There are about 18 thousand expert witnesses permanently appointed by district courts in Poland. They are not covered by any comprehensive programmes of competence development, and there are no set requirements from candidates for the position. This means that random people apply for the posts and the quality of their work is unsatisfactory. This is emphasised in the letter by the Commissioner for Human Rights to the Minister of Justice, of 5 June, 2013: “(...) the unclearly defined competence of expert witnesses and the lacking system of control over their work by the judges were indicated as the reasons why an expert witness’s participation in court proceedings can be excessively time consuming and sometimes contributes little to resolving the issue (...). Another shortcoming is the fact that there is no adequate system of control over the standards of recruitment for the role, which could ensure high quality of their opinions.”
The project’s long-term objective was to improve the quality of the justice system as far as expert witnesses are concerned, by appropriate selection of candidates for the role. The project involved designing a universal tool for assessing competences of candidates/expert witnesses online. This was achieved by desk research of solutions used in different countries and legal systems, as well as a survey of judges, prosecutors and solicitors (463 responses), a panel of experts and an international conference “Adversarial trial and the competences of expert witnesses” (over 100 participants), which included a discussion on the premises of the tool in development. Two major reports were issued: “Assessing the competences of expert witnesses” and “Fees of expert witnesses”.
The recipients of the project were representatives of legal professions: judges, prosecutors, solicitors etc.
The role of the partner, the Centre for Forensic Science, University of Warsaw, was to provide scientific support during the research part of the project: construction of survey questionnaires, choosing respondent groups, analysing the results, reviewing conference materials etc