IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON INVESTIGATION Science is a compelling and commanding weapon in the armoury of administration of justice. Forensic Science is a science pertaining to law. In particular, it works as the branch, which is used mainly in criminal investigation and findings of which can lead to arrests and convictions. Undoubtedly, scientific investigations generate evidence in favour of the victims and against the accused. Forensic Science helps in providing the identity of the culprit or the accused who willingly or unwillingly, in most of the cases, leaves the mark of his crime, thereby making the job of the investigator much easier in proving the culpability with the aid of Forensic Science. Forensic Science provides scientific study for investigation of crime. The growth, development and use of Forensic Science in detection of crime in developed countries are tremendous and increasing with new techniques. The area of Forensic Science in India has not been properly looked into, as it ought to have been and more so when the average acquittal rate is alarmingly high. Therefore, in our country, also, the necessity and importance of Forensic Science hardly needs any emphasis. The lack of understanding and appreciation of the importance of specialists in general, by non-specialists, in all fields, cannot be denied. The field of Forensic Science is no exception. Many a time, neither the judge, nor the lawyer nor even the police appreciate fully, the advances or the extensive, promising potentialities of the science and the fusion of new technologies, methodologies, modalities and research. Multitask and multi-professional nature of Forensic Science needs an inter-professional approach, which is, many a time, lacking. Therefore, sincere and serious efforts are required to be made to eliminate personal and professional bias of the involved personnel and professionals. Forensic Science in criminal investigation and trial is principally concerned with materials and circuitously through materials, with men, places and time. It embraces all branches of science and applies them to the purposes of law. The scientific examination by Forensic Scientists adjoins a missing link or strengthens a weak chain of investigation. Systematic uses of Forensic Science provide significant assistance in answering the following questions: (i) How was the crime committed? (ii) When was the crime committed? (iii) Who committed the crime? Law-enforcement agencies refer to Forensic Experts to help solve mysterious situations concerning human life and thereby, provide help and useful contribution to the criminal courts in the journey for search of truth in criminal trials. Forensic Science deals with various aspects, including routine post-mortem to sophisticated tracking piece like DNA analysis. Unfortunately, techniques and methodology with necessary materials used extensively in Western countries has not successfully clicked in India because of a variety of reasons, the major one being the investment of huge finance. This science is also, at times, useful in finding out the truth in some of the civil cases. The prosecution mainly calls Forensic Scientists as expert witnesses. The practice of the defense producing Forensic Scientists or the courts consulting on their own listed experts is not very much in vogue. In fact, there is an acute need to bridge the communication gap that presently exists between lawyers, judges and Forensic Scientists. An independent analysis and evaluation of the scientist''s data and any subsequent testimony that may follow again depends on the judges'' familiarity and understanding of the principles of Forensic Science. In Western countries DNA test and profile is widely employed. In a country like ours, the need of such a test and profile may, hardly, be emphasized. In many developed countries, DNA test, genetic testing techniques and "racmization" -- testing based on systematic examination of teeth and bite-marks has proved to be very useful. "Racmization" technique is currently used in Japan and Germany. It has potential to replace the traditional method that took into account the eruption and/or fusion and falling sequence of teeth. A fusion of such knowledge of Forensic Science and newly developed techniques will, undoubtedly, not only provide proper perspective and dimensions, but will also lead to detection of crime, and be a great help in search of the truth. It will be useful in the prevention and control of crimes and will provide required assistance to the parties to civil disputes, as well. IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON THE JUSTICE DELIVERY SYSTEM Common view is that the Indian justice administration system is slow. However, the major question is, is it the primary problem with Indian justice delivery system? The key issue is, is it is delivering justice at all in majority of cases? If a machine is faulty and makes bad products, then if one speeds up the machine, it will deliver more of those bad products. Therefore, if we speed up a malfunctioning Justice Administration System, it will simply toss up more of injustice. Is that the goal of any justice delivery system? In the words of Justice Shayamal Kumar Sen, "The investigation process needs to be hastened; otherwise the criminal justice system will suffer". Justice Sen urged that research and development should be initiated in a way that would ensure that crime at the grassroots level is detected immediately and an effective management system should be introduced. According to M P Singh, vice-chancellor, West Bengal National University Of Juridical Science, new techniques should be introduced as it will help in crime detection and the infrastructure should be developed in a way that will not only give momentum to effective criminal delivery system but will also hasten the entire long drawn process of investigation. IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON COURT AND COURT PROCESSES Science is not new to