Forensics For Dummies. Douglas P. Lyle
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Forensics For Dummies - Douglas P. Lyle страница 8
Название: Forensics For Dummies
Автор: Douglas P. Lyle
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Жанр: Зарубежная образовательная литература
Серия: For Dummies
isbn: 9781119181682
isbn:
The ME’s opinion is not written in stone and can change if new evidence comes to light that suggests a previously ruled natural death may not have been so natural after all.
The coroner’s technician is an extension of the coroner/ME and is indeed the ME’s representative at the crime scene and works with the ME at the morgue. These technicians are often the ones who actually deal with the body at any crime scene where a death has occurred.
The coroner’s technician may do the following:
✔ Make a cursory examination of the body
✔ Obtain a core (liver) body temperature, which is critical in determining the time of death (see Chapter 11)
✔ Direct the taking of photographs of the body
✔ Collect any trace or insect evidence from the body
✔ Wrap and transport the body to the ME’s office
The technician may also assist the ME in all the examiner’s duties at the morgue and may
✔ Perform or help with the performance of autopsies
✔ Prepare the autopsy report at the direction of the ME
✔ Communicate with the public, the media, and law enforcement on issues relating to the medical examiner’s office
✔ Explain the autopsy procedure and its results to family members of the deceased
✔ Testify in court as the ME’s representative
After they have analyzed the evidence, members of the forensics team may be called upon to explain it in court. Expert testimony can often make or break a case, and experts – be they medical examiners, crime-scene investigators, toxicologists, or other key players – can be called to testify by either the prosecution or the defense. In turn, their testimony may be refuted by the testimony of experts with different opinions.
The sworn duty of the ME is to present the facts in court and offer an unbiased opinion based on those facts. She is solely responsible for presenting evidence in court because she is in many ways an officer of the court. The ME may ask a member of her staff or of the crime lab to present evidence, but the ME is the one who is ultimately responsible to the court.
The ME may be asked to discuss and explain the forensic evidence and render an expert opinion regarding the evidence to the judge and jury. In this regard, the ME acts as an educator as well as a scientist. The ME often is the only person from whom a jury hears complex scientific information presented in an understandable way. At other times, the ME must pit knowledge and communication skills against other experts with different opinions.
Many of the procedures that are commonly employed in criminal cases, and that are discussed in this book, have never been adequately subjected to scientific scrutiny. Bite mark analysis, trace evidence such as hair and fiber analysis, and even fingerprints, to name a few, have been questioned in the courts and in scientific circles. The facts are that none of these techniques have ever been adequately tested for accuracy or reliability. Does this mean that they are no longer viable forensic scientific procedures? Not at all. It simply means that the techniques used in their analysis and the qualifications of the examiners must be better defined and standardized.
The 2009 study done by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) titled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward started the ball rolling. Since then, organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC), and others have made great strides in the standardization of forensic science. The goal is to make each scientific procedure reliable, reproducible, and uniform in every crime lab across the country as well as to establish standards and qualifications for experts in each area of forensic science. It’s a tall order and will take time, but these organizations, and the working groups and committees they have established, are moving in the right direction.
Added to this is the problem of examiner bias, laziness, and corruption. Many cases of “experts” falsifying or “dry labbing” the evidence have cropped up in recent years. Dry labbing simply means coming up with results without actually doing the testing. We have seen this with DNA, fingerprints, bite marks, and other forensic techniques. Part of the work of the organizations previously mentioned is to identify and remove such individuals from the scientific community.
What does this mean for the current state of forensic science? Simply that the quality of the evidence uncovered and the expertise and honesty of the examiners is critical to the reliability of the results, and any move to improve that is a positive change. For example, if a good-quality fingerprint is found at a crime scene and it is examined and compared by a qualified expert, the results are very reliable. Even though no true scientific evaluation of fingerprint techniques has been done, the facts are that despite countless millions of fingerprints being obtained around the world, no two have ever been shown to be identical. Even identical twins have different fingerprints. So forensic science is sound; it simply needs to be standardized and uniformly applied.
Understanding the court system
The court system in the United States is adversarial by nature, meaning that each side attempts to outfox or outargue the other. The prosecutor and defense attorney attempt to present evidence that favors their respective side and spin any contrary evidence in a manner that supports their theory regarding the case. This locking of horns can put the forensic expert in a difficult position. Each side is likely to bring in outside experts to support or refute the testimony of the ME. These experts may even be other forensic pathologists, toxicologists, firearms experts, or someone from any of the other forensic areas.
Each expert can expect to be qualified before the jury, meaning that the opposing attorneys ask questions about the expert’s credentials, training, experience, areas of expertise, teaching positions, publications in the field in question, and anything else they think will support or undermine the expert’s true qualifications. In general, the side that calls on an expert as a witness asks easy, supportive questions, and the opposing side asks tougher questions aimed at impeaching, or refuting, the qualifications and any testimony the expert gives. Expert witnesses must be prepared for potentially unsettling questions.
Experts presenting testimony need to be honest and measured, trying not to oversell their points of view, but making their honest opinions clear, concise, and believable. That is, experts must appear neither too sure nor too unsure of their opinions. The former may alienate a jury, and the latter may undermine the expert’s credibility.
Getting to the heart of the “truth”
The real goal of court proceedings is not so much to uncover the absolute truth as it is to provide enough evidence so a jury can reach an understandable version of the truth based on the applicable rules of law. Getting to that version is complicated by the fact that certain items of evidence may not be admissible (allowed into the courtroom at the time of trial) in court, because they were obtained improperly, contaminated, or overly inflammatory or prejudicial.
So, you may СКАЧАТЬ