<CHAP NUM="1" ID="CH.00.001">chapter 1
<FM><TTL>Introduction</TTL>
<KTSET><TTL>Key Terms</TTL>
<KT>algor mortis</KT>
<KT>autopsy</KT>
<KT>expert witness</KT>
<KT>livor mortis</KT>
<KT>Locard’s exchange principle</KT>
<KT>rigor mortis</KT>
</KTSET><OBJSET><TTL>Learning Objectives</TTL>
<P>After studying this chapter you should be able to:</P>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Define and distinguish forensic science and criminalistics</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Recognize the major contributors to the development of forensic science</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Account for the rapid growth of forensic laboratories in the past forty years</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Describe the services of a typical comprehensive crime laboratory in the criminal justice system</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Compare and contrast the <ITAL>Frye</ITAL> and <ITAL>Daubert</ITAL> decisions relating to the admissibility of scientific evidence in the courtroom</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Explain the role and responsibilities of the expert witness</P></OBJ>
<OBJ><P><INST>< </INST>Understand what specialized forensic services, aside from the crime laboratory, are generally available to law enforcement personnel</P></OBJ></OBJSET>
<CASE><TTL>Ted Bundy, Serial Killer</TTL>
<P>The name Ted Bundy is synonymous with the term <ITAL>serial killer</ITAL>. This handsome, gregarious, and worldly onetime law student is believed to be responsible for forty murders between 1964 and 1978. His reign of terror stretched from the Pacific Northwest down into California and into Utah, Idaho, and Colorado, finally ending in Florida. His victims were typically young women, usually murdered with a blunt instrument or by strangulation and sexually assaulted before and after death. First convicted in Utah in 1976 on a charge of kidnapping, Bundy managed to escape after his extradition to Colorado on a murder charge. Ultimately, Bundy found his way to the Tallahassee area of Florida. There he unleashed mayhem killing two women at a Florida State University sorority house and then murdering a 12-year-old girl three weeks later. Fortunately, future victims were spared when Bundy was arrested while driving a stolen vehicle. As police investigated the sorority murders, they noted that one victim, who had been beaten over the head with a log, raped, and strangled, also had bite marks on her left buttock and breast.</P>
<P>Supremely confident that he could beat the sorority murder charges, the arrogant Bundy insisted on acting as his own attorney. His unfounded optimism was shattered in the courtroom when a forensic odontologist matched the bite mark on the victim’s buttock to Bundy’s front teeth. Bundy was ultimately executed in 1989.</P></CASE></FM>
<BM><H1>Definition and Scope of Forensic Science</H1>
<P>Forensic science in its broadest definition is the application of science to law. As our society has grown more complex, it has become more dependent on rules of law to regulate the activities of its members. Forensic science applies the knowledge and technology of science to the definition and enforcement of such laws.</P>
<P>Each year, as government finds it increasingly necessary to regulate the activities that most intimately influence our daily lives, science merges more closely with civil and criminal law. Consider, for example, the laws and agencies that regulate the quality of our food, the nature and potency of drugs, the extent of automobile emissions, the kind of fuel oil we burn, the purity of our drinking water, and the pesticides we use on our crops and plants. It would be difficult to conceive of any food and drug regulation or environmental protection act that could be effectively monitored and enforced without the assistance of scientific technology and the skill of the scientific community.</P>
<P>Laws are continually being broadened and revised to counter the alarming increase in crime rates. In response to public concern, law enforcement agencies have expanded their patrol and investigative functions, hoping to stem the rising tide of crime. At the same time they are looking more to the scientific community for advice and technical support for their efforts. Can the technology that put astronauts on the moon, split the atom, and eradicated most dreaded diseases be enlisted in this critical battle? Unfortunately, science cannot offer final and authoritative solutions to problems that stem from a maze of social and psychological factors. However, as the contents of this book will attest, science does occupy an important and unique role in the criminal justice system—a role that relates to the scientist’s ability to supply accurate and objective information that reflects the events that have occurred at a crime. It will also become apparent to the reader that a good deal of work remains to be done if the full potential of science as applied to criminal investigations is to be realized.</P>
<P>Considering the vast array of civil and criminal laws that regulate society, forensic science, in its broadest sense, has become so comprehensive a subject as to make a meaningful introductory textbook treatment of its role and techniques most difficult, if not overwhelming. For this reason, we must find practical limits that narrow the scope of the subject. Fortunately, common usage provides us with such a limited definition: <BOLD>Forensic science is the application of science to the criminal and civil laws that are enforced by police agencies in a criminal justice system.</BOLD></P>
<P>Even within this limited definition, we will restrict our discussion in this book to only the areas of chemistry, biology, physics, geology, and computer technology, which are useful for determining the evidential value of crime-scene and related evidence, omitting any references to medicine and law. Forensic pathology, psychology, anthropology, and odontology encompass important and relevant areas of knowledge and practice in law enforcement, each being an integral part of the total forensic science service that is provided to any up-to-date criminal justice system. However, except for a brief discussion at the end of this chapter, these subjects go beyond the intended range of this book, and the reader is referred elsewhere for discussions of their applications and techniques.<FNIND NUMBER="1"/>1 Instead, we will attempt to focus on the services of what has popularly become known as the crime laboratory, where the principles and techniques of the physical and natural sciences are practiced and applied to the analysis of crime-scene evidence.</P>
