CLPEX Chat Board

I was reading the osac document on Technical Review. The first general recommendation is: "Technical review of the case record or testimony shall be conducted by a competent friction ridge examiner as defined above." (the underlining is from me)

My question is: Which agencies consider a review of testimony to be a 'technical review'? Would this comply with an agencies accreditation requirements?

ANAB AR3120 - 7.3.1.7 and ANAB AR3125 7.7.1.I

There shall be a procedure for the technical review of inspection (or 'technical' for 17025) records, including reports, and testimony. The procedure shall:

I think accredited agencies have to address technical review of testimony as part of that accreditation. OSAC is creating a technical review of testimony document to provide some guidance on how to do that. There is a difference between evaluating overall testimony versus the technical aspects of the testimony given. "Were they dressed appropriately for court?" versus "Did they articulate a conclusion appropriately?" are examples of the difference between testimony evaluation and technical review of the testimony provided.

We DO consider a review of testimony to be a technical review and it can be done in person, if able, or based on transcripts. In this reality, it could also be done remotely if that is available to the agency. We have two forms that we use. One is for anyone that is able to watch testimony being given. The other is for a competent person to technically review another's testimony.

It's worked well for us so far. Our only issue is we don't testify all that often so we don't always have it reviewed yearly. Not that ANAB requires a specific number or frequency - they just require a procedure for when it IS done.

Josh,

Great information. Am I correct in assuming that the terms audit and review are being used synonymously? (and quality assurance and quality control too?)

Forgive me if I'm being pedantic here, but "technical review" is a step in the overall process that precedes release of a report, isn't it? It cannot be something we do after a report has been released. If that is correct and true technical review is supposed to apply to testimony, wouldn't that mean that the answer to every question would have to be subjected to technical review and approved before it could be communicated to the judge or jury?

That seems "a bridge too far" in the push to inject pure science into our discipline.

The technical review of a report must still be done before it can be released...well actually, accreditation doesn't specify what gets technically reviewed before it is released - only that a procedure must exist for how technical reviews are completed. It would seem underserving to not technically review everything (which is why we technically review everything) but there are some labs that don't.

The technical review of testimony is completely different. In most cases, what we say in a report is significantly less than what we testify about. When we testify, we speak on permanence and uniqueness, history, research, our backgrounds, etc. before we even get into to meat of our examination. There have been times I've spent the majority of my time in the witness box testifying to all of those other things and my conclusion was a very small "afterthought".

The technical review of testimony is something that a competent examiner will conduct and if there are errors, just like in a report, they will get reported to the proper people. If it's an error that has a weight on the strength of the testimony, it will be shared with the court as soon as practicable. If it was a date error on a training class, it will be shared with the court as well but in a less expedited fashion.

So, in my opinion, you would not have to have every question/answer technically reviewed before it's presented to a jury. That's why technical review of testimony is different than technical review of a report - one happens in real time and the other doesn't. Each has a different set of "requirements" with how to deal with errors.

Each agency will have to craft a policy to dictate how that technical review of testimony is conducted because we all testify differently - there is no road map for every court on how to elicit testimony from a fingerprint examiner. We all have the foundation questions and we usually provide them to the attorney before trial but we also know they go 'off script' all of the time so, technical review of testimony happens in real time and cannot always account for these side trips that happen in court.