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In The News

2015-12-04 | Cuyahoga County opens regional fingerprint lab
The Cuyahoga County Regional Forensic Science Laboratory has opened a fingerprint lab to handle cases at no charge for all law enforcement and justice agencies in the county. "The opening of the fingerprint lab is another step forward in the provision of regional crime lab services to our community," Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson said in a statement.

2015-12-01 | Can DNA predict a face?
In the last few years, several scientists and companies have ventured into the new world of appearance prediction. It’s a hazy place, where the roots of a person’s looks hide out in their genetic instruction books. Scientists dig up these roots by linking people’s physical features with tiny landmarks in their DNA. If investigators could use DNA to predict nose width, say, or eye size, they might have an easier time tracking down criminals.

2015-11-24 | D.C. court considers how to screen out ‘bad science’ in local trials
Lawyers from D.C.’s Public Defender Service said in court papers that the rules for admitting experts are particularly important in criminal cases because juries often rely heavily on scientific evidence and because unreliable forensic evidence is a leading cause of wrongful convictions.

2015-11-24 | DNA Frees Man After 16 Years, Links Infamous ‘Teardrop Rapist’ to Crimes
A man who spent 16 years in prison after being convicted of three sexual assaults in Los Angeles was cleared by DNA – and is set to be released. Now the three crimes are instead linked to an infamous serial rapist apparently still at large. Ominously, Luis Vargas told a courtroom in 1999, shortly before sentencing, that he was innocent: “I’m concerned (the) individual (who) really did these crimes might really be raping someone out there, might really be killing someone out there.”

2015-11-19 | DNA prompts re-arrest of man set free in 1983 murder
Investigators determined that Scott, who was 35 years old at the time, was the last person seen with Ray in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. He was arrested as a suspect in her murder but later released because there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him at the time, sheriff's officials said.

2015-11-17 | Oxygen Isotopes Offer New Details in 30-Year-Old Multiple-Murder Case
One November morning in 1985, hunters came upon the 55-gallon drum in the New Hampshire woods. They opened it, and made a horrifying discovery. Stuffed inside were the bodies of a woman and a young girl. Fifteen years later, investigators combing the woods for clues on the long-unsolved case came upon the unthinkable, just a short distance away: yet another barrel. This one contained the bodies of two more little girls.

2015-11-16 | DNA Mixture Calculation Method Just ‘Random Number Generator,’ Says New Study
The method used at crime labs nationwide for 15 years, the Combined Probability of Inclusion (CPI), is not accurate, according to a new study published by a company that says they have the big-computing solution to analyze the data more accurately. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys could benefit by using their software, more than a decade in development by the Pittsburgh-based company Cybergenetics. “CPI’s a random number generator,” said Mark Perlin, the company’s founder, told Forensic Magazine in a phone interview. “The culture in forensic science makes it normative to spend an hour or two ‘normalizing’ data… But (in medicine) you don’t hear of X-ray techs playing with an image for hours on end.”

2015-11-16 | Not so fast with that rapid DNA
In the United States, the FBI is currently seeking to use the rapid DNA technology in law enforcement, particularly in police stations and at crime scenes. Unlike in Canada, many American jurisdictions allow for collection of DNA samples from arrestees, which then get added into a national DNA databank. Samples collected on arrest are checked against DNA evidence in open investigations — such as those collected from break-and-enter or sexual assault crime scenes — to see if that particular arrestee is implicated in unsolved cases.

2015-11-10 | It's Time to Take 'The Bite' Out of Court Convictions
The popular criminal forensic investigation television shows portray every forensic science investigation tool and technique as infallible and always accurate. But, in real life, this is not true. Some of the forensic science procedures used in criminal investigations are very controversial. One example is whether or not the bite marks left on a human body by another human being should be used as evidence in court during criminal trials. This has been debated for decades, with some scientists, dentists and legal scholars claiming that using bite marks left by a human being on the body of another human being, as criminal evidence in court, is junk science. Other scientists, dentists and legal scholars say human bite marks are solid criminal evidence if the investigator knows what he/she is doing when they analyze them.

2015-11-10 | Why Post-Conviction DNA Testing Works: An Interview with Kirk Bloodsworth
After being exonerated in 2003, Bloodsworth devoted his life to reforming the justice system and ensuring that the accused have adequate access to a proper defense. But most importantly that they have the means to test significant evidence for any traces of DNA that may not have been tested during the trial. Called post-conviction DNA testing, the technique eventually helped Bloodsworth prove his innocence.