Forensic Engineering

Max M. Houck

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780128027189
• eBook ISBN: 9780128027400
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Law

Forensic Engineering, the latest edition in the Advanced Forensic Science series that grew out of recommendations from the 2009 NAS Report: Strengthening Forensic Science: A Path Forward, serves as a graduate level text for those studying and teaching digital forensic engineering, as well as an excellent reference for a forensic scientist's library or for their use in casework.Coverage includes investigations, transportation investigations, fire investigations, other methods and professional issues. Edited by a world-renowned leading forensic expert, this series is a long overdue solution for the forensic science community.- Provides basic principles of forensic science and an overview of forensic engineering- Contains sections on investigations, transportation investigations, fire investigations and other methods- Includes a section on professional issues, such as: from crime scene to court, forensic laboratory reports and health and safety- Incorporates effective pedagogy, key terms, review questions, discussion questions and additional reading suggestions

Section 1

Introduction

Outline

Introduction

Principles of Forensic Science

Forensic Classification of Evidence

Interpretation/The Comparative Method

Forensic Engineering/Accident Reconstruction/Biomechanics of Injury/Philosophy, Basic Theory, and Fundamentals

Key Terms

Review Questions

Discussion Questions

Introduction

Engineering moves forward in time, innovating, designing, and creating things of all sorts. Add “forensic,” however, and everything reverses: Forensic sciences are inherently historic in nature, revealing as they do past events. Time does not “flow,” however, but rather is a series of events that form an irreversible unidirectional sequence. The arrow of time is said to point to the future but this is no more accurate than saying because a compass' needle points north if it is traveling north. The arrow of time, as it were, demonstrates that the world is asymmetrical in time and not that time itself moves in any one direction. For example, think of video recording an egg falling on the floor and breaking. Run backward, any viewer would recognize the sequence for what it is. Editing the video into individual frames and shuffling would not preclude a viewer from arranging the images into a proper timeline sequence. Even mixed, the stack of images retains the asymmetry of time, revealing it as a property of the stochastic world and not a property of time in and of itself. Eggs do not spontaneously reconstitute! Neither do devices or buildings or airplanes. Forensic engineering uses its knowledge of how things are designed and made in the present to help determine how they failed in the past.

Principles of Forensic Science

F. Crispino Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada

M.M. Houck Consolidated Forensic Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA

Abstract

Forensic science is grounded on two native principles (those of Locard and Kirk) and the admission of a few other nonnative ones. This framework is one definition of a paradigm for the discipline to be considered a basic science on its own merits. The science explores the relationships in legal and police matters through the analysis of traces of illegal or criminal activities. In this way, forensic science is seen as a historical science, interpreting evidence in context with its circumstances and originating processes (at source and activity levels).

Keywords

Epistemology; Forensic; Kirk; Locard; Paradigm; Science

Glossary

Abduction Syllogism in which one premise is certain whereas the other one is only probable, generally presented as the best explanation to the former. Hence, abduction is a type of reasoning in which we know the law and the effect, and we attempt to infer the cause.

Deduction Process of reasoning which moves from the general to the specific, and in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises. Hence, deduction is a type of reasoning in which, knowing the cause and the law, we infer the effect.

Forensic intelligence Understanding on how traces can be collected from the scene, processed, and interpreted within a holistic intelligence-led policing strategy.

Heuristic Process of reasoning by rules that are only loosely defined; generally by trial and error.

Holistic Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.

Induction Process of deriving general principles from particular facts or instances, i.e., of reasoning that moves from the specific to the general. Hence, induction is a type of reasoning in which, knowing the cause and the effect (or a series of causes and effects), we attempt to infer the law by which the effects follow the cause.

Linkage blindness Organizational or investigative failure to recognize a common pattern shared on different cases.

Science The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. It is also defined as a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject.

Given that it identifies and collects objects at crime scenes and then treats them as evidence, forensic science could appear at first glance to be only a pragmatic set of various disciplines, with practitioners adapting and developing tools and technologies to help the triers of fact (juries or judges) interpret information gained from the people, places, and things involved in a crime. The view could be—and has been—held that forensic science has no philosophic or fundamental unity and is merely the application of knowledge generated by other sciences. Indeed, many working forensic scientists regard themselves mainly as chemists, biologists, scientists, or technicians, and rarely as practitioners of a homogeneous body of knowledge with common fundamental principles.

Even the 2009 National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Report failed to recognize such a concept, certainly blurred by a semantic gap in the terminology itself of field practitioners, who confuse words like “forensic science(s),” “criminalistic(s),” “criminology,” “technical police,” “scientific police,” and so on, and generally restrict the scientific debate on analytical techniques and methods. An independent definition of forensic science, apart from its legal aspects, would support its scientific status and return the expert to his/her domain as scientist and interpreter of his/her analyses and results to assist the lay person.

What Is Forensic Science?

In its broadest sense, forensic science describes the utility of the sciences as they pertain to legal matters, to include many disciplines, such as chemistry, biology, pathology, anthropology, toxicology, and engineering, among others. (“Forensic” comes from the Latin root forum, the central place of the city where disputes and debates were made public to be solved, hence, defining the law of the city. Forensic generally means of or applied to the law.) The word “criminalistics” was adopted to describe the discipline directed toward the “recognition, identification, individualization, and evaluation of physical evidence by application of the natural sciences to law-science matters.” (“Kriminalistik” was coined in the la...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Published and Forthcoming Titles in the Advanced Forensic Science Series
• Copyright
• Senior Editor: Biography
• List of Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Section 1. Introduction
• Section 2. Investigations
• Section 3. Transportation Investigations
• Section 4. Fire Investigations
• Section 5. Other Methods
• Section 6. Professional Issues
• Index