EXPERT EVIDENCE 1
EXPERT EVIDENCE
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EXPERT EVIDENCE 2
Question 1
a) The Rules of Expert Evidence
In some instances, a party to a court proceeding may chose to retain a person who is a
specialist in a specific subject in order for the person to provide his or her expert opinion on a
given aspect of the case. If such people are qualified in their area of expertise and they are
trained and have specialized knowledge, they qualify to be called expert witnesses. There are
many reasons why an expert witness may be retained. Primarily, an expert witness may be
retained to give an opinion evidence in the proceeding or he or she may be retained as a court
appointee to be an independent adviser to the court. In the Australian law, the expert witnesses
have specific obligations which they need to comply with. Primarily, as they adduce the expert
evidence, the expert witnesses have an overriding duty of assisting the court. This assist to the
court has to be impartial, objective, and unbiased. Further, the Australian law of evidence
provides that an expert witness’ paramount duty is to the court and that he or she is not an
advocate to any of the parties before the court. Finally, an expert witness under the evidence law
of Australia is obligated to comply with the directions of the court and work in cooperation with
another expert witness.
For a statement by a witness to be admissible, it has to meet the rules that govern the
admissibility of expert evidence. In the witness statement provided, the rules have been followed
fully. The first rule of expert evidence is the expertise rule (Charrett, 2018, p. 341). This rule
states that the witness producing the witness statement must have sufficient knowledge and
experience that is enough to entitle them to be held out as an expert who can offer assistance to
the court. In the case provided, the witness, Allanah Joy Davies, is employed by Victoria Police
in the Forensic Service Department (FSD) at Macleod. He is a qualified scientist, with a bachelor
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of Forensic Science of the University of Technology, Sydney and Master of Forensic Science in
Forensic Studies at the Flinders University. Further, the witness boasts of a specialized
knowledge which he has acquired based on his training, study, and experience. From the
knowledge and experience that the witness has, it is apparent that he satisfies the expertise
requirement of the rules of the expert evidence and he is entitled to be an expert who can assist
the court.
The second rule of expert evidence is the common knowledge rule. This rule provides that
the information that the witness statement is providing should not be the one which the court can
rely upon general knowledge and common sense to reach a determination but should rather be
the type of information upon which the court will need the help of a third party (Charrett, 2018,
p. 344). In the case provided, it can be seen that the information which the witness was providing
was scientific and there was no way the court could have used general knowledge and common
sense. For instance, common sense could not guide the court in differentiating between blood
stain and non-blood stain. As such, the witness statement met the requirements of this rule.
The third rule of the rules of expert evidence is the area of expertise rule. This rule requires
that the claimed knowledge of the expert witness must be sufficiently recognized as credible by
other people who also have the ability to evaluate its theoretical and experiential foundations
(Charrett, 2018, p. 338). Here, it is without a doubt that the witness statement satisfies this
requirement since the witness has knowledge in forensic science, and forensic science is a
recognizable field with many experts who can evaluate its theoretical and experiential
foundations.
The last rule is the basis rule. According to this rule, for an expert witness opinion to be
accepted, it has to be established that it is not based on matters which are directly within the own
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observations of the expert. In the case provided, the witness could not use direct observation to
confirm the blood. Instead, he had to use a scientific Hematrace method. Hence, this shows the
opinions he had about the blood conformation were not directly within his own observations.
b) Techniques to Assist the Jury in Understanding the Evidence Given in the Witness
Statement
During the course of a criminal trial, it is vital for the jury to comprehend and appreciate how
complex both crime and the methods use to resolve it are. It is also important for the jury to
understand and appreciative the specific procedures that are used in aiding with the resolution of
a crime. As a result of this, when an expert witness is called to give their testimony, it is
important for them to do so in a way that is informative and easily digestible. This means that
