The Lawyer Monthly Expert Witness Awards 2021
LAWYER MONTHLY EXPERT WITNESS AWARDS 2021 UNITED KINGDOM - 20 - www.lawyer-monthly.com apparent, and that can assist the Court in its combined tasks of judging Innocence and guilt, in addition to maintaining the safety of the general public. At present, however, this approach is time-consuming due to the need to try to gain access to the relevant material, and the limitations of this situation will necessitate improvement of the access provided to the entire case evidence, with the entirety available for scrutiny by both experts for the defence and prosecution, guided by counsels. It is evident that, under such circumstances, the concept of the creation of doubt in the mind of the Jury may inevitably have to be re-considered and more rigorously approached and regimented as a result. It should be noted that the ability to immediately and rapidly scrutinise the entire case details by experts would not only save much time in the preparation of reports, butalsosavecosts. Thus, atpresent, decisions regarding what information should be provided to the scientific experts is carried out by laypersons, and it can be seen that such choices need to be assisted by the experts themselves, and especially as a result of their casework experiences in such matters. A classical example of this involved a recent fireworks accident case, where the image sequence of a hypervelocity errant firework projectile exploding, (and that caused life changing injuries), was discovered within 7 frames of a 19,000 frame display, down at the far right hand lower corner, thus resolving the case; and where multiple lay scrutiny of the video had resulted in it being rejected as being necessary to be examined. Additionally and somewhat extraordinarily, the study of CCTV records of e.g. public houses, has been found to require not only forensic scientific inspection, (to identify toxicological influences), but also both male and female opinion, as the former can provide significant insight from the male perspective of the ebb and flowof developing and faltering human relationships, under the influence of drugs, and which can reveal details, critical to the case. Change is also likely to be necessary in regard to prompt releases of sensitive data, such as the complete life medical records of alleged victims to experts, and which may perhaps be addressed through a more controlled access, possibly closely supervised by both legal teams (such a situation having already being experienced). A ground change is therefore necessary from the view that forensic experts should be fundamentally combative in nature, to one where it is defined that they both contribute an understanding of the basic contribution possible by forensic science – a situation currently assisted by the Court’s requirement that experts should meet and prepare a list of points of agreement and disagreement – and that the use of two opinions provides a safeguard against possible miscarriage of justice and also inadvertent and inappropriate evolution of analytical quality assurance protocols. Examples of such contribution in my experience have been: the observation that a THC analytical technique in seized cannabis was veering to unusually high results, too much significance being given to a single particle of firearms residue, observation that reports in the peer reviewed scientific literature revealed possible likely contamination of police premises and transports with firearms residue, the lack of any blood alcohol limit in cases involving child care, and a rapid (32-hour) development of a UHPLC Q-TOF MS-MS technique, with clean- up, for detecting, identifying and quantifying human and other insulins, during the Leeds Insulin Serial Killer case, and which was pivotal in demonstrating the presence of human Insulin for the first time in casework at such a low level. To achieve this, it should be made mandatory that, in cases where significant doubt has the potential to exist, a trial cannot proceed unless the experts have completed a conference. At present this is able to be bypassed on a technicality through the process of experts appearing unexpectedly at Court and demanding to be cross-examined due to other pressing work commitments, without the presence of the other expert. The process of the defence expert having the right to carry out a defence inspection must also be fundamentally revisited and made mandatory as well, due to some private laboratories, perhaps not unexpectedly, considering such a process to be an insult to the competence of their staff and management, rather than a necessary part of their duties to the Court – their principal customer. The critical importance that a detailed scene visit is always carried out as a part of the defence duties should be noted as a lesson that has been learned time and again in both previous and ongoing cases, and even as this article is being written. (Examples being the explanation for an unusually large crater following an explosion being found, on inspection, to be likely to have been due to a combination of frozen ground and animal burrows, into which the device was likely inserted, and the discovery of an improvised shotgun in an otherwise non-descript pile of metal pipes, inter alia). The use of subjective opinion in forensic toxicology matters, not backed up with the latest forensic toxicological and drug peer-reviewed research, and forensic case experience, should be noted to be a twentieth century practice that should be in the process of being relegated to history. Choice of experts in high profile cases must always include someone who has the time “ The year 2020 has paradoxically turned out to be the most forensically productive ever experienced. A spherical mass of 500 tonnes of TNT explosive ready to be detonated for the purpose of studying blast wave overpressure with distance characteristics, that can be used to predict large explosive outcomes. (Operation “Sailor Hat” 1965, US Navy).
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