What happens when expert evidence is unreliable? Finola Moss reports
Such is the Law Commission’s concern about the reliability of expert evidence in criminal proceedings it has proposed that an expert’s trustworthiness be formally proved.
Professor Jeremy Hodder, leading the consultation, warns: “Expert evidence, particularly scientific evidence, can have a very persuasive effect on juries. It is vital that such evidence should only be used if it provides a sound basis for determining a defendant’s guilt or innocence.”
The effect of such evidence on courts deciding the welfare of children and their permanent removal from their families is not considered.
In 2004 Margaret Hodge, the then children’s minister, instructed councils to review all final care orders that depended “exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between medical experts about the cause of harm”.
It is difficult to envisage how any expert evidence could satisfy this definition, within the quasi-inquisitorial regime of care proceedings, where consensus is coerced by the need for joint instruction and agreement of expert evidence.
The child’s guardian normally endorses the social services expert’s opinion of abuse, leaving parents systemically unable to
