CLPEX Chat Board

This is a quote from a news article, made by the mother of the defendant who had been found guilty:

"I still think that if you take an expert witness and present him as an expert witness then the jury assumes... it presumes that he is certified."

It also states:

courts don't even require fingerprint experts to be certified. "He had been certified but all he had to do was send in his documents to get re-certified and he had not done that at the time of the trial."

Although it didn't come from jurors, it's an interesting premise. I sometimes ask people what they would expect of a forensic expert witness regarding their schooling and whether or not they'd be surprised, as a juror, to hear that the witness doesn't have a college degree. And from there I introduce the idea of age and experience (from both a few years and many years). But I haven't thought of expanding the question relative to a certification in lieu of the degree and/or experience.

I would be even more interested to know how many jurors or other lay persons understand the requirements of being recognized by the court as an expert and presenting testimony (knowledge of the subject beyond the level of a lay person obtained by virtue of training, education, skill or experience and that their testimony must be based on reliable methods). Also of interest would be if jurors, court officials, and lay persons actually understand the nuances of certification versus proficiency testing versus competency testing. While jurists do instruct the jury about expert testimony, few judges actually instruct with thoroughness or the expectation that the jury should know and understand these terms.

There's some loose language with regard to "certified." Unless specified otherwise, I generally assume that an account of the testimony of a "certified" expert means the expert is "court-certified," meaning simply that their testimony has been accepted by a court, essentially what the FPS means by Fellow. And the question of the judge addressing the jury on such matters is reasonably clear. The court alone passes on admissibility. The judge should not be addressing the jury on matters that bear on credibility, except to explain that they are the judges of credibility. The rest is for the attorneys to offer. In the particular case, the defendant's family is whining that the expert wasn't currently certified and that he (the expert) is pending charges for using stolen drugs. It doesn't say if those facts came out at trial or if the drug thing was even known then. If not, it will surely be gone over in federal court where they won't worry too much about the certification issue but might consider the drug crime issue as something that might have affected the jury's estimation of credibility. At least according to the prosecutor, the print evidence wasn't all that critical to the case, so I'm guessing the drugs was a post-trial revelation or the D.A. would have not risked it with a troubled expert. If the D.A. is correct, and if there is no evidence the identification was wrong, it sounds like the conviction will probably stand.