FROMTHE EXPERTS
FROMTHE EXPERTS
FORENSIC SCIENCE STANDARDS FOR TRIAL LAWYERS
By Dana Delger
26 The Trial Lawyer
Every lawyer whose practice involves scientific evidence at any level has either made or heard the old joke that they went to law school precisely because they weren’ t good at science. And it’ s true that scientific education is grossly lacking for lawyers. As one commentator has written,“[ l ] awyers, of which judges are merely a subset, generally lack good training in the methods of science. Most lawyers do not speak the language of science. Lawyers and scientists come from different worlds of education and experience.” But no lawyer, least of all civil plaintiff’ s lawyers and criminal defense counsel, can afford to be ignorant about scientific evidence.
But where to begin? At least for those scientific techniques that fall under the umbrella of forensics, one of those places is forensic science standards. These documents shape forensic practice by setting minimum requirements, best practices, or otherwise provide guidance to practitioners, and both the criminal defense and civil plaintiff’ s bars need to be familiar with these documents and how to use them. Not only can they help educate lawyers about the science at issue in their cases, but standards play an increasingly important role to both forensic scientists and to courts. Accordingly, good practice requires lawyers to understand them and to be prepared to handle them in litigation. To that end, this article will offer a brief introduction to the world of forensic science standards, their sources, and importance, as well as provide pointers to further resources for litigators to learn more.
Current Sources Of Forensic Science Standards
Today, most forensic science standards are developed through the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science( OSAC), a program run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology( NIST). OSAC is essentially an incubator which, through the efforts of volunteer subcommittees made up largely of practitioners from virtually every area of forensic science, develops and drafts proposed forensic science standards. Legal professionals, statisticians, quality assurance experts, and the public then have the opportunity to weigh in on these documents.
After passing through this review process, standards can be placed as“ proposed standards” into a standards repository called the OSAC Registry. OSAC encourages forensic laboratories to adopt them in their proposed format. Before they can be fully published, standards must go through an additional review process and further development at private sector standards developing organizations called SDOs. Most standards in forensics go through one of two SDOS: the Academy Standards Board( ASB) or the American Society for Testing and Materials( ASTM). The ASB is a subsidiary of the American Academy of Forensic Science( AAFS). Civil lawyers may already be familiar with ASTM, as courts have regularly looked to those standards