🔴 Anthony Natif notes from Court: Uganda Vs Molly Katanga and Others July 01/2026

Throw out the entire DNA report; Forensic expert advises court

SPECIAL REPORT | ANTHONY NATIF | As recorded in the case Uganda Vs Molly Katanga and adapted from @TonyNatif on X. 

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In a rather dramatic turn, the DNA forensic expert told Justice Rosette Comfort Kania earlier today that due to gross contamination events at different stages of the DNA evidence cycle, the DNA report before court should be discarded, as it doesn’t meet the bare minimum levels of scientific rigor required for evidential value.

DW4, a world-renowned British forensic DNA expert of nearly 30 years, told the presiding judge that Uganda Police’s forensic DNA analysis was so contaminated as to render the results impossible to rely on. She said the results as shared by the prosecution don’t meet the criteria for probative value.

With the help of a DNA electropherogram, DW4 showed the court that the Ugandan police’s DNA report indicates that a negative control sample somehow had DNA material from “at least 2 people”.

For the scientifically uninitiated, a negative control is simply expected to be blank. Its value is to help validate the experiment. Ladies who have peed on a pregnancy test kit might be familiar with that second control line that shows up whether the test is positive or negative. If it’s not there, you discard the test. This is a bit like that but only more complicated.

But I digress.

“By international standards, this (presence of DNA in a control sample) constitutes a gross contamination event,” she said.

She said, “The whole batch should have gone back through the process to determine how a negative control sample could possibly have DNA material. Every sample should have been re-tested.”

She said that in the absence of any re-testing and a full investigation on the source of that DNA (in the negative control sample), “the DNA profiling results relating to the gun do not meet the criteria for evidential value, and they should be disregarded.”

UgandaVsMollyKatanga

Throw out the entire DNA report; Forensic expert advises court

In a rather dramatic turn, the DNA Forensic Expert told Justice Rosette Comfort Kania earlier today that due to Gross Contamination Events at different stages of the DNA evidence cycle, the DNA… https://t.co/P53aOJAFMB pic.twitter.com/DQHJymKM6Y

— Anthony Natif (@TonyNatif) July 1, 2026

She then talked about the presence of an allelic ladder across different batches of samples and said this was a sign of gross contamination inherent across their entire processes and not just one batch.

She said the point of seeing allelic ladders across different batches is that the laboratory should have immediately stopped processing ANY DNA sample and not just the samples in this case, conducted an investigation and a deep clean before resuming operations.

There was no evidence before court that they had done that.

In closing, she advised Justice Kania to completely disregard this DNA evidence because it’s not scientifically sound, but even if it were, it does not in any way prove who between Mrs Katanga and her deceased husband pulled the trigger or touched the gun at all.

She advised the judge that for the answer as to who pulled the trigger, the court’s best bet was to rely on fingerprint evidence, reminding the Lady Justice that DNA evidence can neither tell you as to who put the DNA, when, or even how.

The court does not have fingerprint evidence before it; the same having been taken but not reported.

Elison Karuhanga for the defense, led her evidence-in-chief.

The prosecution prayed for time to prepare for cross-examination.

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Full report to be shared tomorrow

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