Behavioural Evidence, Expert Testimony, And Legal Procedure
- IJLLR Journal
- Aug 15
- 1 min read
Rishika Sethi, BBA LL.B. (Hons), MIT-WPU School of Law
ABSTRACT
Offender profiling and behavioural evidence are extensively used in criminal investigation to develop potential hypotheses and to gain insight into offence patterns. Once this material crosses the threshold into the courtroom, it falls under different rules of admissibility, reliability, relevance and fairness in court. The article looks at the courts’ approach to profiling expert evidence in the United States, the United Kingdom and India, and why it sometimes doesn’t pass the legal muster. The core thesis of the argument is that the problem with behavioural profiling evidence in court is not the inherently antagonistic role of the court towards psychology, but rather the evidence often fails to meet the standards of evidentiary fairness, qualified help and methodological reliability. The article examines each of these failures in the light of State v. Fortin, R v. Gilfoyle, R v. Dallagher, R v. Clark and Diaz v. United States, and ultimately concludes with suggestions for the judicial evaluation of behavioural expert evidence.
Keywords: The keywords employed in the proposed this thesis are: behaviour evidence; offender profiling; expert testimony; admissibility of behaviour evidence; forensic evidence.
