When it comes to a crime, criminals are able to cover up many types of evidence. One piece of evidence that is almost impossible to cover up is prints. Because of the difficulty behind covering prints, they are the most important part of solving a crime. The types of prints range from Fingerprints to palm prints and even lip prints can be used to solve a crime. Prints are the most important piece of evidence because prints are left everywhere anyone touches, they are not easily covered up, all prints are unique, and because many parts of your body produce prints without you even trying. When talking about the importance of prints it is vital to notice that prints serve many roles and for the most part the average person doesn’t know any more about prints than what they have seen on CSI or other television shows. With enough research it is found that prints are more complex, interesting, and unique than might be thought. My research topic is very important because people don’t realize that without prints crimes would be much harder to solve. Without prints there would be no evidence at a crime scene that lasts long enough without disappearing. What people need to realize is that there is more to prints than just fingerprints and that there is more involved when collecting and processing them than what is shown on television. When dealing with prints it is important to understand that prints are very fragile and can easily be obstructed during the removal process. Removing a print is more complicated then it seems because of how careful you have to be and the fact that you only really get one shot when doing so. Prints are one of a kind so no two people can have the same prints. This just increases the importance of prints so that ... ... middle of paper ... ...ade for fibers such as cloth fibers. Again this can rule out suspects based on if they have the right clothes but it cannot place someone at the crime scene unless something rare is found. Even in that case a suspect may still be able to discard the clothes but they cannot discard the prints on their body. Prints are the most important evidence in solving a crime because prints are left everywhere anyone touches, they are not easily covered up, all prints are unique, and because many parts of your body produce prints without you even trying. The information provided previously should be used in attempt to educate future investigators about the importance of prints and why they should be properly taken care of when dealing with investigations and criminal prosecutions. Don’t commit a crime, because prints are going to leave you behind bars and a very unhappy person.
When it comes to identical twins we have come to learn that twin identical or not will not have the same fingerprint. Fingerprints are unique and are made to identify a person. So even when you clone humans or other primates I believe that the Friction ridge pattern will be similar but not exactly the same. I believe that in the process of the cloning process something will cause the fingerprints to come out different. Because cloning is dangerous there has yet to be a human cloning, but there have been cloning of monkeys and according to the data even though the monkey was cloned the fingerprint still isn’t the same.
Crime is a common public issue for people living in the inner city, but is not limited to only urban or highly populated cities as it can undoubtedly happen in small community and rural areas as well. In The Real CSI, the documentary exemplified many way in which experts used forensic science as evidence in trial cases to argue and to prove whether a person is innocent or guilty. In this paper, I explained the difference in fingerprinting technology depicted between television shows and in reality, how DNA technology change the way forensics evidence is used in the court proceedings, and how forensic evidence can be misused in the United States adversarial legal system.
Another discrepancy between actual forensics and how it is portrayed in the media is the availability of information in databases. There is only a small percentage of the entire population’s fingerprints or DNA samples stored within databases such as the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). This makes finding a match between a DNA sample or fingerprint difficult, as a match would only be found if the person’s information was already stored within the database. If there is no match previously stored in a database, the fingerprint or DNA sample could be potentially rendered useless within a trial. Typically, in order to perform an analysis, investigators must already have a suspect in mind and request a DNA or fingerprint sample from him or her. If the suspect does not want to provide one however, the sample collected as evidence may not count as valid. The CSI effect creates an idealized image that all crimes can be solved with a hair or drop of blood, but this is not always the case in real life.
In the criminal justice system, the best chance of a fair trial and justice lies within cases that include physical evidence. Physical evidence, whether fibers, fingerprints, or DNA, can give a jury proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Physical evidence can convict a criminal, or it can free an innocent man. It can bring closure to families and to the law enforcement that work the cases. The following cases will show what physical evidence does in a criminal trial and the vast impact it can make. For each case I will examine how the physical evidence was important to the case and whether or not it could have made more of a difference if the presentation of the evidence were different. The five cases are: the Mosley case, the Warren case, the Chandler case, the Frediani case, and the Swift Case.
The most important type of evidence is DNA. When DNA testing takes place, the samples are collected from the suspect and the crime scene. These evidences include hair, fingerprint, human secretions, blood, semen and other bodily fluids, are collected and sent to the lab for further investigation.
For this study forensic evidence can be considered DNA evidence and/or trace evidence of any kind, included to but not limited to tire tracks, bullet casings, glass shards, fingerprints, and hair samples. Although this study proposes the idea that forensic evidence is more important it currently is not used frequently in the justice system. A study found that out of the cases they examined forensic evidence was collected in 37% of cases but only 18% of those cases were examined (Peterson, Hickman, Strom, Johnson, 2013). Another study found that 38% of participants said forensic evidence was hard to come by while 62% said they had spent time on victim credibility (Menaker, Campbell, Wells, 2016). This shows us that forensic evidence is not used frequently, and more time is spent on making a victim credible instead of finding evidence. It is the purpose of this study to determine if forensic evidence is more important than circumstantial evidence and eye witness testimony. If this can be determined than less time can be spent on things like victim credibility for testimonies, and more time can be spent on analyzing forensic
Once a crime has been committed the most important item to recover is any type of evidence left at the scene. If the suspect left any Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) at the crime scene, he could then be linked to the crime and eventually charged. A suspect’s DNA can be recovered if the suspect leaves a sample of his or her DNA at the crime scene. However, this method was not always used to track down a suspect. Not too long ago, detectives used to use bite marks, blood stain detection, blood grouping as the primary tool to identify a suspect. DNA can be left or collected from the hair, saliva, blood, mucus, semen, urine, fecal matter, and even the bones. DNA analysis has been the most recent technique employed by the forensic science community to identify a suspect or victim since the use of fingerprinting. Moreover, since the introduction of this new technique it has been a la...
