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Currently speech evidence is dealt with in our
courts in the realm of personal opinion with the defence and
prosecution sometimes having differing opinions. This suggests
that currently the chain of evidence concept does not apply to
speech evidence.
We at The
FSL advocate that speech evidence is handled in the same way as medical evidence ...
-
needs
to be dealt with in court as expert opinion and not personal
opinion
-
needs
to have set procedures in acquisition, processing and
preparation that ensure the integrity of evidence is maintained
-
needs
to be dealt with under consultation of technical and humanities
speech experts.
Speech evidence in whatever form it is in, must
accurately represent what was originally said for that evidence to
be valid. The legal concept of reasonable doubt suggests
that a scientific or statistical framework needs to be applied to
the process of dealing with speech evidence for that chain of
evidence to be maintained. This is required whether obtaining a
transcript, enhancing speech, speaker identification and media
authentication.
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