Comprehensive Examination - FRSC530

Virginia Statute 19.2, 270.5

lecture established that DNA is reliable evidence

Virginia Statute 19.2, 310.5

• Establishment of databank

  • Subjected to examination of your bodily fluids if convicted of a crime

  • Can be used to go forward in a trial, but if it is not used, it is destroyed

Virginia Statute 19.2, 187.1

• Chain of custody within a forensic laboratory

  • Laboratories established by the ATF

  • Allows the prosecution to make inferences and presumptions that the evidence was handled with regular fashion

Habeas Corpus

• The great writ

• Came to the U.S. through England

• s Magna Carta

• Means “bring me” or “produce the body”

• Ability of someone incarcerated through their attorney asking that they be brought into court to learn why they are being held in custody and have the court decide whether they should be released

Appointment of Experts for Indigent Defendants

• Defendant brought in at arraignment is told through the judge certain rights that they have and are given the option to have the court provide them an attorney or they may provide their own

• Based upon a financial guide, if the individual falls below a certain monetary value of self-worth, then the court will appoint an attorney to represent them

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis

• Questionable field of forensic science

  • Has come under close scrutiny

• Has the ability, based upon interpretation and knowledge of the origin of the blood, can give the judge and jury an indication of what happened

Anatomy of a Case

• Grand jury

• Indictment

• Trial

• In a criminal case, the burden of proof is on the government, and established beyond a reasonable doubt

• In a civil case, the burden of proof is the preponderance of the evidence (51%)

• Jury must be unanimous on guilt and sentencing

• For closing statements, both sides must refer only to the evidence presented in the closing statements

Discovery in Criminal Cases

• Defendant in a criminal case is entitled to learn about the evidence presented against them in trial, entitled to know if the government has exculpatory evidence

• Get discovery by filing a motion that gets heard in court, and the court rules on it and the judge determines what the discovery will consist of, whether it be photographs, reports, statements that the defendant made to law enforcement (does not include statements made by witnesses unless they are exculpatory)

Exculpatory Evidence

any information, forensic result, or testimony that tends to prove a defendant is innocent or not guilty of the charges

Expert Testimony

• Experts are individuals that can present evidence beyond the knowledge of the average juror to help the jury come to their conclusion

• The standard for experts is low, but the judge ultimately determines if the expert is competent

Direct / Circumstantial Evidence

• Direct: the type of evidence that doesn’t require an inference

  • Individual presents note to bank teller to give them the money

• Circumstantial: a reasonable inference from a scenario

  • Person standing over bloody body with a bloody knife

Spencer v. Commonwealth

• Serial killer and rapist—would break into people’s homes before they returned and would attack

• David Vascuez is questioned and he ultimately confesses to the murder, but similar murders continue to occur

• Vascuez is exonerated after 5 years in prison after Spencer is found guilty

  • First person in the U.S. to be convicted of capital murder based on DNA and was executed

O.J. Simpson Case

• Shoeprints were one of the leads due to bloody prints

  • Didn’t have all the evidence but this could have been used in the criminal trial

• Blood-stained sock was found in his bedroom—belonged to one of the victims

• Simpson was found not guilty, but in a separate civil case, he was found guilty

Lululemon Murder Case

• Employee arrives early in the morning and discovered a trail of blood

  • Jana Murray was deceased, and in the bathroom was Brittany Norwood, who was tied up in duct tape but alive

• Norwood said two men came in and assaulted them near closing time

• Size 12 footprints were found in the blood

  • Norwood did this to try and cover her tracks

• Norwood tried to use the defense of insanity, but this did not work; it was clearly a crime of passion that included 4-5 different weapons

• Dr. Williams explained how the beating took place

Stephen Scher Case Pennsylvania

• Stephen was at a camp trip with his friend Dillon and said his friend had shot himself with a shotgun

  • Tripped over his shoelaces while trying to shoot an animal

• Scher divorced his wife and ended up marrying Dillon’s wife after his passing

• Case was reopened and it was found that high-velocity blood spatter was on Scher’s boots, indicating he had been in close range

  • He ends up confessing that they got into a heated argument and the shotgun accidentally went off

People v. Jennings

• Wife wakes up to find gas light on, tells her husband, and when he gets up to check, he is attacked by a man and is shot and killed

• Man was found limping not far away off the side of the road and was questioned and searched—he happened to have a revolver on him with the same caliber used at the crime

