With nearly four decades of forensic experience and more than 425 cases under his belt, Dr John Douse stands as one of the UK's most distinctive and intellectually versatile expert witnesses. From his early days at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory to high-stakes murder trials and explosive investigations, his work has consistently pushed the boundaries of forensic science-whether through pioneering analytical methods, cross-disciplinary insights, or a rare willingness to walk the scene himself when the data won't speak. In this profile, Dr Douse reflects on the innovations, extreme pressures, and unexpected breakthroughs that have shaped a career defined by rigorous science, intellectual tenacity, and an unwavering commitment to justice.
The years of the pandemic (and those following) have been some of the most fruitful, fascinating and challenging, of the 39 years that I have had the privilege to be granted the permission to continue to prepare reports for service to the Courts, as a forensic scientist.
Continuing on from the pioneering research carried out earlier in my career, at the Met Police Forensic Science Laboratory and Forensic Explosives Laboratory, review of my casework over the last 25 years has shown a record of continuing innovation and leadership in forensic science.
This being in the principal fields of the introduction of improved methods of analysis and interpretation, by the application of modern evolving techniques to casework, in areas such as forensic toxicology, drugs, explosives, and other areas of forensic trace analysis and forensic chemistry, such as DNA and Firearms Discharge Residue.
Currently, my most interesting potential development continues to be the application of the process of joint consideration of the detailed circumstantial evidence of all cases, along with the primary instructed expertise, forensic scientific evidence; allied with a broad range of understanding and expertise in a range of other close expert areas (e.g. drugs with toxicology).
This depth of case study is perceived to be vital, as one is likely to be the only scientifically trained individual who will ever have the access to study and consider, in detail, the entire casefile details, and where critical aspects outside of one's expertise can be brought to the attention of instructing Counsel for consideration by other experts.
The critical importance of the tiniest and seemingly most insignificant written entry (especially in the unused evidence sections) to a plethora of solved cases, testifies to the importance of this approach, most significantly in R v Muragamoorthy (accusation of infant murder, Old Bailey, 2006), and where one three line entry in a paramedic report describing the situation of a "frozen jaw" in the young victim, confirmed the likelihood of camphor, accidentally applied, in overdose, as a folk remedy, being the likely cause of death.
Such attention to detail not infrequently requires over 400 hours work (unsurprisingly not infrequently having to be currently carried out mostly pro-bono).
The issue, will be, as always, the ability to ring fence funding for such efforts and which critically improve the protection of the Jury Trial System from Miscarriages of Justice.
This synthesis of forensic evidence and also circumstantial evidence, (including the ever improving content of the peer reviewed scientific literature, right up to the date of the appearance of experts' in Court to give evidence), has been found to not infrequently be able to present conclusive proof (agreed by all parties), and that is increasingly assisting the Courts to more reliably and accurately evaluate the truth of the most complex case situations, for presentation to the Jury.
This was demonstrated by an extraordinary recent success in the case of R v Shahid Ali (Birmingham Crown Court (Murder) (2024)), where after a 25 hour day replying to urgent reports exchanged mid trial, service of my final report (written overnight), containing such analysis and correlation, led to agreement by all parties, the prosecution folding their case, and the defendant walking free from the Court.
Also in the case of Re D (Children: Interim Care Order: Hair Strand Testing) [2024] EWCA Civ 498 iii), and where my detailed and painstaking approach was confirmed as being the way forward in all forensic evidence cases; with orders issued for all parties, in future, to assist the Judge to consider the hair strand test results, in the context of the whole of the evidence, including: a) The statements of those who are alleged to have exposed the children to the drugs identified; b) Other evidence (i.e., from observation) which may suggest drug use within the home; c) Other evidence which may suggest that drugs are not used within the home; d) The presentation of the children and the adults; e) The history of the family generally." (Hair Strand Testing A Cautionary Tale, Kira Pattenden 15 Winckley Square Chambers).
