Crime Scene Unit Management

A Path Forward

Edward W. Wallace, Michael J. Cunningham, Daniel Boggiano

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317312819
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Procedimiento penal

Crime Scene Unit Management: A Path Forward is a must-have resource for anyone involved with forensic investigations and the search for evidence at the crime scene. The book provides standards for how to manage a crime scene so that evidence is collected and preserved without errors and includes guidelines for how to implement the standards and set up regional training programs for smaller jurisdictions with tighter budgets. Key features include examples, checklists, and flow charts for evidence handling and routing. CSIs, fire investigators, homicide investigators, accident investigators, police executives, and students of forensic science will benefit from this thorough approach to how the crime scene—and the personnel charged with tending to the evidence—should be managed.

1
The Need for a Path Forward

Overview

The criminal justice system consists of many parts, each part working together to administer justice. These parts include lawyers, judges, administrators, witnesses, law enforcement, and juries. In a perfect world, each part works as it should in order to ensure a correct outcome. Society desires the correct outcome. In a criminal case, the desired outcome is that the guilty are found guilty and the innocent are found innocent.

An incorrect outcome does no one any good. Finding a guilty party innocent allows someone to remain free in society to commit more crimes. Finding an innocent person guilty punishes and attempts to rehabilitate an individual who does not deserve punishment nor need rehabilitation. In the end it achieves no worthwhile purpose.

Forensic science and its practitioners often play an important role in this aspect of the criminal justice system. Physical evidence collected from the scene will be analyzed and presented to the jury accompanied by expert testimony. The interpretation of this evidence and the testimony given by the forensic expert can significantly affect the outcome of the trial. The nature of the evidence, the results of the analysis, the interpretation of those results and, ultimately, the testimony given can sway a jury towards a verdict. To say that this is a very big responsibility is a gross understatement.

The responsibility for the outcome of the analysis should not rest solely on the scientist or forensic expert sitting on the witness stand at the time. In order for the best possible analytical outcome to occur, the evidence must be in the best state that it can be in; uncontaminated, unadulterated, not diminished in any way. What we are talking about here is making sure that nothing bad happened to the evidence so the information it can give to the jury can reach its maximum potential.

To make this happen, all of forensic science must play its part, from beginning to end. Each link in the chain has to show that it did everything the way it was supposed to be done, by employing best practices. If this happens, then all those people who rely on the products that forensic science produces can be assured that the results of the analysis can be relied upon.

The Need for a Path Forward

In November of 2005, the United States Congress through the Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2006, tasked the National Research Council to, ostensibly, study the state of the forensic sciences in America.¹ As a result, in the fall of 2006, a committee was formed to set about this task.² The committee was comprised of a cross section of stakeholders in the criminal justice system. It included members of the forensic science community, the legal community, and other scientists.³ The committee held hearings in which it heard testimony from many people. The committee met on eight occasions to deliberate.⁴ The result of its work, published in 2009, was a report titled “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward.” The task was, to say the least, monumental. The report covered a lot of ground, endeavoring to identify issues facing forensic science today and supply solutions for them.

A comprehensive review of the NAS Report is not the purpose of this chapter or book. We are neither equipped to, nor do we desire to, give either a detailed summary of the report or reasoned arguments for or against its merits. The fact is, without regard to what one believes are the motivations for the report, or what one thinks of those who spurred the movement of the selection of those who sat on the committee, the report is here to stay. There are issues highlighted by the report that pertain to the various subspecialties within the forensic sciences. There are issues that practitioners from all subspecialties should be aware of. The fact is that some topics of this report will touch all of forensic science in some way. If readers desire an in-depth review of the report, it is suggested that they seek out a more authoritative and comprehensive treatment, or download the report from the internet and read it for themselves. This report is the start of the path forward.

The goal of this chapter is to explore what this report may mean to crime scene investigation, the beginning of the forensic process. We want to draw the attention of executives, managers, bureaucrats, administrators and investigators that create, evaluate or have to live with the policies and procedures they create for their crime scene investigators and crime scene investigation units, to what the report has to say. We would like to explore what the report says in a general sense about forensic science, forensic science practitioners and some of the methods used and how they will (or must) integrate in the future to ensure an acceptable, reliable product. We would like to try and figure out where this is all going to go, so we can figure out the best way to get there also.

Some basic knowledge of the report is needed in order to understand how it will encourage forensic science to ensure a reliable product. When we try to understand the report, we must frame the issues in a way that all of the players can understand. The stakeholders must also articulate their needs in language that everyone can understand. Not all forensic practitioners come to the profession with an understanding of what forensic science is, its unique philosophy, or how the services it provides differ from other scientific endeavors. Not all administrators will be forensic scientists. This may be especially true for those entities traditionally run by law enforcement agencies. Not all law enforcement agencies will have trained forensic scientists or practitioners in their ranks to run these entities, nor will they have trained forensic scientists or practitioners who are effective managers and policy creators. Sometimes, it seems, this is a fact of the way government works. As a result, those who find themselves in supervisory positions within forensic units may not have formal knowledge about the work methods that those they are supervising actually perform.

Here are some quick points that those who are new to the forensic sciences should know before we move on. The various forensic science subspecialties do not operate in a vacuum. Some of the issues that affect one subspecialty may affect some or all of the others. There will be more than one process to any forensic investigation. Evidence may be recovered from a crime scene unit then pass through multiple areas of a lab before all analyses are complete. Issues affecting the quality of the evidence at Step 1 may affect the evidence at Step 2, and so on. Everyone with a stake in the outcome of the criminal justice system will expect assurances that, from the time an item of physical evidence was initially collected to the time it was analyzed and then stored, it was handled correctly.