the Indian courts. Towards the end of 1989, one low-end computer was installed in Supreme Court of India for caveat matching. Immediately thereafter, in 1990, Justice GC Bharuka, as a sitting Judge at the Patna High Court initiated the process of court computerization. On his transfer to Karnataka in 1994, he undertook to introduce ICT (Information and Communucation Tecnologies) in the entire judiciary of the state of Karnataka. Presently all the courts upto the taluka level are computerized. All the judicial officers and court staff are trained. There is complete automation from filing of a case to grant of a certified copy. Digital production of under-trial prisoners by video-conferencing is made possible. Through website, causelists of the Supreme Court of India, High Courts, district courts and various Tribunals is made available online, a day before. SCIENCE AND GREY AREAS OF LAWS v SPACE LAWS Simply put, Space law is a part of International jurisprudence related to outer space. It follows customary practice in defining outer space, the region 100 km beyond the earth''s surface. With the advancement of science and technology, things that were once considered impossible are now increasingly becoming possible and even fashionable. No one, some six decades back would have thought of going to space, let alone marrying in space. Thanks to science, this has now become a reality. For $2.3 million, a person can cement bonds from 62 miles straight up. Japanese company First Advantage, along with former X-Prize contender Rocketplane Global, is teaming up to offer weddings in space. According to a LiveScience article, Rocketplane Global "is developing the XP Spaceplane for private suborbital spaceflights. The four-seat spaceship is slated to be about the size of a fighter jet and designed to carry two jet engines and a rocket engine to reach space." Besides shelling out $2.3 million, a person has to undergo four day''s worth of training for the one-hour ceremony. Training includes safety procedures, weightless maneuvering, and to explain to one''s family why they were not invited. Not only this, Sapporo Breweries, the Japanese beer maker established in 1876, is brewing beer from barley descended from seeds that spent five months on the International Space Station ( ISS). According to a CNN article, "The project is part of biological studies of the adaptability of plants to environmental changes and the impact from stresses such as space travel." If successful, the study will bring the world one-step closer to growing crops in space. In addition, fortunately, right now, scientists cannot tell the difference between the ISS grains and homegrown barley. However, in order for commercial space activities to grow, there must be an attractive legal environment. Unfortunately existing space law consists mostly of some inter-governmental treaties that are quite inappropriate for business. Space is just another place where humans are going to live. In addition, because space is almost limitless humans are going to live there in vast numbers in the future. In other words, it will become a completely new habitat. Today most activities in space are government ones because getting to and from space is so expensive. Once travel from orbit is cheap enough, as on earth, individuals, private companies and organizations will carry on most activities in space. At that time space activities will involve almost every industry, be it catering and drinks, fashion and entertainment, or law. An attractive legal environment is needed to enable operating companies to plan passenger services and place orders for the vehicles that they require, and for manufacturers to finalize vehicle design details and raise the investment that they need in order to put the vehicles into production. Sovereignty over outer space is another debatable issue that needs to be resolved. CYBER LAWS AND JURISDICTIONAL ISSUES With the advent of internet, a whole new category of crime that includes fraud, theft of services and data, copyright infringement, destruction of data through computer sabotage (viruses) and acts causing inconvenience to agencies comprising sensitive, secret or confidential functions has come up. Chances of use of the web as a forum for publication of defamatory content has increased multifold and there is a need for a clear, coherent expression of the law in this area. Hacking time theft (stealing someone else''s internet time) pornography, sending threatening e-mail, defamatory e-mail, hacking e-mail, e-mail bombs, etc. are the main areas of cyber crime. The people who commit cyber crimes are mostly those who have white-collar jobs, unlike usual criminals. They can even be high school kids. The territory that a cyber crime can stretch across is immense. It can go over continents The principles that govern the exercise of criminal jurisdiction are based on the assumption that "crime" is a territorial phenomenon. Cyber crime makes these principles problematic in varying ways and in varying degrees. Unlike real-world crime, it is not physically grounded; it increasingly tends not to occur in a single sovereign territory. The perpetrator of a cyber crime may physically be in Country A, while his victim is in Country B, or his victims are in Countries B, C, and D and so on. The perpetrator may further complicate matters by routing his attack on the victim in Country B through computers in Countries F and G. The result of these and other cyber crime scenarios is that the cyber crime is not committed "in" the territory of a single sovereign state; instead, "pieces" of the cyber crime occur in territory claimed by several different sovereigns. Cyber crime is a primary example of cross-border crime, and so, it raises the issue of jurisdiction. This is a tricky issue. Acts on the Internet that are legal in the state where they are initiated may be illegal in other states, even though the act is not particularly targeted at that state. Jurisdiction conflicts abound, both negative (no