<P>For many, the term <ITAL>criminalistics</ITAL> seems more descriptive than <ITAL>forensic science</ITAL> for describing the services of a crime laboratory. The two terms will be used interchangeably in this text. Regardless of title—criminalist or forensic scientist—the trend of events has made the scientist in the crime laboratory an active participant in the criminal justice system.</P>
<H1>History and Development of Forensic Science</H1>
<P>Forensic science owes its origins first to the individuals who developed the principles and techniques needed to identify or compare physical evidence, and second to those who recognized the need to merge these principles into a coherent discipline that could be practically applied to a criminal justice system.</P>
<P>Today, many believe that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a considerable influence on popularizing scientific crime-detection methods through his fictional character Sherlock Holmes, who first applied the newly developing principles of serology (see <OLINK LOCALINFO="CH.00.012">Chapter 12</OLINK>), fingerprinting, firearms identification, and questioned-document examination long before their value was first recognized and accepted by real-life criminal investigators. Holmes’s feats excited the imagination of an emerging generation of forensic scientists and criminal investigators. Even in the first Sherlock Holmes novel, <ITAL>A Study in Scarlet</ITAL>, published in 1887, we find examples of Doyle’s uncanny ability to describe scientific methods of detection years before they were actually discovered and implemented. For instance, here Holmes probes and recognizes the potential usefulness of forensic serology to criminal investigation:
<EXT><P>“I’ve found it. I’ve found it,” he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a test tube in his hand. “I have found a reagent which is precipitated by hemoglobin and by nothing else.¼ Why, man, it is the most practical medico-legal discovery for years. Don’t you see that it gives us an infallible test for blood stains? ¼ The old guaiacum test was very clumsy and uncertain. So is the microscopic examination for blood corpuscles. The latter is valueless if the stains are a few hours old. Now, this appears to act as well whether the blood is old or new. Had this test been invented, there are hundreds of men now walking the earth who would long ago have paid the penalty of their crimes.¼ Criminal cases are continually hinging upon that one point. A man is suspected of a crime months perhaps after it has been committed. His linen or clothes are examined and brownish stains discovered upon them. Are they blood stains, or rust stains, or fruit stains, or what are they? That is a question which has puzzled many an expert, and why? Because there was no reliable test. Now we have the Sherlock Holmes test, and there will no longer be any difficulty.”</P></EXT></P>
<P>Many people can be cited for their specific contributions to the field of forensic science. The following is just a brief list of those who made the earliest contributions to formulating the disciplines that now constitute forensic science.</P>
<H3>Mathieu Orfila (1787–1853).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Orfila is considered the father of forensic toxicology. A native of Spain, he ultimately became a renowned teacher of medicine in France. In 1814, Orfila published the first scientific treatise on the detection of poisons and their effects on animals. This treatise established forensic toxicology as a legitimate scientific endeavor.</P>
<H3>Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Bertillon devised the first scientific system of personal identification. In 1879, Bertillon began to develop the science of <ITAL>anthropometry</ITAL> (see <OLINK LOCALINFO="CH.00.014">Chapter 14</OLINK>), a systematic procedure of taking a series of body measurements as a means of distinguishing one individual from another. See <LINK LINKEND="FG.01.001">Figure <FIGIND NUM="1" ID="FG.01.001"/>1–1</LINK>. For nearly two decades, this system was considered the most accurate method of personal identification. Although anthropometry was eventually replaced by fingerprinting in the early 1900s, Bertillon’s early efforts have earned him the distinction of being known as the father of criminal identification.</P>
<H3>Francis Galton (1822–1911).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Galton undertook the first definitive study of fingerprints and developed a methodology of classifying them for filing. In 1892, he published a book titled <ITAL>Finger Prints,</ITAL> which contained the first statistical proof supporting the uniqueness of his method of personal identification. His work went on to describe the basic principles that form the present system of identification by fingerprints.</P>
<H3>Leone Lattes (1887–1954).<INST> </INST></H3><P>In 1901, Dr. Karl Landsteiner discovered that blood can be grouped into different categories. These blood groups or types are now recognized as A, B, AB, and O. The possibility that blood grouping could be a useful characteristic for the identification of an individual intrigued Dr. Lattes, a professor at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Turin in Italy. In 1915, he devised a relatively simple procedure for determining the blood group of a dried bloodstain, a technique that he immediately applied to criminal investigations.</P>
<H3>Calvin Goddard (1891–1955).<INST> </INST></H3><P>To determine whether a particular gun has fired a bullet requires a comparison of the bullet with one that has been test-fired from the suspect’s weapon. Goddard, a U.S. Army colonel, refined the techniques of such an examination by using the comparison microscope. Goddard’s expertise established the comparison microscope as the indispensable tool of the modern firearms examiner.</P>
