Admissibility and weight of the medical evidence in rape case
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Abstract
Medical evidences in rape cases are important for prosecution. Those evidences are admissible ad used to weigh together with other evidences in court. The doctor's role in court is to provide an opinion that the victim has sexual intercourse or not (evidence of penetration) and may be provide an opinion relating consensual intercourse. This documentary research aims to study the admissible evidences including medical evidences used in court for rape cases from the past until the present time. The data were searched from the Supreme Court's judgement in online database and from other law and medical books in both Thai and English languages. The frequency, percentage, Fisher's exact test, and simple logistic regression were used for statistical significant at p-valuue < 0.05. The result of this study revealed that there were eligible 70 judgements which the conviction was 44 judgements (62.86%). Most important and reliable evidences to support the conviction were the victim's testimony, witness's testimony, circumstantial evidences, and doctor's opinion about sexual assault. In case of child victims, the medical evidences may be interpreted differently from those of the adult victims depending on their genital anatomy. In conclusion, the judge weighs many admissible evidences for adjudication which the more there are corresponding evidences, the more reliability there is.
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Published Manuscripts are the copyright of the Journal of the Justice System. However; the opinions that appeared in the content are the sole responsibility of the author.
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