Role of Forensic Science and Digital Evidence in Criminal Justice

The integration of law, science, and technology in the evolving criminal justice environment has re-established the way guilt and innocence are established. Justice cannot simply be done but must be seen to be done and as rightly pointed out this philosophy is more so applicable in an age where scientific accuracy and electronic footprint are becoming more and more the deciding factor in a judicial process. The use of oral testimony and circumstantial evidence which has been in existence since time immemorial is being supplemented and sometimes supplanted by evidential science and digital evidence, redefining the norms of evidence and legal reasoning. In this paper, the critical examination will be made on how forensic science including DNA profiling, fingerprint analysis and forensic pathology is increasingly becoming important in offering objectivity and scientific certainty in criminal trials. Likewise, it looks at the role of digital evidence, such as electronic documents, phone records, surveillance video, and social media communications, which is becoming more significant under the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, in particular, in the laws on electronic evidence. The paper also examines the jurisprudential change into scientific evidence to emphasize how the courts are turning to expert opinions and computer trails more and more to support facts, minimize wrongful convictions, and bolster the reliability of the adjudicatory system. It concludes that the incorporation of forensic science and digital evidence is not only a technological development, but also a legal change that needs to take place to bring about fairness, accuracy, and integrity to the contemporary criminal justice system.