{"id":4237,"date":"2015-04-03T08:08:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T12:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4237"},"modified":"2015-04-03T08:08:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T12:08:55","slug":"crime-scene-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4237","title":{"rendered":"Crime Scene 101"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Television and the movies notoriously overstate the tools (especially the electronic ones) at a criminal investigator\u2019s command, to the extent juries have developed increased expectations about the availability of forensic evidence. (Here\u2019s a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nij.gov\/journals\/259\/pages\/csi-effect.aspx\">fascinating study<\/a> of the \u201cCSI Effect,\u201d suggesting prosecutors and judges need to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/body\/science-in-the-courtroom.html\">up their game<\/a>.) At the same time, many writers of crime thrillers strive to accurately portray crime scene investigations and to make their fictional detectives follow more careful procedures than often occurs in real life.<del><\/del><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4238\" style=\"width: 330px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4238\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4238\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/3476834256_f2e7bb33c1_z.jpg?resize=320%2C229\" alt=\"crime scene investigation\" width=\"320\" height=\"229\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-4238\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(photo: U.S. Army, Europe, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Forensic investigator <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geoffsymon.com\/\">Geoff Symon<\/a> recently talked to crime authors about evidence. He began by dividing it into two categories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>direct evidence, which means eye-witness accounts, with all their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apa.org\/monitor\/apr06\/eyewitness.aspx\">well-documented weaknesses<\/a> and<\/li>\n<li>circumstantial evidence, which is everything else.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Symon emphasized that circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and when a tv lawyer pooh-poohs a case, saying \u201cit\u2019s only circumstantial,\u201d that\u2019s not necessarily a weakness. In truth, unless there is a reliable eye-witness, <em>all <\/em>cases are circumstantial. Fingerprints, hairs, fibers, and blood and DNA other than the victim\u2019s are all circumstantial evidence, and the accumulation of evidence of this type, when put together in a convincing narrative, can become absolutely compelling. Circumstantial evidence can relate to a particular category of people (say, all those with blood type AB negative or having a carpet with a particular kind of fiber), or to a particular individual (fingerprints or DNA).<\/p>\n<p>Says Adam Plantinga in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vweisfeld.com\/?p=4152\">400 Things Cops Know<\/a> <\/em>says \u201cPeople watch crime shows on TV so they think the police can get readable prints off just about anything\u2014human skin, stucco walls, quesadillas,\u201d but \u201conly a few surfaces are conducive to the retrieval of fingerprints.\u201d Slick surfaces, like noncoated glass, glossy paper, and aluminum are best, he says.<\/p>\n<p>Two additional considerations are avoiding <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forensicmag.com\/articles\/2014\/01\/preventing-crime-scene-contamination\">contamination of the crime scene<\/a> and maintaining the chain of evidence. No longer do hordes of people enter the room where a body lays, tromp around in their own shoes, and depart. (In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/sheppard\/chronology.html\">notorious 1954 murder<\/a> of Marilyn Sheppard, \u201cPolice officers, relatives, press, and neighbors [were allowed to] troop through the house.\u201d Subsequently, this case was a basis for the movie and tv series, <em>The Fugitive<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s investigators recognize that \u201cwhenever you leave a room you take something with you and you leave something behind,\u201d Symon said. Thus, the importance of hair coverings, gloves, booties, and hazmat-looking suits. Cross-contamination of the crime scene was vital to the defense of O.J. Simpson. First investigators on the scene, therefore, have a particular responsibility to document it accurately with photos, video, sketches, and notes, knowing it may be contaminated subsequently.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nolo.com\/legal-encyclopedia\/what-chain-custody.html\">chain of custody<\/a> for evidence is an essential part of \u201cpreserving\u201d the crime scene evidence. Unless a piece of evidence has been carefully tagged, and each subsequent person who handled and tested it has signed for it, criminal prosecutors cannot claim that a trace of DNA , a hair, or other physical evidence is the same bit gathered at the crime scene and not somehow introduced subsequently.<\/p>\n<p>Symon and other forensic investigators help authors by describing \u201creality.\u201d The challenge for the author is to subvert reality in a believable way so their story\u2019s plot can unfold. While in real life, procedural mess-ups may mean perpetrators are never be brought to justice, this often suits the author\u2019s fictional purposes very well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Television and the movies notoriously overstate the tools (especially the electronic ones) at a criminal investigator\u2019s command, to the extent juries have developed increased expectations about the availability of forensic evidence. (Here\u2019s a fascinating study of the \u201cCSI Effect,\u201d suggesting &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4237\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Crime Scene 101 - Fictional Investigators' Challenges","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,174,35,29],"tags":[31,416,414],"class_list":["post-4237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-first-draft-blog","category-real-life","category-writing","tag-author","tag-real-life","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-16l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4240,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4237\/revisions\/4240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}