Criminal Investigation

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CHAPTER 7

• Criminal Investigation

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Criminal Investigation

• The Scope of Forensic Science and Criminalistics
• Forensic science is that part of science used to
  answer legal questions
• It is the examination, evaluation, and
  explanation of physical evidence in law
• It encompasses pathology, toxicology, physical
  anthropology, serology, and others

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Criminal Investigation

• Criminalistics is one branch of forensic science
• It deals with the study of physical evidence
  related to crime
• A crime may be reconstructed
• It is interdisciplinary
• Drawing on math, physics, chemistry, biology, and
  other scientific fields

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Criminal Investigation

• Types of information that physical evidence
• Information on the corpus delicti
• Body of the crime
• Information on the modus operandi
• Method of operation

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Criminal Investigation

• Linking a suspect with a victim
• Hair, blood, fibers, cosmetics that are
  transferred from one to the other
• Linking a person to a crime scene
• Fingerprints, glove prints, hairs, fibers,
  bullets, tool marks
• Disproving or supporting a witnesss testimony
• Identification of a suspect

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Criminal Investigation

• Origins of Criminalistics
• Personal Identification
• Anthropometry
• Developed by Alphonse Bertillon in 1882
• The first attempt at criminal identification
• Based on the fats that every human being differs
  from everyone else in the exact measurements of
  their bodies and that the sum of these
  measurements yields a characteristic formula for
  each individual
• Eleven physical measurements
• Bertillon is considered the father of criminal
  investigation
• Fingerprinting was found to be superior to the
  Bertillon system

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Criminal Investigation

• Fingerprints Prevail over Bertillonage
• Dactylography was first used in 1900 in England
  as a system of criminal identification
• Fingerprints have a longer history
• Galton published the first definitive book on
  dactylography in 1892
• Presented statistical proof of the uniqueness of
  fingerprints

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Criminal Investigation

• Inspector Alvarez obtained the first American
  criminal conviction based on fingerprints in 1892
• Edward Henry
• Instituted Bertillons system but added
  fingerprints to the cards
• His fingerprint-classification system won out
  over the Bertillon system

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Criminal Investigation

• Firearms identification
• Cause about 70 percent of the nations homicides
  each year
• Henry Goddard
• Made the first successful attempt to identify a
  murderer from a bullet recovered from the
  victims body (1835)
• Grooves left on the bullet as it passes through
  the gun

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Criminal Investigation

• Professor Balthazard
• Published a major article on firearms
  identification in 1913
• Noted that the firing pin, breechblock,
  extractor, and ejector all leave marks on the
  cartridges and that these markings were different
  on different types of weapons
• Colonel Calvin Goddard
• The person most responsible for raising the
  status of firearms identification to a science
  and for perfecting the bullet comparison
  microscope

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Criminal Investigation

• Firearms identification includes
• Identifying types of ammunition
• Designing firearms
• Restoring obliterated serial numbers on weapons
• Estimating the distance between a guns muzzle
  and a victim when the weapon was fired

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Criminal Investigation

• Contributions of August Vollmer and Others
• Vollmer instituted a formal training program for
  properly collecting and preserving evidence
• Helped produce the first workable polygraph
• Established the first full forensic lab in Los
  Angeles

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Criminal Investigation

• The Evolution of Criminal Investigation
• Investigative Beginnings The English
  Contribution
• The agricultural and industrial revolutions
• Began a process of change that profoundly
  affected how police services were delivered and
  investigations conducted
• Left the farms for work in the city
• Bow Street Runners
• Londons Metropolitan Police in 1829

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Criminal Investigation

• Investigative Techniques Come to America
• Success of Metropolitan Police was noticed in
  America
• Plain clothes officers spread across the United
  States after the advent of private police
• The nations first municipal Criminal
  Investigations Bureau was created in Chicago in
  1884

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Criminal Investigation

• State and Federal Developments
• Congress created the U. S. Secret Service in 1865
  to combat counterfeiting
• California Bureau of Criminal Identification was
  established in 1905
• Pennsylvania state police was created in 1905
• The forerunner of the FBI was established in 1908
• The FBI, as we know it today, was designated in
  1935
• The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) was
  established by the FBI in 1967

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Criminal Investigation

• Forensic science and the Criminal Justice System
• Investigative Strategies and Activities
• Basic investigative stages
• The preliminary investigation
• Involves the first police officer at the scene
• Establish whether a crime was committed
• Locate witnesses
• Protect the crime scene
• Determine how the crime was committed
• Field notes

