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A forensic document examiner is intimately linked to the legal system as a forensic scientist. Forensic science is the application of science to address issues under consideration in the legal system. FDEs examine items (documents) that form part of a case that may or may not come before a court of law.
Forensic evidence supplied by an expert witness is usually treated as circumstantial evidence. For example, a forensic scientist or forensic engineer may provide results of tests indicating that bullets were fired from a defendant's gun, or that a car was traveling over the speed limit, but not necessarily that the defendant fired the gun or ...
Evidence packaging involves the specialized packaging methods and materials used for physical evidence. Items need to be collected at a crime scene or a fire scene, forwarded to a laboratory for forensic analysis , put in secure storage, and used in a courtroom, all while maintaining the chain of custody .
When evidence can be used in court to convict persons of crimes, it must be handled in a scrupulously careful manner to prevent tampering or contamination. The idea behind recording the chain of custody is to establish that the alleged evidence is in fact related to the alleged crime, rather than having, for example, been "planted" fraudulently ...
Trace evidence is found in many different forms with some examples including, but not limited, to fire debris, gunshot residue, glass fragments, and fibres. [2] Each of these types of evidence will have a trained analyst in that specific field who will conduct the analysis on these items.
In eyewitness identification, in criminal law, evidence is received from a witness "who has actually seen an event and can so testify in court". [1]The Innocence Project states that "Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing."
The codified use of expert witnesses and the admissibility of their testimony and scientific evidence has developed significantly in the Western court system over the last 250 years. The concept of allowing an expert witness to testify in a court setting and provide opinionated evidence on the facts of other witnesses was first introduced by ...
Demonstrative evidence: any visible, physical evidence used in legal proceedings. These are used to demonstrate aspects of the case, reconstruct an event, and illustrate what happened. There are two categories of demonstrative evidence; court displays and investigative aids. [5]