A campaign group has renewed its call for officials to pursue recompense for taxpayers for hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to a since-discredited DNA expert at the heart of at least two miscarriages of justice.

The Bermuda Equal Justice Initiative questioned why the Government appeared not to have taken “concrete steps” to recover public funds paid for evidence provided by Trinity DNA Solutions, a Florida firm led by forensic scientist Candy Zuleger.

It spoke out after the Bermuda Police Service disclosed new information on the amount Trinity received for its work on the island, revealing that payments were made to the company as recently as March last year.

The BEJI said in a statement: “These later payments, however characterised, compound the injustice.

“Taxpayers were required to pay again in circumstances where the original work had already been shown to be unreliable.”

The BPS said that payments made to Trinity after the end of the two organisations’ working relationship related mainly to “full DNA case file requests, which are separate from DNA services rendered”.

Ms Zuleger worked on about 450 cases for the BPS between 2006 and 2016, appearing repeatedly as a prosecution witness before the Supreme Court in criminal cases.

Problems with her techniques for analysing DNA evidence from crime scenes became clearer when a man jailed for life for murder and attempted murder, Julian Washington, had his convictions quashed by the Privy Council in London in November 2024 because of inaccurate evidence she gave at his trial.

Two more potential “miscarriages of justice” were identified after a review by the Department of Public Prosecutions of all the cases in which she was involved.

The Royal Gazettereported in December, based on information provided by the BPS’s communications department, that the police paid the company $2,798,926 between 2006 and 2016 for its work on about 450 cases. The communications department gave a revised figure last Friday of $2,799,426.

A spokesman said the corrected total included a $500 payment that was “inadvertently omitted, due to a clerical error, from the previous total amount provided”.

The new public access to information disclosure from the BPS provides a 50-page list of payments, collated by the Accountant-General’s Department, from 2006 to 2024, totalling $2,837,731.

All the payments on the list were made by the BPS, apart from one in March 2008, for $1,915, from the Department of Public Prosecutions.

The list includes payments from the BPS amounting to $20,950 in the fiscal year 2017, $10,350 in 2018, $3,960 in 2023 and $1,400 in 2024.

The fiscal year 2024 items were for two payments of $200 in December 2024 and one of $1,000 in March 2025.

The police spokesman said: “The listed payments from 2017 to 2024, after the professional services relationship with Trinity DNA Solutions ended, were mainly in relation to full DNA case file requests, which are separate from DNA services rendered.”

The BEJI said: “The latest disclosure of payments to Candice Zuleger and Trinity DNA Solutions sharpens, rather than settles, the most pressing question now facing the Government of Bermuda: why are no concrete steps being taken to recover public funds paid for evidence that has since been wholly discredited?

“The figures speak for themselves.

“Public records now show that Bermudian taxpayers paid $2,837,730.58 to Trinity DNA Solutions between 2006 and 2024, including payments made after the courts had determined that Ms Zuleger’s forensic methodology was flawed and unsafe.”

The group said its criticism was “not simply about hindsight”.

Its statement noted: “Once expert evidence has been judicially condemned, the Government has a duty to reassess not only affected convictions but also the financial consequences of having relied on that evidence in the first place.

“BEJI is therefore calling on the Government to act decisively and transparently to determine whether recovery of those sums is possible, in whole or in part.”

The organisation, led by paralegal Eron Hill, said the BPS should disclose if there was a formal contract in place with Trinity and if the firm or Ms Zuleger had to maintain professional indemnity or public liability insurance.

“If no professional liability insurance requirement was imposed, why was such basic financial protection omitted when millions of dollars of public funds were at stake?”

It added: “The public is entitled to clear answers …

“What is clear is this ― Ms Zuleger was repeatedly engaged as a prosecution expert, her evidence has now been comprehensively discredited and the financial burden of correcting that failure has been shifted entirely onto the taxpayer.

“New experts have had to be retained to re-examine her work, at additional and ongoing cost to the public purse. That is a classic case of paying twice for the same failure.”

The statement urged the Government to get independent legal advice on “whether claims in restitution, negligence, breach of contract or insurance recovery are available”.

It went on: “To do nothing is to accept that millions of dollars can be spent on defective expert evidence with no consequence for those who produced it.

“Bermudians deserve better stewardship of public funds. They deserve assurance that experts engaged by the Government are independent, properly insured and held accountable when their work collapses.”

The Government was invited to comment on the matters raised by the BEJI and advised that the Gazette should follow up with the BPS.

In turn, the police service said it appreciated the campaign group’s opinion, but “respectfully reserves comment regarding these specific matters raised, at this time”.

The public prosecutions department told the Gazette last week, in response to the same Pati request, that it held “no records evidencing payments made by this office, or on its instruction, to Ms Zuleger or Trinity DNA Solutions LLC”.

An information officer added: “For completeness, the Public Access to Information Act does not require a public authority to create records where none exist, nor does it extend to records not held by that authority.

“Financial instructions do not require us to keep records beyond seven years.”

• To see the BPS’s list of payments to Trinity DNA Solutions, disclosed under Pati, see Related Media

• It is The Royal Gazette’s policy not to allow comments on stories regarding court cases. As we are legally liable for any libellous or defamatory comments made on our website, this move is for our protection as well as that of our readers

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BPS Trinity payments responsive records