Witness immunity
Definition
A common-law protection that historically shielded expert witnesses from civil liability for statements made in judicial proceedings. In England and Wales it was significantly narrowed by the Supreme Court in Jones v Kaney (2011), which held that experts retained by a party are no longer immune from negligence suits.
Related terms
- Contextual bias
- The influence of case-relevant background information (suspect financial difficulties, police intelligence) on the direction of an examiner's technical analysis. Demonstrated experimentally for...
- Duty of impartiality
- The obligation that an expert witness owes to the court rather than to the party that retained them. Codified in England and...
- Fabrication of evidence
- The deliberate creation of false scientific results or the falsification of existing results for use in legal proceedings. It is the most...
- Sequential unmasking
- An information-sequencing protocol in which the examiner receives the questioned material first, completes and documents the analysis before receiving the known standards,...
- Wrongful conviction review
- A post-conviction process in which a court, review commission, or independent body re-examines the evidence supporting a conviction. In England and Wales...
Explained in
- Expert Liability, Bias and MisconductA common-law protection that historically shielded expert witnesses from civil liability for statements made in judicial proceedings. In England and Wales it w...