It should be noted, in this regard, that an expert having acquired over long periods of time and experience, multiple areas of expertise in their general field, should be considered to be not only an advantage, but in fact a highly desirable necessity, and that can provide unique perception of the true nature and meaning of the evidence, and that would simply not be able to be reached through having just one precise and limited area of expertise; and which resulting conclusions can always be assessed, and the correctness of the conclusions verified, by other experts.
This can be seen to be critical due to the often very limited time available to complete reports, and also access to a wide number of experts, in many cases.
The importance of the expert inspecting all of the relevant exhibits, inspecting the scenes and having access to the entire casefile should be noted to also be critical.
Thus, the opportunity for the expert to walk and inspect the various scenes remains a critical method of providing answers to unsolvable conundrums, that resist all usual investigation methods; (such as an unusual crater found to have been likely to have been caused, (upon inspection on a freezing evening in Gateshead), by large rodent burrows present under a frozen, explosion surface around ground zero).
Similarly in a case of synthesis of explosives, persistent inspection of every item of evidence at a police station revealed a nine-year old set of glassware contaminated with liquid nitroglycerine; and which probably had evaded notice due to only a select number of items having been sent for specialist explosive consideration. (My training at Oxford in synthetic organic chemistry likely having been the reason for the recognition of the presence of this trace chemical evidence). (The defendant, having subsequently panicked, at the time, and disposed of the manufactured sample in a hole in the garden!)
Further notable achievements have been a wide variety of cases (ranging from road traffic cases to murder) involving unusual toxins (among the usual plethora of alcohol, cannabis, cocaine, and prescription medications).
These comprised, in summary: thallium, arsenic, mercury, magic mushrooms, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide, nitrous oxide, hydrogen cyanide, chemical warfare agents, ricin, insulin, botulinum toxin (Botox), solvents, fentanyl, zolpidem, flunitrazepam, synthetic cannabinoids (new psychoactive substances), anabolic steroids, glycerol, and a range of other fascinating compounds.
My work has recently branched out into a number and variety of Medical Negligence and Family Court Cases (15), where the depth and clarity of the forensic entire-case analysis approach is appreciated, and now even demanded, as it allows the toxicological evidence to be correlated closely with the circumstantial, and conclusive answers being able to be provided, underpinned by the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Further very rare and unusual useful casework evidence input, not uncommonly, can also arise (perhaps not unsurprisingly) from one's: long life experience (especially military training), unusual life experiences, and also exposure to many unusual and varied case experiences (currently over 425 in my case).
Thus, a recent murder case involving suspected strangulation, and where an underground publication ("Black Medicine") encountered during military combat training, provided useful input to the medical doctors trained in ethical medical procedures; and where such considerations of extreme vulnerability of critical areas of the human body to the slightest insult, might not have been expected to have been part of the usual medical training curriculum!
A further case involved experience of the use a wide range of different hire cars and observation of the unusual sensitivity (at the time) of their collision braking activation mechanisms to objects on the pavement (confirmed by a cattle grid on North Hill Minehead having to be urgently redesigned).
This being in a case where a high-powered car, driven at unusual high speed on a straight road (possibly due to a spiked drink cocaine induced seizure), suddenly cartwheeled multiple times and landed upside down on a stone wall. (The case analysis and scene walkthrough, showing a rail maintenance van legally parked, but where the road angled on approach, to the offside just at the parking location) (and also diesel seepage from the overhead main rail bridge and a special high friction road pad to counter this).
Interestingly, in this regard, at an experts' conference with the Porton Down expert on Ricin (in R v Kauser, 2011) (and where a very detailed chemical analysis of a recipe, for the chemical processing production of ricin, was shown by myself to have been unable to produce product, in correct opposition to the prosecution opinion), they wondered as to why, in a previous ricin case (and where it was declared that there was no suitable expert in the UK) I had not been instructed. (With experience of six cases including the Wood Green Ricin Factory, and a case in the Four Courts of a wealthy wife who procured a hit man from Las Vegas USA to assassinate her husband, using extracted ricin imported within a contact lens holder)!
