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Comment by skirge | Hacker News Reader

It's not only US. Many justice systems depend on direct witness or experts and expert who can say anything. Witness can be prosecuted for lying, experts not because they only have opinions.

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You could punish an expert, but you'd have to prove that they intentionally provided false info, which is nearly impossible to prove for opinions unless you can prove some form of collusion or get a confession.

That's why technically both sides should have experts. A lot of trials where experts are called devolve into simply a "battle of the experts" as the evidence is too close or too complicated.

Sadly, the prosecution often has an unlimited budget for experts and the defendant often has zero. The judge can rule that the state put up some funds for a defense expert, but this is usually a fraction of the cost that the prosecution spend.

Additionally, if you are being defended by a public defender or a cheap defense attorney then they will rarely file a motion for expert fees as they don't have the time to coordinate with an expert and go through the evidence to create a narrative for trial.

Furthermore, lawyers are trained in the law, not in things like forensic science, so if your lawyer knows nothing about the techniques being used to convict you then they won't be able to adequately cross-examine the prosecution's expert nor question their own expert (if they have one).

In France it's even worse as the State experts are assumed to be Right and there is no intended procedure for the defense to hire their own experts, at least not in a way where both sides would discuss on an equal foot.

There's even an obscure article of the law stating that a trial can be adjourned if a witness contradicts a State expert that testified before them.

Though, unlike in the US, the investigators in France are required to seek evidence of both innocence and guilt [0]. So theoretically there's no need for defense experts.

[0] https://www.justice.gouv.fr/justice-france/justice-penale/pr....

That's the theory. According to my experience in these particular cases, that's rarely how it works in reality.

And that's how the justice system breaks down. Prosecutors who pursue a matter with zeal because they can, not because they should. The outward sign of this most often is an emphasis on irrelevant but prejudicial talking points, such as the accused researching lawyers to represent them, or flying a private plane to the Super Bowl to participate in bawdy activities. It starts there and ends with an unjust execution because the police didn't like the way the accused looked at them.

The public defenders' office should have the same amount of funding as public prosecutors'.

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