• Attacker had entered through a window that had been freshly painted, leaving four fingerprints to be examined

  • Recently out of prison and his filed prints were compared to those on the window and they were a match

  • Four men from Chicago PD (and went to Scotland Yard) came in to give expert testimony

Sam Shephard Case

• Shephard was the victim

• Bloody body of his wife was found upstairs after a long night of partying with friends

• Shephard was arrested and found guilty during trial, but he ends up filing for habeus corpus due to the amount of press from Cleveland newspapers, as well as his due process being denied

  • Case is retired and Dr. Paul Kirk states that the blood spatter indicates the killed was left-handed, and Shephard was right-handed

  • Son tried to file civil case against his father’s wrongful imprisonment, but it did not go well since many thought he was guilty

Frye Case

• Early version of lie detector (polygraph) test

• Not accepted in the scientific community

Daubert Case

• Gives the judge the ability to listen to the scientific evidence outside of the hearing as a jury

• Makes the judge the gatekeeper for scientific evidence

• Find your own experts in certain areas of scientific evidence and bring them to court… examine them and judge will rely on their input

Kumho Tire Case

• Supreme Court took into consideration technical engineering practices and procedures—faulty tire

• Held that a trial judge’s gatekeeping obligation applies not only to scientific expert testimony, but also to testimony based on technical and other specialized knowledge

People v. Sutherland

• Highlights the important of addressing errors of fact that occur during the prosecution of the case, even after a final judgement has been entered, if those errors were not known at the time

• For evidence to be admitted, it must be relevant to the case and meet certain legal standards, such as being lawfully obtained and not subject to exclusionary rules

  • Only reliable, widely accepted forensic science can be used in court

Melendez-Diaz v. Commonwealth

• Forensic scientists were not present at trial to present the certificate

  • Violated 6th Amendment right to confront witnesses

• Supreme Court ruling—author of testimonial documents must be in court for cross examination

Wayne Williams Case

• About 20 murders of young men and a few girls, predominantly African American

  • Strangulation and happened to be found in the water or around it

  • Many of the bodies had fibers of very descriptive color

  • Police were surveilling and saw a car go across a bridge, stop, and then heard a splash—he was questioned, identified himself, and said he was meeting a young girl who was into music to determine if she had any talent

  • With a search warrant, police found an abundance of carpeting on the floor and vehicle he was driving

• Tracked down the carpets manufacturer and determined it was made in Virginia and only sold for a 1-year period—small chance of it being found in the Atlanta region (which is where this takes place)

Patler v. Commonwealth

• Leading case for circumstantial evidence

• George Rockwell—head of the American Nazi party shot Walsh

• Witnesses saw a middle-aged white male with dark hair, a dark jacket, and wet pants climb off a distant roof

  • Roof was flooded with water

  • Tar found on his pants were similar to tar from room

• Pistol and jacket were found in the bushes

  • Known casing from his private range were the same as the casing from the pistol found at the scene (in the bushes)

Coors Murder Case

• Grandson of Coors owner, Adolf Coors III, was murdered by John Corbid

  • Corbid previously committed first degree murder but escaped prison and later came to Los Angeles, then eventually Colorado

  • Went by the name Walter Osborne

• He began to stalk Adolf, who had planned to move to a ranch 15 miles outside of Denver

  • He ends up blocking the roadway with his car, Coors confronts him, they get into a fight, and Coors was shot

  • 
    

  • Evidence consisted of blood on the railing and on the bridge, as well as a ransom note he had sent to the Coors family for $200,000

  • Adolf’s body was found 7 months later in the mountains

• Corbid had burned his car in NJ and moved to Vancouver

  • Found through fingerprint identification when he tried to renew his driver’s license

  • Layers of soil were found inside the fender of his car that linked him to the mountains where Adolf’s body was dumped

Brady v. Maryland

• Discovery and exculpatory evidence case

• Admitted to being involved in a robbery but claimed Boblit was responsible for the murder

• Landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in which the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence (in favor of the accused) from the defendant

John Webster Murder Case

• George Parkman would frequently lend Webster money but was not often repaid

• Janitor remembered seeing the two arguing and the door being locked

  • He found parts of a body in a waste tank vault

• Parkman found out Webster had pledged as collateral a set of stones, and Webster had also pledged the same stones as collateral to another person

  • Parkman wanted his money back and Webster was not able to come up with it, and because of the argument, Webster killed Parkman

