June 07, 2005

Jonathan B. Wilson cautions against jumping to conclusions regarding the expert testimony provisions of recent legislation in Georgia which we and others have criticized (see Jun. 2). In particular, he writes, "while the House amendment limited the impact of the Daubert rule to only civil cases, that amendment did not have the effect of widening the scope of permitted testimony in criminal cases. It merely kept the pre-amendment law in place for criminal cases. If Georgia law now admits too much junk science in criminal cases, that shortcoming was already present in the law prior to the 2005 amendment." A bill passed by the Georgia Senate earlier would have applied Daubert to civil and criminal cases alike, but the House saw things differently. The entire post is here.