Forensic Science in JOSEPH M. ENGLISH Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20007
τ Ν RECENT YEARS, the courts have -"-subjected some of the classic methods of law enforcement to closer scrutiny than ever before. For centuries those methods used by enforcement agencies and the prose cution to solve crimes and to bring the perpetrators to justice, respec tively, have depended upon: (1) confessions of guilt, (2) statements of witnesses to the crime, and (3) information derived from physical evidence, sometimes called "circum stantial" evidence. Direct Evidence
The first two—i.e., confessions and witnesses—historically have been characterized as "direct evi dence." The last, that is, physical or circumstantial evidence, has been called "indirect evidence," and, because it is "indirect," there may have been a tendency to give it less weight than the "direct" evidence of the confession or the witness's state ment. After all, who should know better the details of what happened and the identity of the person who did the deed than the guilty party him self or those who saw the act com mitted? Standing alone, free of the en cumbrances of the real world, there would seem to be no more reliable premise upon which to base the quest for the truth of the matter and on which to base wise adjudica tion than the premise that the testi mony of those who were present at the occurrence may be taken as de pendable. 40 A ·
However, criminal justice is not administered in the rarefied air of pure thought and pure motives, but in a milieu of complex and sometimes conflicting information and, at times, considerably less than pure motives—a milieu in which those who administer justice must somehow sort out facts from fictions and, constantly testing the "facts," fit those which stand the test into place with such patience and skill that the true picture comes clear. The world of the investigator and the jurist is one in which thought systems, therefore, loom impor tantly. True facts in inept though well-meaning hands can serve jus tice and injustice with an impar tiality reminiscent of the roulette wheel. Cases come to mind in which, for sundry reasons, persons have seriously confused investiga tions by falsely confessing or by falsifying more or less essential de tails of the occurrence under in vestigation. An extortionist, for fairly obvi ous purpose, in one case confessed to writing the threatening note which he had prevailed upon his young daughter to write for him. An airman falsely confessed, after several days of questioning, to mur dering a young woman whom he probably had never even met. Two others had confessed to the same crime. However, a mistaken crime laboratory blood grouping mislead the investigators, causing them to intensify their interrogation of the airman and to free the other sus
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 42, NO. 13, NOVEMBER 1970
pects, one of whom it now appears committed the crime. After con viction and six years in prison, the airman was cleared by belatedly developed information brought to light by an energetic newspaper re porter, a dedicated private attorney, more careful crime laboratory work, and more accurate testimony than appears to have been used in the original investigation and trial. The attorney spent his own funds contacting widely dispersed wit nesses and for other expenses. Over $3000 of these expenditures have not been reimbursed. If some confessions are false, it hardly can be reasoned that all con fessions are, therefore, unreliable and should be ignored as without evidential value. The problem may well lie elsewhere—i.e., with the conditions under which the confes sion was obtained, emotional in stability of the person under ques tioning, excess of zeal on the part of the interrogator, or other fac tors. When all necessary conditions are as they should be, a confession is as valid, trustworthy, and reliable a source of accurate information as probably any other. There appears to be a widespread belief among the judiciary that fault too frequently may lie with the investigator through naivete, zeal, or bias. This overworked pub lic servant, the investigator, almost inherently is under pressure from the community and the news media, through his chief, to "solve" or to "close" cases. Usually he works within a system which provides less
REPORT FOR ANALYTICAL CHEMISTS
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motivation to look behind a confession than to accept it at face value and thus to facilitate an increase in his department's statistical "accomplishments." That such a circumstance is a serious threat to objectivity cannot be gainsaid.
