The Relevant Issues Of Expert Witness Child Abuse

By Linda Butler


The fields of law, sociology and psychology have currently banded together to make for a more workable court system. This is relevant to many types of cases where professional people may be called upon to testify for or against a person in court. Their testimonies are often circumstantial but helps build the case for a lawyer by establishing just cause or culpability.

Psychologists, legal experts, and sociologists are wondering if the testimonies of experts might not be affecting legal cases in a negative way. They need to know if things like expert witness child abuse is able to deliver relevant and meaningful things to the judicial process. Mostly, they are concerned that lawyers will not use it just for winning a case.

Pros are often needed in court to help clarify the technical details for the civilian jury. Professionals will testify only what they know with regards to their work, and this part of the program can include MEs and forensic people, and the facts they provide all work for making justice that much more workable. It is a practice needed by courts, and now includes any kind of expert in any given field.

Law courts will hear out professional witnesses for necessary support for judgments that will be given. The judges and jurors are made to decide whether the testimony is good enough, but counselors can subjectify it with rhetorical arguments. They can therefore make the testimony worthless.

In cases of child abuse, there might be so many points that a lawyer can use and exploit to his advantage. When determined to win a case, he might wreck reputations, use expert witnesses to make people see things his way, and other techniques which are legal enough in one sense. However, many psychologists are questioning the validity of their accounts.

Ethics is a thing with many interpretations, but not when the law mandates one applicable definition or set of definitions for one item. If the lobbying is effective, the use of expert testimony in child abuse cases should be defined in a way not prejudicial to anyone concerned. This helps alleviate the pressing issue of ethical concern for sociologists and psychologists called in to testify.

However the decision will go, the testimonies should be the objective things they were meant to be. As witnesses, psychologists, for instance should be allowed to explain all circumstances that pertain to a case, and not just the answer to specific questions provided by an attorney during cross examination. Also, the expert should not be called upon to answer leading questions or those laden with implications.

Nowadays, expert witnesses do not provide legal strength to the jury process, because counselors can simply go about destroying the relevance of their testimonies especially when they do not support client interests. Ethics thus is something that is being abused here and this issue is important for lawyers. Even as the debate rolls on, one other question is more important.

This question is about the status of children during the cases they are involved in. Psychologists know how delicate the mind of children are, and a court case can traumatize it. No matter what issues there are in court, it is not a place where children can be happy, and vicious cross examinations will simply make lawyers the ogres that permanently harm their minds.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment