Ai As An Expert Witness In Criminal Trials In...

Ai As An Expert Witness In Criminal Trials In India

Author Name : Priyank Goyal

INTRODUCTION

The criminal justice system around the globe, has not been immune to the development in technology. Various technologies have helped in better and accurate justice delivery thereby meeting the ultimate goal of fairness, transparency and upholding the rights of an accused in a democratic system. An important development in this area is the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). There are several jurisdictions around the world, where the AI technologies are being used to deliver justice. There is always an underlying debate as to whether, such technologies shall be allowed or they shall be limited. However, such a debate is beyond the scope of this paper.

Expert witnesses have been a part of criminal trials in India since long. The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 allows the testimony of an expert as an evidence within the trial. While the weightage on such evidence depends on case-to-case basis, it is true that in certain cases it can play a vital role in deciding the outcome of the case. In any constitutional democracy, the basic aim of the criminal justice system is to ensure justice as well as consistency. While, expert witness can play a vital role in determining the ends of justice, there can be case made for inconsistencies. AI can play an important role in solving these inconsistencies; however, the blind use of AI technology can also prove to be a counter-intuitive move on its own. The paper aims to study the viability of AI in the Indian criminal justice system. The paper in its first part would attempt to give an outlook of the present AI technologies and what are their standards. In the second part of the paper the writer would detail the use case scenarios for AI technologies and how they can improve/replace the expert witnesses and bring consistency to the criminal trials. Lastly, the author would analyze as to whether AI can be an effective solution to bring more consistency and transparency in the criminal trials where experts testimony plays an important role.