state claims jurisdiction) and positive (several states claim jurisdiction at the same time). Above all, it is unclear just what constitutes jurisdiction: is it the place of the act, the country of residence of the perpetrator, the location of the effect, or the nationality of the owner of the computer that is under attack? Or all of these at once? It turns out that countries think quite differently on this issue. The cyber crime statutes of numerous countries show varying and diverging jurisdiction clauses. Since internet allows transactions between persons of various jurisdictions, an international agreement (to be crystallized into a convention, later) is required for any regulation. However, in arriving at a uniform law, varying standards adopted by jurisdictions across the world and the point of balance adopted by them have to be kept in mind. Jurisdiction is a highly debatable issue as to the maintainability of any suit that has been filed. Today with the growing arms of cyberspace the territorial boundaries seems to vanish thus the concept of territorial jurisdiction as envisaged under S.16 of C.P.C. and S.2.of the I.P.C. will have to give way to alternative method of dispute resolution. In addressing the issues of what problems were posed by cyber-crime, Mr. Corell noted that the scope of international cooperation is limited by international agreements and by the national law of the State from which information has been requested. There are also differing priorities between developed and developing countries. These differences complicate international cooperation and expand the gap between the two groups. There is no authoritative, comprehensive elaboration of the principle of universal jurisdiction concerning cyber-crime, he said. There are different views concerning the offences that constitute crimes under international law that are subject to universal jurisdiction. There are also different opinions with respect to the significance of the obligation to prosecute or extradite, as contained in various treaties, as evidence of universal jurisdiction. Whether States are not only permitted, but also required, to exercise jurisdiction with respect to crimes under international law, is also subject to different opinions. CONCLUSION The magnetism of science has always captivated members of the legal profession. People look up to science to rescue them from the experience of uncertainty and the discomfort of difficult legal decisions, and are constantly disappointed. The notion of what constitutes science and what it would take to make law more scientific varies across time. What does not vary is our constant return to the well. We are constantly seduced into believing that some new science will provide an answer to laws dilemmas, and we are constantly disappointed. In the words of Senior Advocate K.T.S. Tulsi -- "There is no doubt that [science] is going to overtake the law enforcement agencies by storm. No one will be able to avoid it. It is like standing on the shore and asking the waves of the sea not to come. What is required is a proper debate about the real value of [science] and whether it fits into the overall picture and what use could be made of it by the investigators." REFERENCES v BOOKS AND ARTICLES A Convergence of Science and Law. A Summary Report of the First Meeting of the Science, Technology and Law Panel: National Research Council. Science and law blog: August 8, 2008. Fingerprints'' Chemical "Footprints"? Science and law blog: August 11, 2008. "Hot Tubbing": Old wine in New Bottles for Expert Witnesses. The New York Times: August 7, 2008, Kenneth Chang. Law, science and technology collaboration: Justice M. Jugannadha Rao-Chairman Law Commission of India. Kolkata Newsline, Thursday, February 01, 2007. A profile of forensic science in juristic journey: Justice Jitendra N. Bhatt. Do space laws need to be modified? S Bhatt Space weddings. I do. I really do. Carol Pinchefsky, 7 July 2008. Tara Blake Garfinkel, Jurisdiction Over Communication Torts: Can You Be Pulled into Another Country's Court System for Making a Defamatory Statement Over the Internet? A Comparison of English and US Law, 9 Transnat'l Law 489, 492 Bryan P. Werley, Aussie Rules: Universal Jurisdiction over Internet Defamation, 18 Temp. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 199, 219 Para 1.16 of the British Law Commission Report on Defamation and the Internet, cited from (visited on 7th August, 2004 1996 US Dist LEXIS 8435 (SDNY 19 June, 1996), cited from R. Matthan: The Law Relating to Computers & the Internet, p. 2 (New Delhi: Butterworths, 2000). In this case, the defendant was an Italian, who had, using an Italian server, set up a website, under the name "Playmen". The court had earlier issued a permanent injunction against the defendant from using that name in any magazine sold, published or distributed in USA. The court accepted that it could not order the website to be shut down as that would amount to asserting that every court in the world had jurisdiction over all information providers on the internet In info age, time for cyber savvy cops. Uma Karve. October 5, 2002. Learning the law, Indian Express. Karina Sudarsan Beware! Cyber Criminals are on the prowl, Navhind Times,March 17, 2002; by Shaikh Jamaluddin. 10 Myths of Electronic Security, Banking Frontiers September, 2002; Rohas Nagpal, Asian School of Cyber Laws. I''ll be watching you! Times of India, December 19, 2002; Zahra Khan, Times News Network. Approaches to Cybercrime Jurisdiction; Susan W. Brenner, University of Dayton - School of Law, Bert-Jaap Koops Tilburg University - Faculty of Law (TILT). Challenge of borderless ''Cyber Crime'' to International Efforts to Combat Transnational Organized Crime Discussed at Symposium, 14 December, 2000. Towards Speedy, Inexpensive, Transparent and Accountable Justice; Justice GC Bharuka, 4th November, 2007. source : www.thinklegal.co.in (ThinkLegal Resources Pvt Ltd) | welcome to loan (http://www.yloan.com/) | Powered by Discuz! 5.5.0 |