Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-07-24

UNKNOWN: You must appreciate, what you have to appreciate is that the work is not carried out just by myself alone, I have a research assistant with me who actually does the reconstruction at my instructions, and then afterwards, we then look at the photograph after the reconstruction had been carried out.

MR VISSER: And, on that point, who was your assistant here?

UNKNOWN: It was my wife, Maria Vanezis, who carried it out.

MR VISSER: What this article of Mr Shahrom says at page 198 is that in marking exact locations, peg marks, sometimes requires subjective judgement that is required.  Do you go along with that?

UNKNOWN: We are talking about, are we talking about clay model facial reconstruction here, or computerised reconstruction?

MR VISSER: No, no, we are talking about facial reconstruction first of all?

UNKNOWN: Yes, I mean there is - what you have to appreciate is that the landmarks on the skull are chosen by a person who is trained in knowing where landmarks are, in anatomy and so they can actually place the landmarks correctly, but, and so there is a degree of skill, that is used by the person carrying out the work.

MR VISSER: Yes.

UNKNOWN: From that point of view, it is subjective.

MR VISSER: t.

UNKNOWN: And then the landmarks on the face were also put again in by the person again, on the face, again that is subjective.

MR VISSER: Who would have done that in this case?

UNKNOWN: That would have been my wife.

MR VISSER: And any subjective judgement would have been exercised by her, in doing so?

UNKNOWN: ...(indistinct), well, what you have to appreciate is that the reconstruction is like any technician, the reconstruction is carried out under my instruction, the landmark placement by someone who is trained, is fairly straightforward.  Although it is a subjective judgement, you are only allowed a certain degree of limitation and freedom to make that judgement,  In other words you have to sort of follow the rules and place the landmarks where the skull dictates.  So for example if you can see clearly the point such as the end of the nose, the size of the ...(indistinct) and so on in the skull, they are straightforward to place, but occasionally you need to use your subjective, your own assessment to do this, and yes, she obviously had this discretion to do this, yes.

MR VISSER: Yes.   You just mentioned that it is rather straightforward, but I gathered from page 198 of the article which you sent us, right at the top in the right-hand column, it says
"A further drawback is that the error of the positioning peg marks on the images, may be as high as two to three millimetres in all directions from the true location."
So, it does not appear from a reading of this, that it is all that straightforward, it takes some skill?

UNKNOWN: Well, what you have to appreciate is that I have sent you a paper to give some guidance on our technique that we use, what you've got to appreciate is what you have there is based on the methodology.  The principle is the same, but the software and the technology is going back to 1990 and slightly earlier.  We have got newer software which enables us to be much more accurate with our landmark placements and the reason why I sent you that paper is because that gives you reconstruction and it gives you superimposition together.  But we do have a more recent paper which I told Dr Naidoo about, which should be made available to you, it was published at the beginning of this year in Forensic Science International, which would give - if you really want to go into that detail regarding the reconstruction, then that is the paper you should have a look at, that is the most up to date.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

UNKNOWN: This is a problem with publishing papers in the past, you know, you don't stand still, you develop things you see.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry Mr Visser, if I could just intervene.  Professor, is that article that you are referring to the one that you've made reference to in the footnote of your report?  An article by yourself, Forensic Science International, 108, pages 81 to 95?

UNKNOWN: That's come out I think, in the February 2000, that one.   That is the one I think.

CHAIRPERSON: That is the one you have made reference to now?

UNKNOWN: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  Sorry, Mr Visser.

MR VISSER: Thank you Mr Chairperson.    Just allow me a moment.  I am sorry, if I did ask you this question before, because I am following your line of evidence, with my questions, please forgive me, but did you make an assessment of the age of the skull since death?

MR VISSER: You didn't.

UNKNOWN: No, no, all I did was, I looked at the skull, saw that it was an adult female and I did not make any ...(indistinct) assessment, no.

MR VISSER: Alright.  Could we possibly agree on categories of certainty as far as identification is concerned.  Would you agree with four possible categories, the one is possible, the second indeterminate, the third is a positive identification and the fourth possible category may be called perhaps rule-outs?  Would you agree broadly speaking that we can talk of those four categories as far as identification is concerned?

UNKNOWN: Rule-out, positive, indeterminate and the other one you said was possible?

MR VISSER: Possible, yes.

UNKNOWN: I mean that is obviously the big, we have a lot of flexibility ... but broadly speaking, yes.

MR VISSER: Yes, well are you going to concentrate in fact, on the possible.  Because let me immediately put it to you that in terms of the article, looking at page 200 and I said to you before that Iskan and Loth appear to be in conformity with this article and what I was referring to was at page 200 where this article says
"... however, we must stress that the degree of medical certainty of this method (and this refers to a video superimposition) cannot be considered adequate for positive identification.  It is used in combination with other corroborative evidence when confirmatory evidence, such as fingerprinting, dental records and DNA profiling are not available."
So what it says, if I understand the English, is that it is a good, it is a useful method of providing assistance for identification where other foolproof, if I may call it that, information does not exist.  Would you agree with that?

UNKNOWN: That is quite correct, I agree, yes.

MR VISSER: Now, the degree it says
"... the degree of medical certainty of this method increases when more anatomical landmarks on the ante-mortem photograph match those on the skull, especially when the dentition landmarks are also included."

UNKNOWN: That is correct.

MR VISSER: Those were not included in this particular case?

UNKNOWN: That is t.

MR VISSER: Yes.  The value of superimposition has been challenged on the basis that the alignment and enlargement factors are too variable and you refer to Defaur - do I pronounce that correctly, or the article does, emphasise strongly that
"... this method cannot be used for positive identification, since the magnification and angulation of the original picture, are unknown.  It has more value in exclusion, than in positive identification ...",
would you agree with that last statement?

UNKNOWN: Certainly you cannot positively identify, well, in one or two circumstances you can, but mostly you cannot.

MR VISSER: Yes.

UNKNOWN: I think one has to be also cautious on the exclusion side as well, again you can mostly exclude, but again bearing in mind there's sometimes difficulties with photographs and you may not be able to exclude a hundred percent, again.

MR VISSER: Yes.

UNKNOWN: But generally speaking it is slightly better for exclusion than for, you know, giving you a positive ID, ...(indistinct).

MR VISSER: Yes, what you have just said is in fact confirmed by Dr Loth, to whom I incidentally spoke before, absolutely confirmed.
	It goes on, and you must forgive me for reading this because this is crucial in our submission.