Experts

For all of you lawyers and judges out there, this post is for you.  Today, I spent the day with some prosecutors in Durres, whom I met for the first time today.  Somehow in our discussions, we got distracted by a discussion of expert witnesses.  Essentially, if something could be the subject of an expert opinion, financial records for example, then courts often require that an expert analyze the records.  According to the prosecutors, some cases do not require experts because they think anyone should be able to look at the evidence and see if they proved their case.  However, they have begun hiring an expert before submitting the evidence to the court before the court forces the issue.  They must "hire" an independent expert and cannot use someone like an auditor from their office or one of their investigators to analyze the records.  In the eyes of the court, someone from the prosecution office would be biased, whereas a paid expert is not biased (go figure). 

This is where Albania meets the U.S. - prosecutors hire an expert who offers his opinion.  Then defendants hire an expert who, surprise, has a different opinion.  So far, so good.  Then, you would think that the judge (no jury trials here), who is paid to "decide" the case, would make a decision.  Generally speaking, that is not what happens next.  If the court is presented with two conflicting opinions, then the court will hire its own expert to render yet another opinion.  If the judge does this, then he simply throws out the first two opinions. 

Today, after meeting with prosecutors, we had lunch with our favorite Durres judge, the President of the court in Durres, Irvin Metalla or Vini (almost every Albanian has a nickname - Irvin is Vini; Dritan is Tani; Julian is Juli; etc.).  So, we ask Vini his opinion on this subject and we were happy to learn that he just had a case with conflicting opinions and was about to hire an expert for the court.  However, he decided that the case was not that complicated and that no additional expert was needed.  He decided to just make a decision without hiring another expert.  

We were very happy to hear this result.   Everything here is baby steps and we are happy when someone has taken some baby steps.  The best thing about today - lunch at The Virgin Restaurant (don't ask - I have yet to hear why this is the name of the restaurant).  It is a fish place by the Adriatic Sea, and it is very good.  Every time we go there, Vini insists on paying.  This time, before we went, we called and said we were treating him, since we had invited him.  So, he called the restaurant the day before, had them go out and catch a very big, fresh fish, and of course he paid them in advance the day before.  Smart guy.

Happy holidays to all of you - 

Cindy