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Keran Henderson - Medical Expert Evidence

The link is to a story about a Juror from Keran Henderson's trial believing that a miscarriage of justice "has occurred."

Keran's trial was essentially one about medical expert evidence. We had a useful discussion on Radio 5 yesterday about how the use of expert evidence needs to be improved to avoid miscarriages of justice.

The key point is that legal decisionmaking and medical decisionmaking operate at different levels of certainty. If people wish to introduce pet theories into court they need to have justified them in some way.

One approach is a form of Daubert hearing. However, there is a need to look in detail at many unproven theories to decide whether there is sufficient certainty for them to be used in court. These include Shaken Baby Syndrome, Classical Metaphyseal Lesions and FII by proxy. This should not be done on a trial by trial basis.

These are large sources of many of the miscarriages of justice in the Family and Criminal Divisions (mainly Family Division).

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