• Set of false teeth were found in Webster’s laboratory and parts of charred bones

Adolph Luetgart Case

• Lived in Chicago with his wife and had immigrated from Germany

• When his business fell off due to recession, his wife wasn’t happy

  • His wife suddenly disappeared, and he said that she got mad one morning and stormed out—isn’t sure where she went, but maybe back to Germany

• At Adolph’s sausage factory, a thick, red scum had spread out onto the floor

  • Inside the vat, they found a corsage, a ring with the initials L.L., and four small pieces of bone

  • He had purchased a lot of pot ash (alkaline) to dissolve flesh and bone

  • Forensic anthropology

Lindbergh Kidnapping Case

• Charles Lindbergh’s baby boy was kidnapped and murdered in Hopewell, NJ

• Home employee went to check on the baby in the middle of the night and found the baby to be missing from his crib

  • Found a ransom note near a window as well as a 3-part homemade ladder, chisel, and some footprints

  • About 12 more ransom notes demanded money

• Dr. Condin, a friend, met with an individual at a cemetary and delivered $50,000 of ransom money, as well as gold certificates

  • Every bill and serial number were recorded and the gold certificates

• Some years later, the gold certificates had to be turned in and exchanged for their value, as they were now deemed illegal

  • Bruno Hauptmann paid for case and the bill had matched one of the serial numbers, so his license plate was recorded

• Hauptmann was a criminal from Germany and was arrested by authorities

  • Ransom note money was found in his home, as well as gold certificate money, but he said the money was given to him when buying stocks by an individual who had fled to Germany

  • Handwritten phone number belonging to Dr. Condin was found

Expert Dr. Jeffries Wymann

• Credited as the founder of forensic anthropology

• Helped in the harvard case involving John Webster and George Parkman

• Guided investigators to evaluate the evidence to determine whether they were the remains of Parkman

  • Concluded that the bones and dentures were similar to Parkman’s physique and jaw shape

Expert William Bodziak

• O.J. Simpson case

• FBI’s leading expert in footwear and footwear impressions

• Determines only 200 pairs of the shoe from the print have been sold in the U.S.

  • Bloomingdales employee remembers waiting on Simpson, but not if he purchased the shoes or not

Expert Dr. Paul Kirk

• World renowned as one of the leading criminalists

  • “The American Father of Criminalists”

• Involved in the Shephard case

Expert Dr. Lynn Kimsey

one of the experts for the Vincent Brothers—entomologist

Expert Albert Osborn

• Questioned document examiner in the Lindbergh case

  • Wrote the textbook on questioned document examination for the U.S.

• Tried to match writing between the known and unknown of Hauptmann

  • English was not his first language, so some of the verbiage in the ransom note was a mix of dramatic and English

• Was asked to give a sample of his writing (Hauptmann)—5th Amendment right violation?

  • 1980 — giving an exemplar is not a violation of your 5th Amendment right of self-incrimination

• Determined that based on the evidence, it is overwhelmingly likely that Hauptmann had written the ransom notes

Expert George Dorsey

• Was a key witness in the Adolph Luetgard case

• Took interest in forensic anthropology

• Based on the four recovered bones, he determined they came from a human body, and indicated where he believed they came from

Expert Arthur Koehler

• Worked for the U.S. Forest Service and was an expert in wood

• Sent a letter to NJ Police and said he’d be willing to help in the Lindbergh case, and they accepted

  • Police sent wood from the ladder, but he says he believes he will be more helpful if he can examine the ladder in person

• Determined the type of wood it was made of and tracked down the manufacturer to a lumber mill in SC

• At Hauptmann’s house, in one of the corners, there were boards missing in the floor

  • Upon comparison of the nail holes, it was found they matched those in the wood used to manufacture the ladder

Expert Albert Hamilton

• Had a background in patent medicine that also portrayed himself as a criminalist—these existed before forensic scientists

• Claimed he was an expert in pretty much everything (chemistry, handwritting, toxicology, embalming, anatomy, ballistics, etc.)

• Determined Charles Stielow’s gun was the murder weapon

  • Said he found 9 bumps inside the 22-caliber pistol, and when looking at the bullets recovered, he found marks that would have been put there by the 9 bumps in the barrel

Expert Sir Alex Jeffries

• Invented DNA fingerprinting in the 1980s

Adversarial System

• Criminal justice is part of this system; a system where there are two sides

  • One side is the government, whether federal, commonwealth, county/city, town, etc.

