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No Scientific Evidence Or Expert Witnesses

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How or why some scientific evidence or expert witnesses are allowed to be presented in court and some are not can be rather confusing. However, there is significant reasons on why the decision was made. The three major sources that currently guide evidence and testimony admissibility: the Frye Standard, the Rule of 702; and, the Daubert Standard, as well as who can serve as an expert witness in a court of law.
Daubert refers to the legal precedent set by the United States Supreme Court in 1993 which defined the criteria for admissibility of expert witness testimony in the Federal Courts. The Daubert ruling (Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579) superseded the long-standing Frye standard (set in 1923) for expert witness testimony (Cornell University, n.d.). The Frye v United States case states that a court must determine whether or not the method by which that evidence was obtained was generally accepted by experts in the particular field in which it belongs. In 1923, in Frye v. United States, the District of Columbia Court rejected the scientific validity of the lie detector (polygraph) because the technology did not have significant general acceptance at that time (Forensic Science Simplified, n.d.). The court announced that a novel scientific technique “must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs” . The court found that the systolic test had “not yet gained such standing and scientific

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