Swiss Criminal Procedure Code
(Criminal Procedure Code, CrimPC)

¹ The dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings shall ap­point the ex­pert wit­ness.

² The dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings shall provide writ­ten in­struc­tions; these shall con­tain:

a.

the per­son­al de­tails of the ex­pert wit­ness;

b.

if ap­plic­able, no­tice that the ex­pert wit­ness may in­struct oth­ers to as­sist in pre­par­ing the re­port sub­ject to his or her su­per­vi­sion;

c.

the pre­cisely for­mu­lated ques­tions;

d.

the dead­line for com­plet­ing the re­port;

e.

ref­er­ence to the duty of con­fid­en­ti­al­ity that ap­plies to the ex­pert wit­ness and any as­sist­ants;

f.

a ref­er­ence to the pen­al­ties for per­jury by an ex­pert wit­ness in terms of Art­icle 307 SCC⁶⁸.

³ The dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings shall give the parties pri­or op­por­tun­ity to com­ment on the ex­pert wit­ness and on the ques­tions and to sub­mit their own ap­plic­a­tions. The dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings may dis­pense with this re­quire­ment in re­la­tion to labor­at­ory tests, in par­tic­u­lar where they re­late to de­term­in­ing the blood-al­co­hol con­cen­tra­tion or the level of pur­ity of sub­stances, proof of the pres­ence of nar­cot­ics in the blood or the pre­par­a­tion of a DNA pro­file.

⁴ To­geth­er with the in­struc­tions, they shall provide the ex­pert wit­ness with the doc­u­ments and items re­quired to pre­pare the re­port.

⁵ They may re­voke their in­struc­tions at any time and ap­point new ex­pert wit­nesses if this is in the in­terests of the crim­in­al case.

⁶ They may re­quest an es­tim­ate of the costs be­fore is­su­ing the in­struc­tions.

⁷ If a private claimant re­quests an ex­pert re­port, the dir­ect­or of pro­ceed­ings may make in­struct­ing an ex­pert wit­ness de­pend­ent on the private claimant mak­ing an ad­vance pay­ment to cov­er costs.