  • Other side is defendant

  • Civil side — plaintiff (who is suing) and defendant

Civil

• Concerned with injuries to individuals, or entities

  • Example: when you stop at a light and for whatever reason, someone runs into the back of your vehicle and causes whiplash—desire of competence

    • May wind up suing them—cannot go to jail on civil end

      • May become incercerated?

    • Same rules of evidence but different outcomes

Felony

• Examples include rape, robbery, murder, grand larceny

• Punishable by a minimum of 1 year in penitentiary

• Much more serious, and maximum can be life in prison in VA

Misdemeanor

• Cases or charges for which the individual can get no more than 12 months in jail

  • Possible fines involved, but generally considered a petty offense

Arrest Warrant

• Piece of paper propagated by an individual (in VA, called a magistrate)

  • Search warrant, arrest warrant, various instances involving mental health

• Magistrates are not judges, but the lowest level of the judiciary

  • Has to make determination if he/she should be released or jailed

    • Called an arraignment—this happens before the magistrate and ensures the individual understands the charges

    • Will be brought into the court and have another arraignment, and a real judge (not magistrate) will go through what the magistrate went through

      • If you can afford an attorney, if you need one, give another court date, provides all necessary information

    • Officer will be able to go out and arrest/search

Grand Jury

• In the early days, was a very powerful group of individuals in England

  • Individuals that met every now and then, and they talked about what they had learned what has been going on in the area

    • Investigative body in the early days

• Modern/Today: in VA, consists between 5-7 people and are chosen at random

  • Meet, by statute, once a month—what happens is they prepare indictments for each of these meetings

    • Indictment will say: “______ killed ______,” and will give a code section, but not information regarding when and where

  • Detective will say what they discovered, and will tell what their investigation discloses

    • If, after listening to the detective without the defendant and lawyer present, the grand jury will take a vote and determine if there is enough probable cause to give an indictment

Probable Cause

• Will not be convicted on the base of an arrest warrant; the belief that there is a reason to believe he/she may commit a crime

  • Very low standard and hard to quantify—no more than 10-15% as a scale

General District Court

• Misdemeanor

• Lowest level of court

• Not entitled to a jury trial

  • Can try the case and say you’re not guilty, but the judge themselves will try the case

• Different General District Courts, from lowest to highest:

  • Juvenal and Domestic Relations Court: juvenile cases are heard in this court—can involve domestic issues or anything involving minors

  • Civil Division: minor civil cases of aggravated value of $5,000 or less

  • Circuit Court: called a court of record

    • Example: charged with murder

    • In a murder charge, one is entitled to a preliminary hearing, which consists of…

      • Charged with murder, comes in again, has a hearing and not a trial

      • Commonwealth wants to convince judge there is enough evidence to hold him/her’s case in motion until they can be tried in a circuit court

      • Want to know if there is probable cause that the crime has been committed—not a trial

***Review individually — too much

Historically, all jury members were…

• Property owners

• Women were not allowed—all male, as women did not have the right to vote or jury

  • Eventually changed from property owners to those who can vote

  • Now a combination of voting and other stuff—jury commissions

Discovery

the evidence that will be used against the defendant in trial

Felony Jury

• Consists of 12 people

• Need a variety of vocations, backgrounds, race, age, etc.

• Prosecutor should educate the jury and paint through the evidence of what happened

• Witness is always subject to cross examination when put on

Instructions of the Jury

• Told what the law is and about the presumption of evidence, the burden of proof, what is referred to as circumstantial evidence, and the elements of the crime

• The jury has the option to take it back to the jury room, and when this is over, they will hear closing argument, which include (1) opening argument/statements, and (2) closing argument/statements

• Now the jury must deliberate—judge may provide the sentence recommended by the jury or modify it to a lesser sentence, not increase it

With a reasonable degree of scientific certainty

• When asking an expert if their opinion is to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty

  • Decided this was not a question

  • U.S. Attorney’s office, by the Department of Justice, has told all prosecutors/experts that they will no longer be asked this question; it is forbidden

Filing a motion

• A formal, written request asking a judge to make a specific ruling, order, or decision in a case, such as suppressing evidence

• Must be scheduled with all parties present

• Notice to prosecutor must be given

• Evidence should be given, for example, as to why witnesses shouldn’t be disclosed to the defendant