The report is an exhibit. Treat it as one.
How a judicial officer reads a forensic page
A forensic report is hearsay until the law makes it something else. The Criminal Procedure Act still gives the court a lawful way to receive affidavit evidence from a medical practitioner or from a person in the scientific service — but only if the document is what it claims to be. Start with the heading, the laboratory number, and the names of those who collected, received, analysed and signed. A chain of custody is simply a sentence with dates.
The backlog is real — and it is still not a finding
Parliamentary answers this year still put hundreds of thousands of DNA exhibit entries on the laboratory books. A large share are intelligence samples that are not themselves the court report. The average age of some entries has been measured in many hundreds of days. That is an institutional problem, and it is not a reason to scold the inspector who arrived with the only bag that was sealed.
A post-mortem is a conversation with a person who cannot be recalled to clarify a sentence. Read the cause, the manner, the time estimates, and the language of uncertainty. “Consistent with” is not “was”. Audit reports belong in the same family: they look official, they use numbers, and they can be wrong in a tidy font.
A working method for the Monday list
• Name the document. DNA, J88, post-mortem, ballistic, chemistry, audit — they are not interchangeable.
• Follow the bag. Who collected, who sealed, who booked, who analysed.
• Separate the science from the adjective. “Match”, “consistent with”, “cannot exclude” and “proves” are different verbs.
• Do not postpone forever, and do not proceed blind. Record why the court is waiting, and for which numbered exhibit.
A note from Neelan Karikan. Authority stems from action, and the first action here is to read the bag before we bless the number. A magistrate who is understood in that work will rarely need to raise a voice.