Crime & Clues

Just what is the impression of forensic science held by members of the general public (our pool of jurors)? If they believe everything they see on TV or in the movies, they are being sadly misled. Our local attorneys believe that, at the very least they have been generally misinformed about the likelihood of finding fingerprints by exposure to the media. Because of this I will be in court in the coming weeks giving testimony on the difficulties of recovering fingerprints from duct tape... Of course the same attorney moments later mentioned how unusual it is to recover fingerprints from guns- Which he felt had good surfaces for recovering fingerprints. (I re-educated him on this point, as guns have generally lousy surfaces, not to mention all the handling involved in firing/recovering/and making safe prior to processing).

It has been my experience that not only do members of the general public have a lack of understanding of forensic science, but that police officers, detectives, prosecutors and judges are often not much better. I think this trend is likely to continue as long as forensics is misrepresented in the media. People tend to refer to personal experience when assessing the value of new information, and when the personal experience with forensic science is "I was watching Law and Order on TV the other night and they.... "

In recent months I have had two different District court judges, lower two different counts of Home Invasion to either Unlawful entry, or Trespassing. Their reasoning? One said that even though we identified the defendant's fingerprints on an item in the residence which was handled, but not taken. Even though he had no business being in the residence- because there were other fingerprints which we did not identify (we eliminated a number of prints belonging to the owner and his family) we could not show that the defendant had any intent to commit a larceny, one of the "unidentified" persons could have committed the larceny.