◄Previous: 3.3 Liability and immunity of experts

# 3.3.1 Criminal liability

As you will appreciate, giving evidence to a court is a solemn responsibility for any witness. Giving untrue or misleading evidence can lead to serious consequences, such as wrongful imprisonment and unmerited blame and compensation. As you will see later in the course, such unfairness destroys lives. To protect the integrity of the trial against intentional manipulation of evidence, unreliable witnesses can be prosecuted for perjury, and experts are no exception. Perjury is a criminal offence contrary to the Perjury Act 1911 and arises when a witness wilfully makes a false statement that they know to be false or do not believe to be true and which is material in the proceedings. It is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

An example of a prosecution for perjury was reported in The Guardian in 2017. Expert witnesses were jailed after committing perjury ‘on an industrial scale’.

## Box 2 Expert witnesses imprisoned for perjury

The following article reports the consequences for a number of experts who fabricated evidence in civil trials. Accident Exchange Ltd was a company that provided replacement hire cars for cars damaged in accidents. The experts worked for Autofocus and gave misleading expert evidence about rates for hire cars, often far below the actual rate. This saved the insurers a lot of money, but eventually, the law caught up with the experts and they were jailed.

Press Association (2017) ‘Expert witnesses jailed in London after perjury on ‘industrial scale’’, The Guardian 16 Jun (open the link in a new tab or window by holding down Ctrl [or Cmd on a Mac] when you click on the link).

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OpenLearn - Expert evidence and forensic science in the courtroom
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