Précis of an article in the Sunday Telegraph Dec.17, 2000: edited by Ken Norman
Court bullies put pressure on experts to lie, says scientist
Experts are regularly bullied into making up evidence by the police and lawyers, according to one of Britain's leading forensic scientists.
Dr Dakariaa Erzinclioglu, a senior research associate at Durham University and director
of the Forensic Science Research Centre at Durham University, claims in a book, Maggots,
Murder and Men, that "new and unhealthy pressures" have been brought to bear on forensic
scientists because of the pressure on police to secure convictions. He has witnessed
48 miscarriages of justice in one year. Lord Justice Auld is examining the allegations
in his review of the court system and will report to the Lord Chancellor in January.
Dr
Erzinclioglu, working on investigations into murder allegations for more than 20
years, is lobbying for an independent state-funded body to administer pay of forensic
scientists. Presently they're paid by lawyers using them as witnesses, and are encouraged
to lie to suit their paymasters. "Their independence must be guaranteed and defined
in law so that, like judges, their neutrality and objectivity can be upheld in every
way," he says. [Not that judges are always objective or neutral, nor that experts
are always right with deeply-held beliefs - ed.]
Unfortunately, he says, "forensic
science evidence is paid for by people who are, by the very nature of the system,
biased, even if they are sincerely trying to arrive at the truth. Police officers
and lawyers are interested but not disinterested parties." He has been pressurised
on a number of occasions by police and lawyers to give the evidence that they want
and because he refused he has not been employed by these people since.
"One lawyer
asked me to make up an answer. . . . I know the kind of pressure the police bring
to force you into a certain kind of investigation and there can be financial pressure
for special witnesses to say certain things because their livelihood depends on it.
"Each forensic scientist is a narrow specialist and he needs all the cases that come
his way, and if you fail to satisfy a particular lawyer he is not going to consult
you again."
Dr E specialises in examining maggots on corpses to determine where and
when death took place. He has a doctorate in maggots, but claims that many of the
"experts" brought in by police and lawyers are charlatans. "There is nothing to prevent
a person who is totally unqualified as a scientist from practising as a forensic
consultant."
Stephen Kramer, QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, comments:
"The best experts are the independent ones and you have no guarantee by having just
one expert - as would be the case if this new system was introduced - that you will
get the right result. "Having two experts is frequently quite useful as a cross-check
and enables the jury to be able to conclude whichever way they want [precisely -
ed]. The experts, after all, frequently agree" [perhaps wrongly - ed.].
In medical cases they usually collude before the trial - Tom Watkins
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