Forensic Investigation: Perspectives of Justice - Term Paper Example

?Running head: Perspectives of justice. Forensic investigation essays. Number: Due PART A Introduction Expert evidence is an admissible testimony made during a lawsuit or a criminal case relating to professional, scientific or technical subject. The basis of expert evidence lies in a formal and/or special study, training or experience that impacts the competence to form an opinion upon matters associated with that subject without necessarily being a witness to any occurrence relating to the lawsuit or criminal case (Rosen 2007). The authoritative expert has a duty to present the scientific and/or technical criteria on which his or her evidence is based to the court to enable it to test the accuracy of such evidence and form an independent judgment of the evidence. On such a circumstances whereby the evidence is challenged, the attorney general for the party being referred to as the “expert” must show the necessary background through questioning in the court and thereafter, the trial judge has the authority to qualify or refute the expertise in question or otherwise rule that the professional or individual is an expert on limited subjects (Burnham 2005). In this technological age, there has been a rise in criminal offenses in the world generally and UK in particular. The nature of the criminal offenses has demanded for extensive investigation otherwise the truth of matters will be hard if not impossible to bring into light. This is where the need for such methods as expert evidence in digging deep into criminal offences comes in. We must agree that the use of expert evidence has been of great help in the investigation into cases of crimes and lawsuits. The last two decades has witnessed an ascendancy of two phenomena: junk science and miscarriages of justice (MOJ). Correlation is not causation, but I feel comfortable in offering the submission that the banishment of bogus expert evidence from our courtrooms would have a salutary effect on the incidence of miscarriages of justice, (Merikangas 2008). Its however sad to point out that in some cases, these evidence have been misinterpreted either by mistake or on purpose. The result of this is what is referred to as miscarriage of justice (MOJ). Whereas most evidences are based on actual witness of occurrences relating to the criminal case or lawsuit, experts are allowed to form opinions in the court based on their expertise on the subject of interest without actually bearing witness of any occurrence regarding the case in court. In the recent past however, a spotlight has fallen on the use of expert evidence in the court room which has largely been triggered by the increasing number of wrongful convictions resulting from such (Morse 2006). A good example of such infamous cases of miscarriage of justice includes the case of Sally Clerk. The latter was a British solicitor who was wrongly convicted of murdering of two of her sons. Sally Clerk was arrested in 1998 and tried for the murder of the two sons. The first son fell into a sudden death in 1996 followed by the death of the second son a period after, in a similar situation. Her conviction was based on expert evidence presented by pediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow who testified according to his statistics that, the probability of two children from a rich family suffering from such sudden infant death syndrome was 1 in 73 million.The admissibility of Meadows evidence was however challenged afterwards by the public arguing that his case was a “misuse of statistics in the courts” and that his claims “had no statistical basis”. Sally Clerk died in 2007 owing to her experience relating to the case. Another similar case is the case of Patel whereby their second child, a boy died at the age of two years in December 1997. Eighteen months later, another of their sons died at the age of 15days and autopsies did not provide any explanation for this. Later in 2001, their daughter died at the age of 22 days but was found to have a broken rib cage. After investigation by the police, Patel was arrested and convicted of the murder of her three children. However, a genetic specialist, Professor Michael Patton testified that there is a possibility of several cot deaths to occur in the same family and one of the causes of such occurrence is an undiscovered genetic defect. He actually stated that chances of experiencing more than one cot death could be as high as 1 in 20. The court heard evidence that Patel's maternal grandmother lost five children in infancy, but that her remaining seven children were "alive and well". There have been varied types of expert evidences and in order for an informed decision to be made relating to the admissibility of the expert evidences before the courts of law, analysis of particular type of expert evidence should be done (Moenssens 2002). One of the particular expert evidence types is the use of latent finger prints. Latent fingerprints are the impressions or evidence left behind by the tips of the fingers, palms of the hand or soles of the human foot. Latent fingerprints are impressions caused by the transfer of body perspiration and oils present on friction ridges onto the surface of an object (Saferstein, 2007). Eccrine glands, or sweat glands, are the most abundant on the soles of the feet. Gland formation on the palms and soles of the feet begins around the third fetal month. The sweat and oil mixture from eccrine glands help make fingerprints adhere to surfaces (Lee & Gaensslen 2001). Although there has been a glaring lack of hard evidence relating to the circulation of latent finger prints, they still remain one of the better and better methods of development and recovery of finger prints. However the quality of latent fingerprints is depended on such factors as the environment the print is in. Systems like Rule standard however believe that the latent finger print evidence fails the admissibility standard of the scientific evidence. Rule standard is basically a system adopted after the system of general acceptance in U.S. The reason behind its implementation is that Rule 702 does not state that there is a precondition of general acceptance to allow expert testimony based on scientific evidence. The case of the Birmingham 6 is an example whereby evidence is wrongly interpreted. This case involved six Irish Catholic men who were convicted of murdering 21 people in 1975 at a scene where bombs exploded at a bar in Birmingham in 1974. The six men including Paddy Joe Hill, Richard Mcllkenny, Gerry Hunter, Jonny Walker, Bill power and Hugh Callaghan served 16 years in jail. The men had been mistaken for years to be Britain’s biggest mass murderers. There conviction was based on forensic evidence of bomb traces which was later discredited. The men were released in 1991 after the court of appeal had squashed their conviction. It was recently that the six were being compensated for the time they spent in prison but Mr. Hill angrily rejected an offer of more than ?900,000. The case of Sally clerk is another example of misinterpretation of evidence. She was accused of murdering two children with evidence based on a statistical improbability of two infants accidentally dying from the same family. Although multiple accidental deaths are often rare, so are multiple murders and therefore in cases whereby the facts of the deaths are held as evidence, the ratio of these prior improbabilities is what should give a correct posterior probability of murder. PART B Science This refers to the body of knowledge that can be logically or rationally explained. In the modern