Law enforcement uses several methods to solve all types of crimes. Having a variety of ways to help solve an investigation gives officials an advantage. If one method fails or isn’t helpful, there are several others they can rely on. For instance, if there are no physical witnesses to a crime, the criminal may have left a fingerprint at the crime scene. An individual’s fingerprint is unique, “no two persons have exactly the same arrangement of ridge patterns” (“Fingerprint ID”). Fingerprints of criminals and of civilians are collected and stored. Also, “People who apply for government jobs, jobs that handle confidential information, banking jobs, teaching jobs, law enforcement jobs, and any job that involves security issues can be fingerprinted” (“The First ID”). Fingerprints are processed within hours and minutes through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint ID System. This system was developed in 1991, and made it easier for different law enforcement agencies to store and share fingerprints.
Before the 1980s, courts relied on testimony and eyewitness accounts as a main source of evidence. Notoriously unreliable, these techniques have since faded away to the stunning reliability of DNA forensics. In 1984, British geneticist Alec Jeffreys of the University of Leicester discovered an interesting new marker in the human genome. Most DNA information is the same in every human, but the junk code between genes is unique to every person. Junk DNA used for investigative purposes can be found in blood, saliva, perspiration, sexual fluid, skin tissue, bone marrow, dental pulp, and hair follicles (Butler, 2011). By analyzing this junk code, Jeffreys found certain sequences of 10 to 100 base pairs repeated multiple times. These tandem repeats are also the same for all people, but the number of repetitions is highly variable. Before this discovery, a drop of blood at a crime scene could only reveal a person’s blood type, plus a few proteins unique to certain people. Now DNA forensics can expose a person’s gender, race, susceptibility to diseases, and even propensity for high aggression or drug abuse (Butler, 2011). More importantly, the certainty of DNA evidence is extremely powerful in court. Astounded at this technology’s almost perfect accuracy, the FBI changed the name of its Serology Unit to the DNA Analysis Unit in 1988 when they began accepting requests for DNA comparisons (Using DNA to Solve Crimes, 2014).
...A. Maria, Ruth M. Robin. (2009). Latent prints: a perspective on the state of the science. Forensic Science Communications. 11.4.
The amount of evidence can either help win or lose a case. Every crime scene has evidence available for officers to collect. It is important for them to know what the standard protocol is for collecting evidence and how to properly collect it without contamination.
Forensic Science, recognized as Forensics, is the solicitation of science to law to understand evidences for crime investigation. Forensic scientists are investigators that collect evidences at the crime scene and analyse it uses technology to reveal scientific evidence in a range of fields. Physical evidence are included things that can be seen, whether with the naked eye or through the use of magnification or other analytical tools. Some of this evidence is categorized as impression evidence2.In this report I’ll determine the areas of forensic science that are relevant to particular investigation and setting out in what method the forensic science procedures I have recognized that would be useful for the particular crime scene.
...Mrs. Hiller found her husband dead. Investigators found some particles of sand and gravel by the daughters bed. They also found the fingerprints of the convicted killer Thomas Jennings, on the Hiller homes railings. Mr.Hiller had painted the railings hours before his death. Into the paint was four fingerprints of someone’s left hand. American Law enforcement had already adopted the principle of fingerprinting so the evidence was allowed to be presented in court. Fingerprinting expert William M. Evans had agreed that Jennings hand, his alone, was the prints left on the railing of the Miller’s home. The courts jury appealed Miller as guilty and he was later hanged. Fingerprinting is fairly new and they’ve helped find the culprit in many investigations carried out in America, therefore proving that our methods in solving crimes are better than the methods used before.
Forensic science has now been recognized as an important part of the law enforcement team to help solve crimes and cold cases. The advances in technology are being used each day and we must continue to strive to develop better advances in this field. The recent discovery of using DNA in criminal cases has helped not only positively identify the suspect, but it has helped exonerate hundreds of innocent individuals. “With new advances in police technology and computer science, crime scene investigation and forensic science will only become more precise as we head into the future.” (Roufa, 2017) Forensic science and evidence helps law enforcement officials solve crimes through the collection, preservation and analysis of evidence. By having a mobile crime laboratory, the scene gets processed quicker and more efficiently. Forensic science will only grow in the future to be a benefit for the criminal justice
Physical evidence is additionally important in every criminal investigation because too often witness accounts are sometimes biased or unreliable. Physical evidence such as trace evidence, DNA, and fingerprints may objectively attach one or more persons to a victim or suspect to a crime. Favorably, physical evidence can also demonstrate inestimable for exonerating an innocent suspect. Laboratory members and criminal investigators should perform together to resolve the biggest portion of evidence to institute the right suspect for a strong prosecution. Willingly, investigation officers should aggressively contact laboratory personnel when questions arise about the cases because DNA evidence is sensitive.