An expert witness is someone who is qualified by special knowledge, skills, experience, training, and education. They can be used to testify and give opinions on topics that are beyond the knowledge of an average person and require special knowledge/experience from the expert on a particular topic. The court of law uses a different test or determine the admissibility of various expert witnesses. The first test they use is general Acceptance test. The Acceptance test sometimes called the Frye test, has been in use in the court of law for more than seventy years. In this test, "the expert testimony is admissible if the “scientific test” they used to come to their conclusion is one that was generally used or is accepted by the scientific community in that field” (Krauss, 2016). For instance, some general conceptions are evidenced-based within a specific scientific area. These are used as the threshold to select an expert witness to testify in the court. In most countries and states in the United States, this type of test is used. However, there are some situations where evidence-based testimonies forced the law court to consider Frye test less appealing and go for a reliability test.
The reliability tests also aim to ensure that “a witness could testify and provide an opinion as an expert if they were qualified by “knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education,” and “if scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact in understanding the evidence” (Rahman & Moran, 2018). However, the reliability tests differences from the Frye test in that it is much more specific on the reliability of the expert’s opinion or testimony. They have to give out a testimony that is reliability in addition to being relevant to the case. This nature of test began in the 80s and advanced to the 90s. The test aims to determine or weigh the expert opinion and testimonies against prejudice. In particular, the focus is to determine whether the expert opinion is intended to confuse or mislead the jury, invalid and irrelevant to the case that is of concern or the opinion is relevant and valid. Like the Frye test, the validity of the source from which people extract the evidence used in the court is also of a lot of concern in the reliability test (Rahman & Moran, 2018). The similarity and small range of difference between the Frye test and reliability test brought a lot of controversies on which of them is the best. In 1993 the US Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Frye Test and developed a new test known as the Daubert Standard ( Shapiro et al., 2015).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The Daubert Standard was based off any of the tests that the previous tests used such as reliability and Frye test. There was a need to eliminate any possibility of contamination of any mistakes that were present on the previous two tests. Further, this test is also unique in that it focuses less on data and reliability. In this test, the trial judge is the one who determines whether or not the expert testimony is admissible by ensuring that the testimony is relevant to the case and rests on a reliable foundation (Krauss, 2016).
References
Krauss, D. A. (2016).The admissibility of expert testimony in the United States, the Commonwealth, and elsewhere.In Psychological expertise in court (pp. 23-46).Routledge.
Rahman, M. W., & Moran, M. J. (2018). Forensic Science: Complex Admissibility Standard for Scientific Evidence and Expert Witness's Testimony.
Shapiro, D. L., Mixon, L., Jackson, M., & Shook, J. (2015).Psychological expert witness testimony and judicial decision-making trends. International journal of law and psychiatry , 42 , 149-153.