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Criminal Investigation

• The continuing investigation
• Includes follow-up interviews
• Developing a theory of the crime
• Analyzing the significance of information and
  evidence
• Continuing to search for witnesses
• Contact crime lab technicians
• Prepare the case for the prosecutor

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Criminal Investigation

• Reconstructing the crime
• Seek a rational theory of the crime
• Use inductive reasoning
• Look for mistakes by the criminal
• Focusing the investigation
• All investigative efforts are directed toward
  proving that one suspect is guilty of the crime

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Criminal Investigation

• Arrest and Case Preparation
• Evidence may be found at the time of arrest
• Case preparation is organization
• An investigation is successful when the crime
  being investigated is solved and the case is
  closed

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Criminal Investigation

• A case is considered cleared even if no arrest
  has been made
• When the offender dies
• The case is found to be murder-suicide
• The victim refuses to cooperate with the police
  of the prosecutor
• The offender has left the jurisdiction and the
  cost of extradition is not justified

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Criminal Investigation

• Detectives Qualities, Myths, and Attributes
• Officers who disappear
• Undercover operations have increased greatly
  since the 1970s, largely due to expanding drug
  investigations

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Criminal Investigation

• Problems with the role
• The ability to cultivate informants for
  information on illegal activities
• Close associations with criminals
• Face risk of stress-induced illness, physical
  harm, and corruption
• May experience changes in their value systems
• Interfering with family relationships and
  activities
• Returning to patrol duties
• Difficulty adjusting to the routine of
  traditional police work

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Criminal Investigation

• Uses of the Polygraph
• Used by police since the early 1900s
• Inferential process in which lying is inferred
• Used to investigate whether a particular person
  was involved in crime
• Used also for preemployment screening
• Studies show that the polygraph may yield an
  accuracy of about 90 percent
• Results may be admitted in court

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Criminal Investigation

• DNA Analysis
• Methods
• Used in legal cases since 1987
• Two DNA testing methods are used to create the
  DNA profile
• Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP)
• Uses radioactive material to produce a DNA image
  on an X-ray film
• Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
• Does not use radioactive material
• Principal method used for forensic science DNA
  testing

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Criminal Investigation

• Methods and Standards for Testing
• Frye standard
• Established in 1923
• Was the primary test of admissibility
• A court would admit scientific evidence only
  after it gained general acceptance in the
  relevant scientific community

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Criminal Investigation

• Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc
• New standard set by the Supreme Court in 1993
• Significantly eased the rules from the Frye
  standard
• The following factors determine whether any form
  of scientific evidence is reliable
• Whether it has been subjected to testing and peer
  review
• Whether there are known or potential rates of
  error
• Whether there are standards controlling
  application of the techniques involved

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Criminal Investigation

• United States v. Jakobetz (1990)
• Population statistics produced by the FBI
  indicated that DNA profile of the defendant was
  extremely rare
• It was expected to occur only once in every 300
  million people

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Criminal Investigation

• Recent Developments
• Mitochondrial DNA
• Creation of a national DNA database

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Criminal Investigation

• Behavioral Science in Criminal Investigation
• Criminal Profiling
• Drug courier profiles
• Profiles of shoplifters
• Potential presidential assassins
• Psychological profiling
• Serial murderers

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Criminal Investigation

• Psycholinguistics
• Psychics and Hypnosis
• Only Nevada and Texas allow evidence from
  hypnosis

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Criminal Investigation

• Recent Developments in Forensic Science and
  Investigation
• Interrogations of a different sort Terrorism
  Suspects
• Forensic Entomology
• The use of insects in investigations
• There is a succession of insects into the body of
  the deceased
• This can be used to estimate the time of death

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Criminal Investigation

• Stalking Investigations
• Described as the crime of the 1990s
• Four types of stalking situations
• Erotomanic
• Stalker believes that the person is in love with
  them, as in the case of a celebrity or public
  figure

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Criminal Investigation

• Love obsessional
• Similar to erotomanic
• The stalker is not known to the victim
• Stalker writes letters and phone calls to make
  themselves known to the victim
• Simple obsessional
• Stalker has had a prior relationship with the
  victim
• Stalking begins after the relationship has soured
• The false victimization syndrome
• This is the rarest form
• A person claims that someone is stalking them to
  gain attention as the victim
• There is no stalker

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Criminal Investigation

• Investigating Cybercrooks
• Protecting the Innocents
• Estimated that about 89,000 Internet sex crimes
  against minors occurs each year
• Juveniles age 12 through 17 constitute 23 percent
  of all violent crime victims
• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children