Page 5744 - Week 17 - Thursday, 5 December 1991
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Times editorial desk? These issues are not being faced and they should be. They exemplify the desultory criminal law reform process in this Territory..
EXPERT EVIDENCE
17. How does the juror take an oath to faithfully try a defendant and give a true verdict when the jury is faced with opposing expert scientific evidence?9 Why is the jury the butt end of our failure to create an independent forensic service which would ensure that forensic expert witnesses are paid by the court, perhaps with cost recovery on the event. I have brought tentative moves in that direction to the attention of the Committee. However, the need to ensure that the injustices of the Lindy Chamberlain trial, the, Tim Anderson matter, the Birmingham Six and my unease with the recent Derry-Anne Browning trial in the ACT, surely call for urgent uniform reform in this country. How many juries, for instance, are even aware of the use by forensic scientists of the Inference Chart? It has been described as a jargon-free guide to assist the jury to weigh scientific signals and patterns. to This, can provide a way out of the bamboozling maze I have seen juries presented with. In the appropriate cases, the jury needs to be acquainted with the basks of scientific inference.
18. Claims of miscarriage of justice often stem from forensic .evidence which has allegedly tended towards being in the prosecution "stable". Whilst it has not been established that "stable" experts may
9 *How to confuse &e Jury Simon Cooper UK Journal of Criminal Law Feb 90 pp i25-137 10 "Guilt by Ieforewe" Day Matitim NZIJ Feb 91 pp 43-49
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