society however, the use of the term science refers to the way of pursuing knowledge not the knowledge itself (Gene Watch UK 2005). Different commentators have held different views relating to science. Richard Feynman argues that for anything to be referred to as science, it must be in line with experiment or in other words, it should be approved (able to be proved) by experiment. In his own words, 'It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong.' Karl Popper argued that it’s more important to disapprove a theory more than to proof it. He argued that you can never proof a theory to be true, all you can ever do is fail to proof it wrong. For example, you can never proof that the sun rises in the east and set in the west. All you can do is fail to proof it wrong by failing to see the sun rise in the west and set in the east. Thomas Kuhn on the other hand introduced the theory of scientific revolution. He argued that science does not build on one another. Instead any new scientific evolution replaces what was there before. For example, Newton’s laws about how and why things moved completely replaced Aristotle’s. Feyerabend’s argument took Kuhn’s into a logical conclusion. He said it was unfair to assume that science was superior to, say, voodoo, without seriously trying to understand voodoo first. According to him, there was no scientific method that would guarantee scientific progress and therefore the latter two, Thomas Kuhn and Feyerabend placed greater stock in the people that held theories than the theory themselves. Basically, the criteria used to determine whether or not evidence is scientific are that the evidence must be experimentally approved. Although there has not been a universal acceptance or consensus on what is really scientific evidence or not, the evidence is generally expected to be empirical and well documented in accordance with a scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of enquiry. There is different scientific evidence presented on Antony’s case which included DNA samples of a string of hair found in Antony’s car, internet searches for incriminating terms such as "chloroform," and also the presence of chloroform and smell of decomposition found in Antony’s car. The use of DNA in the criminal justice system in UK basically started sometime after 1995 after the National DNA Database (NDNAD) was created. A recent study of the NDNADB has shown that it contains DNA profiles of 124,347 people who have been arrested but not charged or cautioned (Burnham 2005), 24,000 juveniles (people under 18) who have never been charged, convicted or cautioned (Press Association 2006), and more than one-third of the black male population of the. DNA fingerprinting has become one of effective methods of digging deep to identify the truth of matters behind criminal acts. DNA database is particularly important in a situation whereby the suspects of a criminal act are not identified. In such a case the DNA samples gotten from the crime scene is used to search the existing database for any match. In case of any match, the individuals involved in the crime scene can be identified. In a situation whereby the group of suspects is known, there is usually no need for a DNA database because the DNA of the suspects is taken from each individual and matched from the DNA samples from the crime scene. There has been a growing need to retain DNA samples of individuals involved in criminal acts. The major purpose of this is to treat such people as suspects in subsequent criminal cases. The argument here is majorly in cases of persons earmarked “career criminal” and is therefore considered likely to reoffend or deterred from offending by retaining his/her DNA sample. The issue of DNA retention has brought out hated debates especially concerning privacy and rights. These include the potential threat posed to ‘genetic privacy’ because this might reveal potential information regarding personal health or family relationships. The creation of a permanent ‘list of suspects’ is also infringement of personal privacy especially if misused by the government or availed to a wider range of organizations in the future, Peter, Achinstein (2008) . Another case of privacy concern is the use of DNA samples for genetic research without consent from owners. In UK, the issue of DNA retention was highly refuted and particularly by the Court’s Grand Chamber which considered it to be a breach of article 8 of the of the convention in relation to the manner in which fingerprints, cellular samples and DNA samples are held indefinitely once a person is arrested concerning a recordable offense, Human Genetics Commission,(2002). The case of “s” and Marper particularly raises a lot of questions concerning the privacy issue resulting from the retention of DNA samples of individuals involved in criminal acts. S is aged 11 and was arrested in 2001 for attempted murder but the case was acquitted in June the same year. On the other hand, Marper was arrested in a case regarding to harassment but his case was discontinued by the CPS in June 2001. The two individuals had both their DNA samples and fingerprints taken and profiled. They later pleaded for their data to be removed from the police records but all in vain. In an attempt to strike a balance between protecting privacy and fighting crime, The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Right (ECtHR) found the retention of fingerprints, DNA profiles and cellular samples of the two applicants S and Marper disproportionate and therefore unjustified it in the basis on the basis of article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which states that (1) Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. (2) There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. The UK has an advanced automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) closed-circuit television (CCTV) network which is used by the police and other security agencies in UK to track movement of vehicle in real time. The data collected from the use of the technology is held for two months in the National ANPR Data Centre for analysis, the results of which are used as evidence in a court of law. There have been cases of misuse of this technology whereby citizens have been harassed with no apparent reason. The case of JohnCatt, an 80 year old pensioner at the time of the incidence and his daughter, were stopped by City of London Police and were even threatened with arrest if they denied to comply with police instructions. They were however been suspected for no crime because they had been targeted on the basis Mr. Catt had attended an EDO MBM demonstration in UK. One limitation of this technology is that criminals have found a way of circumventing it through the use of vehicles of the same make and model in order to copy the number plates. In case of criminal offense, the legal driver is the one who receives an alert instead of the criminals. This is refered to as car cloning. On the other hand, the use of DNA samples also has a limitation in that not always are traces of DNA material found in crime scenes. These are just but a fewof the limitations. Conclusion The use of expert evidence and science has become useful tools in the investigation into criminal activities. However, majority of the technologies used tends to infringe particular human rights such as the right to personal privacy. A balance need to be struck between the protection of human right and the fight against crime. On the other hand, technology is evolving on both the area of criminal investigation and the crimes themselves. 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