witnesses who previously had identified the two earlier defendants later identified the true robbers. For some years, New York City banks were victimized by a check forger who regularly passed checks in very large amounts. One day a number of Wall Street banks were defrauded by this man of very large Errors in Eyewitness Testimony sums. Police were lead to suspect a certain Mr. "A," an unexceptional Let us look at the evidential value suburbanite husband and father of of the testimony of eyewitnesses. two children. Mr. "A" happened to For what might be considered very be present on the "Street" that day. good reasons, this category of "diSix persons who had had direct conrect" evidence is far less persuasive tact with the forger identified Mr. today than formerly. The fall from "A" as the person who had appeared grace of eyewitness testimony has at their banks and had negotiated followed disquieting experience in the fraudulent instruments in their cases in which sworn eyewitness presence. testimony, like some confessions, has proved to be in error. It was only after seven years iii prison that Mr. "A" was exonerated Cases can be cited in which conand released as a result of the idenvincing numbers of eyewitnesses tification of the real forger through have sworn that they observed peran FBI laboratory analysis of the sons, later proved to be innocent, in handwriting on the checks. Mr. the act of committing a felony. "A" died within a year of his reNine such eyewitnesses once swore lease from prison. in a court of law that two defendants on trial were seen by each of Why was eyewitness testimony in the witnesses in the act of commiterror in these instances? The folting a robbery and murder. Eight lowing may help to explain it. of the nine had picked the two deWhen human society was younfendants out of what appeared to ger, individuals in their daily lives have been a well-conducted lineup. numbered among their acquaintDuring the course of the trial, in ances much larger percentages of which the two defendants had all the populations of their communibut abandoned hope of acquittal, an ties than is possible today. As a astute newsman, once again, led the consequence, when an event was police to the actual robbers. The witnessed in former times, it was culprits had disposed of the victima case of the witness's observing ized concern's moneybags in the a friend or relative or someone basement of the building in which whom the witness recognized. With the robbers lived. Each of the nine increases in the numbers of people
populating our cities and towns, a witness who sees a total stranger in the act of passing a fraudulent check, killing a merchant, or committing some other reprehensible act, too often cannot be relied upon to retain an accurate mental image of the criminal. There is an old adage to the effect that "Murder will out!" I t is a homely way of saying that the truth of the matter, regardless of how obscure it may be, will in time be clearly exposed for all to see. The real weaknesses of the classical methods, as was said earlier, would appear to lie largely in the imperfections in the circumstances of their use and from faulty understanding of the inherent weaknesses and strengths of the methods. Now, admittedly, if it is a fact— and it seems to be a demonstrated one—that confessions and eyewitnesses are especially susceptible to abuse, then certainly the widespread negative judicial reaction is justified. What is offered in their stead? Physical Evidence
As the courts rely more and more on scientific evaluation of physical evidence, what assurance is there that this kind of evidence will not also be misused? To avoid such misuse, there are several necessary conditions: There must, first and foremost, be an uncompromising dedication to finding the truth on the part of the examining scientist and everyone else involved in the
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 42, NO. 13, NOVEMBER 1970
Report for Analytical Chemists
investigation, prosecution, and ad judication processes. There must be a high level of sophistication on the part of the scientist, the labora tory administration, the prosecutor, and the presiding judge, not to men tion the defense attorney. This would include a keen awareness of the state of the art and possible pit falls of each of the many categories of physical evidence encountered. But all of the sophistication and expertise which can be mustered can be brought to naught or worse in a climate in which those who play the crucial roles are wedded to one side or the other in the criminal justice process more firmly, perhaps, than to the cause of justice itself. The adversary system in which any method for obtaining the facts of a case must be used with the resul tant excesses of zeal sometimes ob served indeed may well be the one single cause of the problems ex perienced with direct evidence. Who is to say that the courts will not have equally misleading results from biased "analyses" of physical evidence, results which will be the more heinous for their aura of "sci ence?" A broader and firmer link with the Nation's universities may help this aspect of the situation. One shudders to contemplate what would be the likely quality of medi cine if there were no medical schools, or if there were only as few universities providing the necessary support for education and research in medicine as now provide pro grams in the forensic sciences, as such. Misuse of Scientific Evidence
That a misuse of the scientific analysis of physical evidence com parable to the misuse of confessions and witnesses is possible on a seri ous scale may be observed in a number of cases which have come to light in which misinterpretation of data obtained in the examination and evaluation of physical evidence has occurred. These cases reveal serious defects in the professional preparation of investigators and of laboratory ex perts. Too often the cloak of ex pertise is gratuitously conferred on a poorly trained or untrained (in a scientific sense) police officer by a
