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 ...