A DUNDEE solicitor has claimed the use of cutting-edge science by police investigating historic cases opens up a “Pandora’s box” of contamination issues.

George Donnelly was involved in the High Court trial that led to Vincent Simpson being acquitted of the 1980 murder of Elizabeth McCabe.

He spoke yesterday as new figures showed huge rises in the amount spent on DNA testing by police forces north of the border.

Tayside Police’s spend includes around £140,000 on “external lab costs” during Operation Trinity—the re- investigation of the Templeton Woods murders.

That involved the use of Low Copy Number (LCN) technology, a technique that has been widely criticised and which is only admissible as evidence in three countries.

Mr Donnelly said, “If one is to be using it in a cold case review situation, the application of 21st century science to 1980s procedures unveils a whole Pandora’s box of contamination issues.”

LCN evidence has been used in the course of three criminal investigations in Scotland in the last three years—the prosecution in 2005 of Luke Mitchell and the 2007 prosecutions of Angus Sinclair and Mr Simpson.

Introduced by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in 1999, LCN is a term for one of several related methods for increasing the sensitivity of ordinary DNA testing.