Checks failure on fingerprint expert’s work

NO quality checks were in place to monitor a fingerprint expert who made errors in at least a dozen enquiries into Troubles deaths, a coroner’s court heard yesterday.

Dennis Thompson worked in the police’s Historical Enquiries Team between 2006 and 2013.

In 2016, an inquest into the 1976 Kingsmill massacre stalled after it was revealed he had twice failed to match prints linking a suspect to an alleged getaway vehicle used in the murders.

The families counsel Fiona Doherty asked Mr Thompson: “Were there no formal quality assurance protocols in place?”

He told Belfast Coroners court: “If you had a query you could take it for a second opinion, but it was unwritten.”

The inquest continues.