IBR
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2013
- Messages
- 129
- Reaction score
- 238
Grrr - don't you hate it when the lawyer asks "Can you exclude it 100%?" and of course the expert witness HAS to say "Not completely - but it is unlikely".
Sometimes I just wish an expert witness would have the courage of their convictions and say "Yes I CAN exclude it! On the basis of my 35-year experience as a specialist in this field, an area where you, the lawyer, have NO expertise at all - zero - there was NO overdose in this case. An overdose of sertraline did NOT cause the death. So shove that in your pipe and smoke it!"
Defence is using this strategy with EVERY evidence, pretending that there is reasonable doubt if the experts can't exclude 100 %. At first sight this seems to be a clever strategy but if you look at the whole picture, you'll realise that defence does this all the time and that this, altogether, means that there is a reason that so many situations, although not 100 % impossible, are unlikely. The reason is that there is no reasonable doubt. Hopefully jurors at least have a rough idea of statistics...