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Expert Witness: Behind the scenes with a real life forensic scientist by Dr Anna Sandiford

Expert Witness is an insight into the real workings of a real forensic scientist. Readers will quickly find out that it is not like CSI and Bones, there are no scientists turning up to crime scenes in designer clothes, there is no room for individual opinion, and it is not about keeping guilty people out of prison or putting innocent ones in prison. It is about looking at the circumstances of a case and seeing what science can tell us about it. It is about making sure that if science is used to put a person in prison, then that science has been fully, fairly and accurately reported.

Dr Anna Sandiford has been involved with forensic science since 1998 and has prepared over a thousand reports on a variety of evidence types, largely for the defence but also for the prosecution. She has also peer-reviewed and assessed thousands of reports in a wide variety of forensic scientific fields. She was also involved in what has been dubbed by the New Zealand media as the 'Trial of the Century' - the 2009 David Bain retrial.

In Expert Witness, Dr Sandiford explores what forensic science is like from the view of an independent expert, what they do and what it is like to give evidence in court. Anna looks at the different areas of forensic science expertise using casework examples that include the complications of drink driving and collecting pollen samples from corpses and blood samples from sock prints. It is a frank and surprisingly amusing insight into the fascinating world of an independent forensic scientist.

I would imagine that most New Zealanders would want to quickly turn to the section on the David Bain trial, which is a shame because they will miss out on some other fascinating cases and the real work of a forensic scientist. Apart from her own scientific findings to do with a particular piece of evidence (which is mentioned in detail elsewhere in the book), her involvement with the case was to co-ordinate and second expert witnesses from the UK and elsewhere. The chapter on the David Bain Trial therefore gives an interesting and non-biased view of how a retrial like that one proceeds, but if you want to know more about scientific findings and the work of a forensic scientist, you will have to look elsewhere in the book..

Expert Witness is a very interesting read and will quickly dispel any myths about forensic science that programmes like CSI have created. In fact the TV programme CSI is mentioned many times not to point out similarities but differences between real life and fiction. It reveals Dr Sandiford's interesting work and will be of interest to anyone who is interested in applied science, real criminal cases or solving mysteries. She also has a way of presenting her book so that it is readable and enjoyable even for those who prefer fiction to scientific texts

RRP $32.99
Published and distributed by HarperCollins Publishers
 

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