Further interesting cases, (on a lighter note), involved instruction by HMRC in regard of the exact nature of a natural product for tax assessment purposes, a huge consignment of Viagra containing mixed isomers, (the firm likely running out of the required chemical and adding a close isomer to make up the batch), and an entertainment establishment selling Nebuchadnezzars of champagne for £55,000, (absence of funds being discovered during the weekly shop)!
Another achievement was the pioneering of the application of the Watson Total Body Water method to blood alcohol calculations, recently vindicated by a publication by AW Jones, following which the recommended accredited method was changed.
Interestingly, the last three such forward alcohol calculations, based on declared consumption, have been within 2% of the levels found by evidential breath analysis, and I wait upon further casework to see if this level of correlation is capable of being sustained.
Insurance cases, especially in explosive matters, (instruction being specified due to my unique combination of forensic and military experience) have also been highlights, such as the salvage of the hazardous material carrier MS Bow Diamond (500 tonnes of TNT and RDX spilled in a storm), and the Exeter WW II unexploded bomb, where high order detonation occurred in a built up area during the EOD make safe process.
Application of our trademark highly detailed analysis of both forensic and also circumstantial evidence, as a combined approach to hair strand drug testing in family cases, was also successful (e.g. in D, 2024, EWCA, Civ 498) (as detailed further above); and it would appear that this is likely to be the way forward in all forensic casework investigation involving trace analysis.
This situation reminds me that some of the very best results have been obtained under the highest pressures, at the extreme of intellectual effort, such as a firm (Roxel) spared a 5 million pound fine and the need to relocate an entire operation abroad.
This being prevented by reflection, on the morning of the trial, of the fifth and last HSE challenge, (which had eluded solution until then), and the creation of a single critical paragraph, while sitting at the computer in a hotel bedroom, with the early morning sun, refreshing breeze and birdsong entering the open balcony windows, and with a panoramic view of the mid-country from the Malvern Hills.
A further remarkable challenge occurred as a result of the recent collapse of the Court system and also barristers' strike delaying trials and instructions, and where at the critical moment when I was completing the main report in an over 400 hour explosive case, I had to halt work and, from zero, prepare a complex delayed report instruction, involving a large casefile to a deadline of one week before trial.
Such a pressure was fascinating to observe in regard of the challenging of my intellect to the extreme, a situation achieved remarkably without ill effect due to practice and experience!
A fascinating "one off" also occurred in the case of R v Isaacs (where by pure chance I was urgently able to assist, due to another trial being adjourned, and the Court likely to proceed without a report), and where my analysis of the casefile led to the finding of a CT scan showing the damage to the diseased and fragile shoulder in a terminally ill patient, having been present the day before the dedicated nursing assistants had performed a washing procedure, thus preventing an appalling miscarriage of justice.
Tantalisingly, we have recently (2025) achieved the interesting situation of bringing to the Court's notice the published use of Medical MRI scans to the study of the effects of Psilocybin from Magic Mushrooms; and the reported observation of the human brain becoming resynchronised by such exposure, to the equivalent extent of the natural difference in synchronisation between different individuals; and hence the possibility that this technique might be able to provide some form of actual scientific evidence of an existing state of automatism in an intoxicated individual. (J Siegel, Nature, 2024, (632),131).
Future innovations that might be desirable are the development of two-dimensional DNA analysis, and where the developing profiles could be presented with time, especially at the sensitivity of the old SGM Plus technique, and which might possibly provide some possible form of discrimination of primary from higher orders of transfer, and also possibly even the contributions by different individuals to complex mixed profiles.
In the case of glycerol in slushed ice drinks, it would be interesting if the medical experts could consider if the prompt uncontrolled consumption, by gulping, of up to 1.5 kilograms of finely crushed ice served at minus two degrees Celsius, (which might be prevented by careful packaging design), could possibly be contributing to the medical crises in some way, and that have been observed in very young children of low body mass. (The sale of fine confectionary products (e.g. "doughnuts") containing high levels of glycerol also being noted, (by inspections), to be, not infrequently, for sale alongside slushed ice drink dispensers).
