An Expert Witness

Pioneering forensic scientist, anatomist and anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black takes the reader into our criminal courts’ witness box from the perspective of an expert witness, the forensic scientist, explaining exactly what that job is, what it demands, how the role evolved, and its likely future.

The expert witness sits at the crux of the relationship between law enforcement, science and the legal system. When that relationship works well, it makes for compelling fiction, television and movies. When it works less well, it makes for compelling and explosive news headlines.

In Dissection of an Expert Witness, Sue Black puts the relationship between these different institutions, and how they affect and are affected by the expert witness, under the microscope. Using shocking landmark cases that expose both the strengths and weaknesses of the interconnection between disciplines - she probes: In which cases did we get it right? In which did we get it wrong? And if we had done it differently, might the pendulum of justice have swung another way?

Incisive and compelling, following the impact of advances in technology to changes in funding and the effect of our gladiatorial system, Sue Black tracks the journey of this most intriguing of sciences through to its inevitable conclusion - and the toll it may take not only on experts but ultimately how justice plays out.