Serious Fraud Office to set standards for electronic evidence

A special Electronic Presentation of Evidence Group (EPE) has been formed by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to develop standards for presenting evidence in court electronically.

Representatives of defence solicitors, the Court Service, Criminal Justice IT, the Legal Services Commission and the Office of Government Commerce are co-operating to enable evidence to be presented in graphical or diagramatic form on screens to juries, and to improve remote access to larger public inquiries.

The group's aim is to develop standards and help drive the adoption of EPE by more prosecutors in more courts to make the presentation of cases clearer, quicker and easier to understand.

The move was revealed in the SFO's annual report, which detailed the prosecution of a scam where use of the system was central.

A series of 'independent' UK companies had been used to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds in fraudulent up-front fees for arranging non-existing finance for overseas clients. The main fraudster was gaoled for 6 years.

The lead SFO prosecuting QC for the case described the process as 'a huge leap forward', enabling key pieces of evidence to be displayed to jurors without fumbling through mountains of paperwork.

The move follows the development of Docman - a new document handling system which has helped the SFO cut the time spent preparing cases and making evidence available to the defence.

The system was developed in partnership with supplier LogicaCMG who hope to launch a commercial version this autumn.

The SFO claimed the system will reduce investigation times by up to 16 weeks.

'We have learnt the lessons of previous attempts to do this, and we are confident that there are efficiency savings to be gained in terms of time as well as opportunities for greater effectiveness and certainty in understanding the evidence,' said Robert Wardle, director of the SFO.

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See also:

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The case for the prosecution

Evidence-gathering needs to improve if IT criminals are to be caught and punished  19 Aug 2004

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