Published 9 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1516
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1516

News

Expert evidence should be reliability tested, says law reform body

Clare Dyer

1 BMJ

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Judges should have to determine in advance whether expert evidence is reliable before it goes before the jury in a criminal trial, the official law reform body for England and Wales has suggested.

The Law Commission says in a consultation paper: "Several recent cases suggest there is an ongoing problem which demands an urgent solution." It warns that expert evidence is sometimes admitted too readily and argues that despite several successful high profile appeals, a "pressing danger" of wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals still exists.

The commission was set up to alert government to problematic areas of law and make suggestions for keeping the law up to date, and many of its recommendations reach the statute book.

It proposes a new statutory test for the reliability of expert evidence, with judges given guidelines on how to assess reliability. Evidence would have to be based on sound principles, techniques, and assumptions, . . . [Full text of this article]


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