Jelte Hielkema, born in Assen, the Netherlands, in 1964. M.A. from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Researcher in Criminal Law and Procedure at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Fellow (1 September 1994 – 30 June 1995)
During the ten months of my stay at NIAS, I have been intensively working on two projects. The first one concerns the nucleus I have been a member of. The research carried out by this nucleus was on the law of evidence and the special use of experts as a means of evidence. The initial goal of the nucleus was to make a comparison between the use of experts in the Dutch legal system and the use of experts in the Anglo-American legal system. After numerous discussions and studies, it turned out that this goal was too ambitious. Therefore, we limited our focus to the presentation and application of Anglo-American evidence theories to the Dutch legal system. Three Dutch criminal cases were selected, translated and summarized. The legal position of experts (e.g. their admission and the use of their testimonies) in these cases will be analyzed. Furthermore, it will be analyzed to what extent Anglo-American evidence theories could have been applied as tools to decide these cases.
The second project I have been working on, was the further development and completion of a major research on the position of experts in Dutch criminal cases. This research has both a legal and a social scientific part. After the description and the analysis of the legal position of experts in the Dutch criminal procedure, a file research has been carried out in order to check how often experts were actually involved in criminal cases and whether the rules on the admission of experts had been obeyed.