expert witness testimony
Importance Notice: For this Assignment, you will need to have completed your casefile and the associated templates. If you have not done so, you will need to refer to the following sessions on BREO and work through them to complete the forms as directed. You will also find the sessions relating to Assignment 1 useful. Lecture 4: Managing Casefiles. Lecture 8: Casefile and Case Study. Lecture 10: Continuity and Integrity. Tutorial 2: Expert Witness Statements. 1. Case Scenario According to information supplied by Bedfordshire Police, Miss Kat Simpson was last seen alive on the 2nd of April 2019. Shortly before her disappearance, Miss Simpson was sighted on CCTV, wearing a black dress. Mr Oscar Doyle has provided details relating to the death of Miss Simpson, which he claims occurred in the early hours of the 3rd of April 2019. Mr Doyle also claims that he stored the dismembered body of Miss Simpson in an empty water tank, in the loft of his home address. He further alleges that he later removed the body parts to other individual locations, although these have not been located. Note: You were contacted by Officer John Garcia of Bedfordshire Police, who requested your assistance. The details can be found on your Enquiry Form. 2. Case Request At the request of Bedfordshire Police, you were asked to examine the water tank for possible evidence which could be used to support or refute the assertion that the body of Miss Simpson had been stored in the water tank for some time, prior to its removal. Note: Officer John Garcia delivered the water tank to the University of Bedfordshire Forensic Science Laboratory. The details can be found on your Submission Form. As part of your case pre-assessment, you determined the following potential outcomes: Recovering between 0 and 5 black fibres. Recovering between 6 and 10 black fibres. Recovering between 16 and 20 black fibres 3. Tank Examination After completing your examination of the tank, you recovered a number of fibres, which you identified as follows: 11 black polyester fibres. 14 black nylon fibres. 33 grey nylon fibres. To assist your analysis, you consulted laboratory data (Table 1) obtained from previous casework examinations where fibres were collected from non-textile household furniture (e.g. those made from wood, metal or plastic). Table 1: Casework data (unpublished) relating to the recovery of fibres from non-textile household furniture. No. of Cases No. of Fibres 2 05 18 6 10 80 16 20 4. Analysis and Interpretation To complete your analysis, use the data from Table 1 to determine the probabilities of your outcomes, based on the findings of your examination. Calculate the likelihood ratio for your proposition of interest and interpret the outcome using the full verbal scale (Table 2). 5. Statement Production Complete your statement using the template provided (Statement Template for Assignment 2). Be sure to show your full workings, including calculations in the Appendix section of the template. Table 2: Likelihood ratios may be expressed as verbal equivalents according to a scale of conclusions (Willis, 2015). Likelihood Ratio Verbal Equivalent 1 The forensic findings do not support… 2 10 The forensic findings provide weak support for… 10 100 The forensic findings provide moderate support for… 100 1000 The forensic findings provide moderately strong support for… 1000 10,000 The forensic findings provide strong support… 10,000 1,000,000 – The forensic findings provide very strong support for… 1,000,000 and above – The forensic findings provide extremely strong support for… Willis S., et al. (2015) Guideline for Evaluative Reporting in Forensic Science, version 3.0. European Network of Forensic Science Institutes, pp. 1-128
