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In The News

2018-06-22 | DNA Doe Project Names Another, Giving Major Piece in Infamous Ohio Mystery
The old man killed himself with a gun in his Eastlake, Ohio apartment in the scorching month of July 2002. Upon discovery, the body was so badly decomposed that detectives couldn’t pull fingerprints. The name, they were pretty sure, was Joseph Newton Chandler III. But when police attempted to notify next of kin, and to find a beneficiary of the $82,000 he had saved, they found an empty lot where a supposed sister lived. Further investigation of a Social Security number determined that "Chandler" was really an 8-year-old boy who had died in a car crash in Texas in 1945.

2018-06-15 | Forensics in crisis
The assumption that forensic science provides unequivocal answers for the criminal justice system was seriously undermined several years ago. Two US chemists who worked at Massachusetts state labs in the US separately admitted to, and were convicted of, faking drug evidence. Although they’ve both served their prison sentences, the story is not over. The severe misconduct of the now infamous scientists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak caused massive reverberations, leading to tens of thousands of overturned drug convictions. Since the scandals erupted, several other smaller scale forensic fraud cases have surfaced in the US, as well as in the UK and Canada.

2018-06-13 | Judge Halts 3D Model Evidence in FBI Agent's Oregon Shooting
U.S. District Judge Robert Jones wrote Monday that the representation of Astarita's position is based on aerial FBI video of such poor quality that it can't be shown to jurors at the trial scheduled to begin July 24. "The clear image of the model depicting defendant with his rifle shouldered and trained on Finicum's truck was not the product of a reliable methodology and involved excessive subjectivity," the judge wrote.

2018-06-11 | Former Forensic Science Director Alleges DNA Flubs in NY
Gestring was the head of OFS until March, when he was terminated following allegations of inappropriate behavior including sexual harassment, according to The New York Daily News and The Albany Times-Union. (Those allegations remain disputed.) Gestring claims in his letter that while the New York State Police Databank Laboratory does the analytical work and operates the physical aspects of the science, it is the role of OFS to ensure the accurate identification from the samples and offenders. The three hit notification failures were “catastrophic,” according to Gestring’s letter. The fourth incident, which was the alleged falsified certification document, was put together by a DNA hit coordinator, he claims—who was suspended and then retired shortly afterward.

2018-06-08 | FORESIGHT 2020 Automates Tracking of Best Practices, Blind Spots
The FORESIGHT Project is a way for laboratories to benchmark against one another in such meaningful ways. But over its last decade, it has relied on some time-consuming methods of putting together spreadsheets and collating data for the numbers to be crunched, the evaluations made. The project’s new software, FORESIGHT 2020, attempts to change that. It has automated most of the key tasks for a dozen laboratories—and promises to highlight both best practices and limitations in the places that are using it, project manager Max Houck told Forensic Magazine recently in conversation.

2018-05-31 | Statute Impedes DNA Exonerations; Iowa Falls Behind in Freeing Innocent Convicts
“DNA has been used to test convictions and basically a lot of people across the country have been exonerated,” Swaim said. “If you draw a circle around the state of Iowa, all the states around us have had at least one and most of had multiple DNA exonerations and we've not had one,” Swaim said. That led the public defender’s office to examine problems with Iowa’s post-conviction DNA statute that was passed in 2005.

2018-05-31 | How an Unproven Forensic Science Became a Courtroom Staple
TESTIMONY FROM BLOODSTAIN-PATTERN analysts is now accepted in courts throughout the country. But in recent years, some scientists and legal scholars have questioned the training of these experts, as well as the validity of the field itself. How did a niche, unproven discipline gain a hold in the American justice system and proliferate state by state? The modern era of bloodstain-pattern analysis began when a small group of scientists and forensic investigators started testifying in cases, as experts in a new technique. Some of them went on to train hundreds of police officers, investigators and crime-lab technicians — many of whom began to testify as well.

2018-05-30 | Witness: Wrong Man Is in Prison in 1986 Slaying of Iowa Teen
The new testimony comes from Ricky Lee Smith, who was 16 and at a drinking party with Nelson’s boyfriend on Dec. 30, 1986, the evening the homicide occurred. In an affidavit signed in February, Smith says Nelson’s boyfriend and his friend left the party to pick Nelson up and returned “covered in blood” hours later. Smith says the two “looked like they had rolled around in blood,” said they might have killed someone and talked about ways to dispose of a body. He says they washed their hands with a solvent and he helped them burn their overalls in a barrel behind the home.

2018-05-26 | State's forensic testing backlog prompts East Dundee police to partner with a new crime lab
A state backlog in processing evidence has persuaded East Dundee police to partner with a new crime lab. This week, village trustees approved an intergovernmental agreement with the Northeastern Illinois Regional Crime Laboratory, which officials said will result in a quicker turnaround on cases.

2018-05-23 | Chemistry Professor Gets $628,000 Grant to Develop New Method of Lifting Fingerprints
Hofstetter is collaborating with scientists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Western Sydney University (WSU) in Australia, where formal testing will be conducted on the “next-generation fingermark lifters” and “on-the-spot visualization devices.” Hofstetter’s team of scientists is receiving advice and support of its efforts from several law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service and Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Natural oils and sweat from the skin can leave behind invisible, or latent, fingerprints. Detecting these prints typically requires the use of powders, chemicals or alternate light sources. Different types of tapes and casts can be used to “lift” prints from a scene so they can be taken back to a laboratory to be viewed and analyzed.