| Summary: | Interactions between science and law can be dated back as far as 9000
B.C. to 3000 B.C., to a time known as the Neolithic age. By the
seventeenth century, great scientific contributions by, amongst others,
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Boyle affected the way the world was
viewed and what methods were most appropriate for finding the truth
and, specifically, altered the thought processes of the entire literate
English society, including English jurists.
During the seventeenth century in England, the fields of law and
science enjoyed increased awareness of the probability of truth, not the
certainty of it. The search for absolute truth was thus replaced by
probabilistic hypotheses and assessment of evidence to achieve truth
beyond a reasonable doubt.
The interconnectedness of science and law has diminished over time as
contemporary thinking demanded not only greater specialisation in the
profession and its subdivisions, but also a greater autonomy of legal
thought and reasoning. Practitioners, scholars and authors held the
view that legal reasoning is, and should remain, separate from scientific
reasoning.
Modes of reasoning employed in criminal investigation and judicial
decision-making are communal in both science and law. Additionally,
investigating officers frequently employ forensic science and scientific
evidence to assist and direct them in criminal investigations. In the
same manner, prosecutors apply forensic evidence in order to assist the court in finding the truth, and to ultimately prove its version of
criminal events.
In South Africa, police investigators and state prosecutors typically rely
on eyewitness testimony in both the detection of crime and to achieve
successful conviction of guilty offenders. In addition, DNA evidence has
emerged as the golden standard of forensic evidence and much
reliance is placed on the results of DNA profiling.
However, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable and DNA
evidence is not the infallible assurance of certainty it was once thought
to be.
It is trite that presiding officers must be provided with all relevant and
admissible evidence in criminal trials. This includes traditional forensic
sciences like bloodstain pattern analysis, trace evidence, fingerprint
evidence and many more.
Recent research has revealed the questionable scientific foundations of
these traditional forensic sciences. While the scientific community is
working towards stabilising these knowledge bases, provisions of the
law of evidence must provide adequate instruments to prevent the
admission of âjunkâ science into evidence. Yet an examination of a
variety of rules of admissibility reveals a deficiency in the law to
competently exclude fallible and unreliable forensic evidence.
In the South African criminal justice system presiding officers invest
great reliance on the opinion and explanation of expert witnesses without critically assessing the scientific validity of the testimony. This
has resulted in the admission of faulty evidence.
To mend this problem presiding officers, as well as investigating police
and legal practitioners must obtain a solid scientific knowledge base to
enable these role-players to accurately assess forensic evidence.
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