OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 31 



IT. 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO MEMORIALIZE 

 THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MASSACHU- 

 SETTS ON THE SUBJECT OF EXPERT TESTIMONY. 



Read, Oct. 14, 1873. 



Your Committee, who had in charge the duty of presenting to the 

 Legislature the importance of some legislative action upon the subject 

 of employing the testimony of the class of witnesses known as experts 

 in the trials of causes in courts, respectfully report. 



The Chairman received a notice from " the Committee on the Judi- 

 ciary on the part of the House " that they would " give a hearing to 

 parties interested in an order relative to medical testimony in criminal 

 cases," on the 28th day of March last. And although the order, in its 

 terms, was more limited in its scope than the subject with which your 

 Committee deemed themselves to be charged, the Chairman attended at 

 the time appointed, and endeavored to present what was believed to be 

 the views of the Academy upon the general subject of expert testi- 

 mony, with the reasons why, in their judgment, some efficient measures 

 of reform in respect to this was important and desirable. 



These views were listened to by the Committee with great courtesy 

 and apparent attention. To aid them in understanding the purposes at 

 which the Academy aimed, as well as to suggest some of the means by 

 which, in their judgment, these pui'poses might be attained, the draft 

 of a bill or legislative act was laid before them, which had been sub- 

 mitted for consideration to able and discreet jurists, and others of 

 acknowledged sagacity, as well as several members of the Academy, 

 and had been by them approved. Of this the Committee were fully 

 apprised ; as well as of the fact that, in what they were doing upon 

 this subject, the Academy were acting in harmony with three other 

 associations of gentlemen interested in science, — viz.. The Suffolk Dis- 

 trict Medical Society, The Boston Society for Medical Observation, 

 and The Boston Society for Medical Science, — and that the attention of 

 these Associations had been specially called to the subject of expert 

 testimony, by- more or less of their members having been required to 

 give such testimony in matters of scientific inquii'y and investigation. 



