1.1: Areas of Forensic Science

• Forensic science

  • The science of associating people, places, and things involved in criminal activities; these scientific disciplines assist in investigating and adjudicating criminal and civil cases.

• Criminalistics

  • Generally thought of as the branch of forensic science that involves the collection and analysis of physical evidence generated by criminal activity.

  • It includes areas such as drugs, firearms and tool marks, fingerprints, blood and body fluids, footwear, and trace evidence.

  • Trace evidence– different things that might include fire and explosive residues, glass, soils, hairs, fibers, paints, plastics, and other polymers, wood, metals, and chemicals.
    

• Forensic Pathology

  • It is conducted by a medical examiner, who is a physician, specially trained in clinical and anatomic pathology, whose function is to determine the cause and manner of death in cases where the death occurred under suspicious or unknown circumstances.

  • This often involves a teamwork approach with the autopsy or post-mortem examination of the body as the central function.

• Forensic Anthropology

  • A branch of physical anthropology, the study of humans and their ancestors.

  • Deals with identifying people who cannot be identified through soft tissue features, such as fingerprints or photographs.

  • Analyze skeletal remains to determine if they are human and, if so, the age, sex, height, and other characteristics, such as socioeconomic status, of the deceased.

• Forensic Odontology

  • Also known as Forensic Dentistry.

  • They include identification of human remains in mass disasters, post-mortem x-rays of the teeth can be compared to ante-mortem x-rays, and the comparison of bitemarks.

• Forensic Engineering

  • Involves the investigation and testing of materials, products, or structures that do not function like they were designed or built to; in essence, they “fail.”

  • They’re goal is to locate the cause of the failure; this information can be used to improve the performance or safety of a product or to determine liability in a legal case.

• Toxicology

  • Involves the chemical analysis of body fluids and tissues to determine if a drug or poison is present.

• Behavioral Sciences:

  • The forensic application of the behavioral sciences, psychiatry, psychology, and their related disciplines, ranges from the study of human behavior, including the investigation to the courtroom.

• Questioned Documents

  • This field has many facets, including the comparison of handwritten or typewritten documents to determine their source or authenticity. In addition, questioned document examiners may be called upon to detect erasures or other obliteration, forgeries, altered documents, charred documents, and counterfeit currencies.

  • Questioned document examiners analyze papers and inks to determine their source and age.

• Other specialties

  • Artists, biologists, chemists, and other specialists may be needed to answer questions in investigations as diverse as mass disasters, airplane crashes, missing persons, and art forgeries.

1.2: Laboratory Organizations and Services

• Private Forensic Science Laboratories

  • They mostly serve a niche by performing only one or two examinations, such as drugs, toxicology, or questioned documents—many are “one person” operations, often a retired forensic scientist providing services in the specialties practiced when employed in a public laboratory.

• Public Forensic Science Laboratories

  • They are administered and financed by a unit of government that varies with the jurisdiction.

• FORESIGHT Project

  • A business-guided self-evaluation of forensic science laboratories across the globe. The participating laboratories represent metro, regional, state, and national agencies.

Federal Government Forensic Science Laboratories

• The Department of Justice

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – a unit of the Department of Justice. The FBI laboratory supports the investigative efforts of the FBI and will, upon request, analyze certain types of evidence for state and local law enforcement agencies and forensic science laboratories.

  • Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – is responsible for investigating major illicit drug enterprises and helping interdict shipments of drugs from other countries

  • Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF)

• Department of Homeland Security

  • Secret Service Laboratory – located in Washington, DC. It has two major functions:

    • Area for counterfeiting and fraud.

    • It supports its function of executive protection.

  • This laboratory engages in the research and development of countermeasures and protection of the president and other officials.

• Department of the Interior

  • US Fish and Wildlife Service

    • Animal-oriented forensic science laboratory. Its mission is to support the efforts of the service’s investigators who patrol the national parks.

    • The laboratory also provides consulting services for other countries in their efforts to track people who traffic animal parts.

• The US Postal Service

  • It is considered to be a quasi-federal agency.

  • The service maintains a laboratory that supports the service’s efforts to combat postal fraud.

  • This effort mainly involves questioned document analysis, although the laboratory also has fingerprint and traces evidence capabilities.

1.3: Laboratory Services

Standard Laboratory Services

• Evidence Intake

  • All forensic science laboratories have a system for receiving evidence. The evidence intake unit will have a secured area for storing evidence, the size of which depends again on the volume of work: it may be a room or a warehouse.

  • Chain of Custody – A process that tracks the movement of evidence through its collection, safeguarding, and analysis lifecycle by documenting each person who handled the evidence, the date/time it was collected or transferred, and the purpose for the transfer.

  • Modern intake systems use computerized systems that generate barcodes that are placed on each item of evidence or its container.

    • The barcode is scanned by each unit of the laboratory that takes possession of that item, so the evidence can be easily traced by the computer as it makes its way through the laboratory.

• Analytical Sections

  • Once the evidence has been received by the laboratory, it will be assigned to one or more forensic units for analysis; each unit, in turn, assigns a scientist to take charge of the evidence and its analysis.

  • In some laboratories, one forensic scientist may be certified to examine several of these evidence types; in larger laboratories that have the luxury of specialization, a scientist may examine only one or two.

1.4: Administrative Issues with Forensic Science Laboratories

Accountability

• The major reason for the state of affairs is that forensic science laboratories historically have arisen within police agencies whose focus is not on science.

• Most people wanted the laboratories to be accredited.

• The accreditation process is rigorous and involves a self-study process, an extensive checklist of requirements, and an on-site evaluation by trained members of the accrediting board.

• American Society for Testing and Materials, International (ASTM)– publishes voluntary consensus standards for a wide variety of sciences, including forensic science.
  

Access to Laboratory Services

• The majority of forensic science laboratories in the United States are funded by the public and administered by a unit of federal, state, or local government.

  • These laboratories support the functions of the parent agency or the government.

  • Very few public forensic science laboratories will permit an accused person access to forensic science services even if that person is willing and able to pay for them

• Private laboratories serve defendants, but the cost is generally high and often courts will not authorize enough money for indigent defendants to cover the costs of analysis and testimony.

• One of the recommendations made by the National Academy of Sciences was that forensic laboratories should be independent, either administratively or financially, from law enforcement.

1.5: Forensic Scientist

Forensic scientists have two major duties:

• Performing scientific analysis of evidence and;

• Offering expert testimony in criminal and civil proceedings.

A forensic scientist must be:

• Well-versed in the methods and requirements of good science in general and in the specific techniques used in the particular disciplines being practiced.

• Familiar with the rules of evidence and court procedures in the relevant jurisdictions.

• Well-trained and experienced in terms of analyzing evidence and examining them as well.

• Able to explain his or her findings to a judge or jury in a court of law.

Many important aspects other than science affect how evidence gets analyzed:

• Chain of custody

  • Forensic scientist must be constantly aware of the requirements of the chain of custody. Evidence can be rendered inadmissible if the chain of custody is not properly constructed and maintained.

• Turn-Around Time

  • If the forensic science laboratory cannot analyze and report evidence in a timely manner, the laboratory’s stakeholders can’t make use of the information.

• Preservation and spoilage

  • Forensic scientists have a duty to preserve as much of the evidence as is practical in each case and to ensure that the evidence is not spoiled or ruined.

• Sampling

  • This often happens with large drug cases in which there may be hundreds or thousands of similar exhibits. The opposite may also be true: insufficient sample for complete or repeat analysis.

• Reports

  • Reports of forensic science analysis are scientific reports and should be complete like any other scientific report.