R v Crupi (1): Forensic gait analysis comes to Australia (and is excluded)

Case commentsJason ChinNovember 3, 2020forensic science, forensic gait analysis, expert evidence, Supreme Court of Victoria

R v Livingston: Bias, I presume?

Canadian courts are increasingly interested in the bias (and partiality and non-independence) of expert witnesses. An Ontario trial court’s recent decision in Livingstone to exclude a computer expert is an excellent example of that trend (or what anecdotally seems like a trend). In this note, I’ll go over Livingston and try to explain its significance.

Case commentsJason ChinJune 26, 2018Comment

R v Comeau: Who decides history?

By now, the Supreme Court of Canada’s boozy federalism decision in R v Comeau is old news. And – no doubt – many important things can be said about Comeau and cooperative federalism, originalism, and precedent. My interest, however (and not surprisingly), is in the expert evidence issues it contains. Most notably, Comeau raises important issues about the factual determination of history in courtrooms and the roles of judges and expert witnesses in that task. In Comeau, I think these issues could have been handled a lot better.