The City Law School’s Lynne Townley has co-authored a chapter in the newly updated book, Electronic Evidence and Electronic Signatures.
By Mr John Stevenson (Senior Communications Officer), Published
The reliance on electronic evidence from devices such as computers and mobile phones has become increasingly important in shaping legal proceedings.
The Post Office scandal, which resulted in the wrongful prosecution and conviction of 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses between 2000 and 2014, is a case in point.
The reliability of data, AI and computer evidence, more generally, is being called into question.
The City Law School’s Lynne Townley has co-authored a chapter in the fifth edition of Electronic Evidence and Electronic Signatures published by The University of London Press on 1 August 2021.
With Stephen Mason, a leading authority on electronic evidence, Ms Townley is one of a group of experts in the field in this practitioners' text, providing an exhaustive treatment of the issues surrounding electronic evidence, in both civil and criminal proceedings.
Their chapter, The Competence of Witnesses, considers the knowledge and qualifications of witnesses giving evidence and looks at the trustworthiness of digital data as evidence.
Ms Townley’s involvement in the publication sees her returning to her early research area of forensic evidence and expert witnesses.
She is the lead author (with District Judge Roger Ede) of a practitioner text, Forensic Practice in Criminal Cases, published by The Law Society. She has also been seconded as the national policy advisor to the Crown Prosecution Service on forensics.