The defense says it’s a cutting-edge tool that can out ferret out false statements and might keep an innocent man from going to prison.
The prosecution calls it pseudo-science – a gimmick that has no place in a Kansas courtroom.
A Sedgwick County judge settled part of the argument this month when he ruled that Kansas taxpayers won’t be paying $5,000 to an Oregon man who was hired to see if two sisters, ages 13 and 16, were lying when they said they were raped by Robert Contreras.
District Judge Warren Wilbert initially approved the payment but changed his mind after Board of Indigent Services director Pat Scalia walked into his courtroom and balked at making the payment.
She said the range of expert services available to indigent criminal defendants in Kansas is limited. “Structural forensic linguistic analysis” is not one of the covered fields.
“There’s a limit to what taxpayers can bear,” she told Wilbert. “This is not a service that is recognized by the state of Kansas.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/05/27/2820560/judge-rules-against-paying-linguistic.html#storylink=cpy
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