Digital Forensics Dr. Randy M. Kaplan Drexel University

Testimony

3 The Salient Questions of Testimony Is the testimony relevant? Is the witness believable? Do other similarly qualified witnesses agree with these conclusions? Is the witnesses testimony comprehensible? Is there admissible evidence to show that the testimony is factual?

4 Roles of An Expert Witness Consulting Expert Court’s Expert Testifying Expert Expert as a Witness to Fact

5 Consulting Expert Consulting experts provides a combination of training review of existing technology advice on strategy assessment of the competitions expert strategy going into court

6 Court’s Expert Similar to the consulting expert A court appointed or stipulated expert Serves in the consultant capacity but performs his or her technical consulting for the court itself

7 Court’s Expert Valuable when judges preside over major cases where both sides have their experts expert view are wildly divergent situation is more common then might be imagined especially true in cases involving nascent technologies

8 Court’s Expert This type of expert is independent Understands arguments posed by both sides Explains strengths and weaknesses of both arguments

9 Testifying Expert The one that most technologists think of first when the topic of serving as an expert witness comes up Raw functions may be similar to those of a consulting expert Constraints are considerably different

10 Testifying Expert Implicit ethical responsibility to be scrupulous to be objective No presumption of privilege that applies to the communications between the attorney and the testifying expert

11 Testifying Expert Any communication, electronic pr physical, is probably not confidential and subject to discovery Typically work patterns need to be altered in order to deal with this particular issue

12 Expert as a Witness to Fact Expert will be asked to testify as a normal, non-expert witness Expert is only expected to testify to events he or she personally experienced, actions he or she took, or things he or she said The expert’s technical mastery is not the central feature of the testimony

13 Expert as a Witness to Fact The fact that the witness is also an expert in one or more areas is also bound to bias the fact finder’s judgement This may effect the perception of the credibility and demeanor of the witness