La prueba pericial criminalística: particularidades en Ecuador

Abstract

Criminalistic expertise began to be used in criminal proceedings in the continental European system during the 19th century; in South America achieves greater presence with the reforms that were implemented from the last decade of the 20th century, due to the consolidation of criminalistics as a science by service of criminal investigation, which constantly appropriates the development of science and new technologies. As a procedural institution, the expert evidence has a variable condition in the tract of the accusatory criminal process; In the investigative phase, it becomes a source or act of evidence, which is introduced to the oral trial through the means of evidence authorized by law and is assumed as such, when it is subjected to oral, public and contradictory debate and is capable of create conviction in the judge. From the theory of evidentiary law it has a dual legal nature, it constitutes a means of personal and real evidence. In the Ecuadorian procedural system it is generally used by the prosecution and the figure of the technical consultant is not expressly recognized, being only admitted in legal practice the expert witness, who is offered similar normative treatment as the ordinary expert. The chain of custody of expertise is assumed in accusatory court criminal proceedings as a guarantee of due criminal process, whose purpose is to guarantee the authenticity of the evidence, in the sense of certifying that the evidence obtained at the scene of the crime is the same one that was sent to the forensic laboratory, the same one that was analyzed and the one that was the basis for substantiating the conclusions of the expert opinion and the sentence that put an end to the process. The criminalistic expert action that takes place in the Ecuadorian criminal process constitutes a genuine act of evidence that, in order to be assumed in oral proceedings, as a means of lawful expert evidence, must resist the own questioning of criminal debate necessarily in two senses, first, in terms of maxims of scientific experiences or specialized and, second, with respect to compliance with the requirements of the chain of custody of the fingerprint or evidence.