Expert Witnesses Testifying in Important Legal Cases in Oklahoma

Expert Witnesses Testifying in Important Legal Cases in Oklahoma

          Oklahoma Judicial Process Servers www.OklahomaJudicialProcessServers.com hires expert witnesses to work with attorneys to provide objective, professional, and highly specialised testimony about matters litigants are seeking to solve through the courts.  These experts use their talents and skills to assist plaintiffs and defendants in both criminal and civil trials, and what they say can potentially have an enormous impact on what the judge and/or jurors decide.  Indeed, there are many types of these experts from a very broad range of fields who work as expert witnesses.

An expert witness in a case involving medical malpractice might involve another licensed, trained, experienced physician who can testify about the mistakes that another doctor made and what should have taken place.  Of course, if the physician did nothing wrong, the expert witness can definitely testify about that, too, and perhaps help serve to exonerate the other medical doctor from any wrongdoing.  There are other examples of different types of expert witnesses plaintiffs and defendants also use in court cases in Oklahoma.

Expert witnesses could also come in handy in cases like the Exxon Valdez and British Petroleum oil spills.  In such cases where these oil spills have killed a large number of living beings at an enormous financial and emotional cost, plaintiffs could bring in expert witnesses who are skilled in petroleum, environmental issues, wildlife, business economics, and more.  The oil companies might likewise try to use expert witnesses of their own to try to mitigate responsibility, downplay the economic impact, and minimise as much of their legal liability.

Another example where an Oklahoma expert witness could come in very useful is in a trial involving child abuse.  An expert witness who is working on behalf of the child and the prosecution might outline typical behaviours of child abuse, what certain DNA evidence such as semen, hair samples, clothing fibers, etc., is and how it pertains to the defendant’s guilt, and so on.  Likewise, an expert witness for the defendant could easily have expert witnesses of his or her own assert that the DNA belongs to someone else, is flawed, etc.

Sometimes in cases where both sides use expert witnesses in a court case, the impact on the judge and/or jurors may potentially rest more on which expert witness they believe is the most credible.  If different expert witnesses are saying two very different things, jurors might become confused and not know what to think.  Thus, the experience levels of the expert witnesses, their ability to communicate in plain language or laymen’s terms that others can easily understand, and their ability to connect with the judge and/or jury can also prove to be crucial.

Much like other forms of evidence, expert witnesses are not always “perfect,” either.  Cases exist where expert witnesses have been known to lie and send innocent people to jail.  Joyce Gilchrest, a former forensic “expert” who worked for the Oklahoma City Police Department maliciously sent many innocent people to jail with her false “expert” testimony, and she got away with it virtually unpunished.

Indeed, John Grisham even wrote a book called An Innocent Man, which outlined how innocent men went to jail and only got out after having suffered through years of incarceration from an evil prosecutor in Oklahoma and testimony that was changed by a supposed “expert”.  Dr. Grisham has made his aversion of DNA evidence widely known and even refers to it as “junk science”.  To this very day he remains very skeptical of DNA evidence and experts in the field.

Some critics view expert witnesses as “hired guns” used solely for the purposes of testifying for people in court cases.  In order to make sure an expert witness is considered more credible, it is important to inquire as to how many times they have testified for defendants and for plaintiffs in cases.  If they have favoured one side or the other too much and attorneys bring this to light in the middle of a very important trial, the judge and/or jurors might view them as inherently biased and not take their testimony as seriously as they otherwise would.

Oklahoma Judicial Process Servers only hired the most reputable, reliable, honest, credible expert witnesses.  If expert witnesses used in court cases do not have a solid background in their field and are not well-respected within their profession, their services are not used.  Hiring expert witnesses can have potentially decision changing impacts on court cases and those involved in them, and choosing the very best people for the job are vital.