<H3>Albert S. Osborn (1858–1946).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Osborn’s development of the fundamental principles of document examination was responsible for the acceptance of documents as scientific evidence by the courts. In 1910, Osborn authored the first significant text in this field, <ITAL>Questioned Documents.</ITAL> This book is still considered a primary reference for document examiners.</P>
<H3>Walter C. McCrone (1916–2002).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Dr. McCrone’s career paralleled startling advances in sophisticated analytical technology. Nevertheless, during his lifetime McCrone became the world’s preeminent microscopist. Through his books, journal publications, and research institute, McCrone was a tireless advocate for applying microscopy to analytical problems, particularly forensic science cases. McCrone’s exceptional communication skills made him a much-sought-after instructor, and he was responsible for educating thousands of forensic scientists throughout the world in the application of microscopic techniques. Dr. McCrone used microscopy, often in conjunction with other analytical methodologies, to examine evidence in thousands of criminal and civil cases throughout a long and illustrious career.</P>
<H3>Hans Gross (1847–1915).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Gross wrote the first treatise describing the application of scientific disciplines to the field of criminal investigation in 1893. A public prosecutor and judge in Graz, Austria, Gross spent many years studying and developing principles of criminal investigation. In his classic book <ITAL>Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik</ITAL> (later published in English under the title <ITAL>Criminal Investigation</ITAL>), he detailed the assistance that investigators could expect from the fields of microscopy, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, zoology, botany, anthropometry, and fingerprinting. He later introduced the forensic journal <ITAL>Archiv für Kriminal Anthropologie und Kriminalistik,</ITAL> which still serves as a medium for reporting improved methods of scientific crime detection.</P>
<H3>Edmond Locard (1877–1966).<INST> </INST></H3><P>Although Gross was a strong advocate of the use of the scientific method in criminal investigation, he did not make any specific technical contributions to this philosophy. Locard, a Frenchman, demonstrated how the principles enunciated by Gross could be incorporated within a workable crime laboratory. Locard’s formal education was in both medicine and law. In 1910, he persuaded the Lyons police department to give him two attic rooms and two assistants to start a police laboratory.</P>
<P>During Locard’s first years of work, the only available instruments were a microscope and a rudimentary spectrometer. However, his enthusiasm quickly overcame the technical and monetary deficiencies he encountered. From these modest beginnings, Locard’s research and accomplishments became known throughout the world by forensic scientists and criminal investigators. Eventually he became the founder and director of the Institute of Criminalistics at the University of Lyons; this quickly developed into a leading international center for study and research in forensic science.<SIDEIND NUM="1" ID="MN2.01.001"/></P>
<P>Locard believed that when a person comes in contact with an object or person, a cross-transfer of materials occurs <KT>(Locard’s exchange principle).</KT> Locard maintained that every criminal can be connected to a crime by dust particles carried from the crime scene. This concept was reinforced by a series of successful and well-publicized investigations. In one case, presented with counterfeit coins and the names of three suspects, Locard urged the police to bring the suspects’ clothing to his laboratory. On careful examination, he located small metallic particles in all the garments. Chemical analysis revealed that the particles and coins were composed of exactly the same metallic elements. Confronted with this evidence, the suspects were arrested and soon confessed to the crime. After World War I, Locard’s successes served as an impetus for the formation of police laboratories in Vienna, Berlin, Sweden, Finland, and Holland.</P>
<P>The most ambitious commitment to forensic science occurred in the United States. In 1932, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover, organized a national laboratory that offered forensic services to all law enforcement agencies in the country. During its formative stages, agents consulted extensively with business executives, manufacturers, and scientists whose knowledge and experience were useful in guiding the new facility through its infancy. The FBI Laboratory is now the world’s largest forensic laboratory, performing more than one million examinations every year. Its accomplishments have earned it worldwide recognition, and its structure and organization have served as a model for forensic laboratories formed at the state and local levels in the United States as well as in other countries. Furthermore, the opening of the FBI’s Forensic Science Research and Training Center in 1981 gave the United States, for the first time, a facility dedicated to conducting research to develop new and reliable scientific methods that can be applied to forensic science. This facility is also used to train crime laboratory personnel in the latest forensic science techniques and methods.</P>
<P>The oldest forensic laboratory in the United States is that of the Los Angeles Police Department, created in 1923 by August Vollmer, a police chief from Berkeley, California. In the 1930s, Vollmer headed the first U.S. university institute for criminology and criminalistics at the University of California at Berkeley. However, this institute lacked any official status in the university until 1948, when a school of criminology was formed. The famous criminalist Paul Kirk (see <LINK LINKEND="FG.01.002">Figure <FIGIND NUM="2" ID="FG.01.002"/>1–2</LINK>) was selected to head its criminalistics department. Many graduates of this school have gone on to help develop forensic laboratories in other parts of the state and country.</P>
<P>California has numerous federal, state, county, and city crime laboratories, many of which operate independently. However, in 1972 the California Depa...
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