ABSTRACT
In criminal cases the role of the expert witness is more usually performed by a person who would describe himself as a “forensic scientist”. The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology carried out an inquiry into forensic science mainly as a result of public unease at a long string of miscarriages of justice in high profile cases, especially as in many of them the problem had been that the use or misuse of forensic evidence was a factor. The most striking difference between the processes in criminal cases and the comparable processes in civil cases is that the criminal justice system is very much more adversarial than are the civil courts. It is almost impossible to predict the effect the Act and the code will have upon the workings of the criminal justice system and in particular upon the work of expert witnesses in criminal cases.
