Sunway campus staff and students were privy to the role of forensic psychology in court cases by University of Auckland’s Professor Glynn Owens.
At the invitation of the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Prof Owens, who regularly testifies as an expert witness on behalf of the prosecution or the defence in criminal matters, explained the changing face of forensic psychology in “Application of Scientific Matters within the Justice System”.
“There is a major effort underway to see what we can rely on and what we can’t. In New Zealand, we are looking at the reliability of bloodstain analysis,” he said.
Around the world, he added, research was ongoing on the reliability of eyewitness testimony and fingerprint analysis.
“On tv, actors can catch a criminal from a really clear fingerprint. In real life, although each individual fingerprint is unique, picking up a fingerprint is a very messy process.”