvantage of the defence and for the advantage of the prosecution," she said.
She did not find it easy to get information. It was an incredible battle in every case and was intended to be.
"If you have a monopoly of experience and knowledge, then I would say there has to be a completely different approach," she said.
For forensic scientists who worked to collect evidence for the police to see the defence as the enemy was wholly wrong, to seek to get convictions was wholly wrong, to become undetached was wholly wrong.
Ms Peirce challenged the forensic scientists: "Would you, any of you, let someone go to the gallows, knowing differently, would you speak up, would you become the whistle-blower knowing that whistle-blowers don't have an easy time?"