We think it is fair to say that many, if not all, responsible practitioners already recognize this. The committee recognized this also.(Believing that, just because the report didn’t directly address crime scene investigation on one specific point or another means that it is not our problem, is wishful thinking.)

Although many stakeholders in the criminal justice system have different desires regarding the outcome of any particular case, there are several ideals that the NAS Report points to that all stakeholders can and should agree on. These ideals are not new, nor are they novel. They are simply that all of society has a desire to see the right person prosecuted and convicted for the crime. No one is served when the wrong person is convicted for a crime they did not commit.

The NAS Report – Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward

A Brief Recap of the Basics

The NAS Report doesn’t say a whole lot about crime scene investigation directly. This does not mean that crime scene investigation practices are perfect nationwide or exempt from an obligation to strengthen forensic science. The report makes it clear that the committee could not address every question or find a solution to every problem. It could only reach consensus on the most important issues that affect forensic science today, and offer recommendations for improvement for them.⁵ It seems at its core that the report wishes to understand the problems that lead to faulty convictions. The whole basis of our criminal justice system is to get it right. In the end, wrongful convictions and acquittals make us less safe.

Of course, the report places some of these problems at the feet of forensic science. Although they note some of the advances forensic science, as a discipline has made over the years, work still needs to be done. More, systematic advances, they say, will help law enforcement by identifying people with a higher level of reliability.⁶

One of the issues the report points to is the lack of uniformity within the forensic community. This includes funding, training, instrumentation, certification and accreditation. Any system, they indicate, needs to lessen this lack of uniformity and create consistent practices.⁷

Disparity exists among the various disciplines and from one jurisdiction to another within the same discipline. Standards, in the form of education, training, certification and accreditation will help to remedy these issues.⁸ Although the report does not address any one discipline directly it can be construed that it is addressing all disciplines, crime scene investigation included.

Another problem that the report takes note of is the disparity in the types of conclusions analysts can make from various kinds of evidence. The report simplifies this by drawing our attention to analyses based on analytical methods (DNA) and analyses based on expert interpretation (e.g. pattern evidence).⁹ Analytical methods draw stronger conclusions with regard to certainty than those based on expert interpretation. Further, different disciplines that rely on expert interpretation are at different places with regard to established protocols, research and the like. On top of that, varying practices from one jurisdiction to another truly hamper the ability to understand how “good” a particular item of evidence is. As a result, the report points out that the scientific validity of the methods used may not be robust enough to support such results.¹⁰

The report is concerned with the underlying knowledge base of forensic science and how to address the limitations and capabilities of the disciplines. In doing this, stakeholders will know what valid information can be expected from evidence. The report notes that this present fragmentation can cause the quality of the evidence and of its interpretation to vary widely from one place to another. It suggests that funding may reduce backlogs but will not necessarily fix these other issues.¹¹ True, unless some of this money is earmarked for research, training and the like.

The report gives some recommendations about how these problems might be remedied. Starting at the top, it advocates the creation of a federal department as a means to set a national policy and direction for all of forensic science. This department would work to, among other things, establish best practices, standards for accreditation and certification, promote research, improve and standardize education and training and to strengthen knowledge of forensic methods.¹²

The report recommends that this federal department create standard terminology for testimony and reporting as well as address issues of accuracy, reliability and validity.¹³ In more common words, what evidence is “scientific”, what is “expert interpretation” and what makes it good or bad evidence?

Recommendations with regard to individual certification and organizational accreditation were also included in the report. The ability to create uniformity rests to a certain degree on both of these items. Also, accreditation and certification create the ability to enforce a code of ethics and of quality assurance, which were included in the list of recommendations.¹⁴

Another pointed recommendation made by the report was the creation of committees in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to “fix” problems in various disciplines and methods. Some issues that the committees might look at are the identification and creation of best practices and rules for measurement and interpretation.¹⁵

This is just a very, very small snapshot of this document. The report is over 300 pages long and contains many important concepts. No review can, in reality, give it the treatment it needs in order to truly understand the breadth and scope of what the members of the Committee who produced it felt was important enough to recognize and investigate further. Again, one should read the report for a better understanding.

The NAS Report and Crime Scene Investigation

The authors of the NAS Report note that collectors can be anybody and everybody, from uniformed officers to hospital medical personnel. This clear fragmentation has the potential for “inconsistent policies and procedures as well as bias.” They note, however, that very often the crime scene investigator is a sworn officer.¹⁶

This variability in practice, the authors feel, is a direct result of the lack of standards and proper training. This can contribute to difficulties in the laboratory when drawing conclusions from the evidence once it has been tested.¹⁷ It is not clear to us what they mean here, but our feeling is that they are indicating once something is missed or done improperly the damage cannot be undone in the laboratory. Whatever information is lost with regard to context or because of degradation of the evidence as the result of mishandling cannot be recovered by laboratory techniques.

Summary

If one seeks guidance from the NAS Report about the direction that the nation will be taking with regard to forensic science, it is easy to find. The authors discuss the same themes in very general terms. They are things like the use of best practices, standardization (techniques, reporting, etc.), reliability, and the demonstration of these through accreditation and certification.

They do not offer much guidance about the degree with which these, and other issues, will apply to any particular area or subspecialty of forensic science. In fact, they spend very little time discussing crime scene investigation specifically, about one page of the whole document. But, if we infer a doomsday scenario based on our interpretation of this section of the report, they seem to take notice that crime scene investigation is the start of the forensic process. Mistakes at this stage are perpetuated throughout and down the line. It is interesting, however, that if this is the case, why the authors spent so little time discussing crime scene investigation specifically in the report. The reason may be very simple, because the issues they discuss in general about forensic science also apply to crime scene investigation.

The NAS Report only tells some of the story as it did not spend a lot of time discussing implementation of the recommendations. Some deeper thought about how to do this has started to come, and will continue to ...