On possible mistakes in expert findings

According to Item 3, Part 2, Article 74 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation one of the evidence in criminal procedure is expert finding which contains the information about the facts obtained with the help of some special knowledge. Expert findings are written examinations and conclusions on the questions which were asked either by the investigating person or by the parties to a case (Part 1, Article 80 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation). Examination includes special and complicated acts which cannot be performed either by people involved in prosecution and defense or by court. The only person to find reliable data is the expert. The evaluation of evidence shall be done according to the rules of Part 1, Article 88 of the Criminal Procedural Code of the Russian Federation which states that any evidence is to be evaluated from the point of view of its relevancy, admissibility and reliability and all collected evidence - from the point of view of its sufficiency for the investigation of the criminal case. Moreover, according to Article 8 of the Federal Law "On state forensic activity" there are additional requirements to expert's findings. An expert shall conduct research without prejudice, on strict scientific and practical basis within a relevant specialty, comprehensively and in its entirety. Expert's findings shall be based on the provisions which ensure the possibility to control the substantiality and reliability of the conclusions according to the generally accepted scientific and practical data. Despite the existing requirements to expert findings, nobody is perfect. Expert malpractice is his/her misjudgments or bona fide ignorance. These errors decrease the evidential force of the findings or make them inadmissible. The above errors can be analyzed by means of different classifications taking into account general requirements to expert findings. Different criteria form the basis of any classification. But not any approach proposed before can serve as an integrated one and allow us to treat the problem of expert malpractice in details. Now there is a need to sum up the scientific experience and systematize all the information on this problem. The purpose of our research was to develop some basic theoretical provisions connected with the nature of possible expert malpractice. To do this it was necessary: to study classifications for forensic examinations and provisions about expert errors existing in Russia; to develop our own integrated approach to the understanding of the nature of possible expert errors on the basis of their classifications taking into account the sources of their origin and the observance of the laws of formal logic by experts. To conduct the research the authors used both general and special methods of cognition and, in particular, a structured system analysis, surveillance, description, the method of formal logic - analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison, analogy, generalization and hypothesis. They studied scientific and special literature on criminalistics and forensic examinations and analyzed the practice of evaluating expert malpractice. The classification of errors in experts' examinations implies their division into classes (groups) and types. Thus, some common characteristics of the formation of expert malpractice have been revealed on the basis of the analysis of literature on criminalistics and forensic medical literature. It has been established that errors in expert findings depend on many factors. The laws of formal logic are among the instruments that enable an expert to avoid errors when making his/her conclusions. Further research of the nature of expert malpractice will help to develop a complex of measures to ensure the quality of expert findings as evidence in the course of criminal procedure.

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