Report for Analytical Chemists Of all the TLC scanners available today, only the Nester/Faust 900 Scanner offers you this unique combination of features . . . source, detector and dual beam optical system with automatic base line compensation . . . in a single, easyto-use unit. In fact, the 900 is so simple to operate, you can get us able data in ten minutes, the first time you use it. All you do is place the plate on the easel and manually park the head over the plate sur face, to the left of the first spot. The photometer output (single channel or differential) is then balanced, with the aid of the front panel meter, by a single control. The plate is scanned (8" plate takes 3 minutes) and the head, which stops at the end of the plate, is repositioned for the next row of spots. It's that easy, and it gives you maximum base line
stability, automatically! There are no mechanical fasteners or linear ity adjustments involved. And, any plate, slide or gel up to 10" χ 2 0 " and up to Vfe" thick can be scanned, without the need for accessories. The 900 is one of the most reliable electronic instruments you can buy and, because it's modular in con struction, can be geared to your particular needs and budget. For example, when used in conjunction with the 1504 Summatic Integrator, it provides automatic detection and immediate digital printout of the area under the analog curve. For information about other optional systems and accessories, plus a lot more data about the unique fea tures of the Nester/Faust 900 TLC Scanner, write today. N e s t e r / F a u s t Mfg. Corp., 2401 Ogletown road, Newark, Del. 19711
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hard-pressed police administrator. The expert thus created by execu tive fiat has little time and few op portunities to upgrade his training. The work loads of the Nation's crime laboratories are extremely heavy and are growing at a fast pace apparently due to the court decisions in Miranda and other cases. Present work loads predict ably would be even larger if cur rently requested examinations could be conducted. Investigators soon learn that certain examinations cannot be handled. There is no point in repeating these requests. Crime laboratory personnel can ill afford to take time from their case loads to acquaint themselves with the developments in the sci ences or to obtain needed training even if enough adequate education and training programs were offered by the colleges and universities of the Nation. These institutions of learning, with a few notable exceptions, have too long ignored society's needs in law enforcement education and training. High-quality educational programs in the disciplines of the crime laboratory, as such, are of fered by even fewer institutions in the Nation's academic community. Little wonder that there is what ap pears to be a monumental failure of communication between the aca demic and law enforcement com munities. A contributing factor may be the innocence of much of the funding community. Foundations seem to be unaware that the forensic sci ences constitute a valid academic area and that, in these sciences, there is enormous potential for ad dressing some of the more serious deficiencies of the criminal justice process and that this area is suffer ing, in its turn, from staggering problems due largely to chronic academic, governmental, and foun dation community neglect. Standards Are Needed
If we prescind from the foregoing and turn to an examination of the heart of the workings of physical evidence evaluation, we find that standards-setting is a major prob lem. There is little evidence of wide-spread agreement, for ex(continued on page A7A) Circle No. 108 on Readers' Service Card
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Report for Analytical Chemists
ample, as to the extent of the quali tative and quantitative d a t a extractable from soil evidence by the more advanced techniques which might safely be relied upon to pro vide the bases for source or origin determinations at useful levels of specificity. Identifying those ac ceptable and alternate laboratory procedures for obtaining data from each kind of evidence amenable to measurable data extraction m a y aid the courts in their efforts to exclude incompetent testimony. Standard reference materials to serve widely separated laboratories m a y speed the handling of cases and raise the quality of their examinations. Other needs are for : 1. A multidiscipline approach to a better understanding of the schol arly legitimacy of the "identifica tion" process as a scientific proce dure for determining with as high a level of specificity as possible the source of an item of questioned evi dence in terms of comparable items of known source. 2. Programs of background sam pling and data collection essential to the evaluation process in the de
termination of just how unique a questioned piece of evidence ac tually is. 3. Broad check sample programs which would serve to keep individ ual experts informed as to their true levels of expertise as compared with their fellows in a given area or with a given analytical method. 4. Programs to attract the better college graduates into the crime laboratory disciplines. 5. Professional education and training programs such as those which have brought medicine to the professional level it has achieved and would promote the continuing close rapport between the academic community and the professional practitioners in the crime labora tories. 6. Programs of public education to recognize the importance of com petent examination and evaluation of physical evidence to the proper administration of justice. 7. Programs to alert the general public and the foundation com munity to the need to be informed in the Forensic Sciences. 8. Curricula improvement in our
Joseph M English is Director of the Forensic Sciences Center in the In stitute of Criminal Law and Proce dure, Georgetown University Law Center. He is also: assistant pro fessor, forensic pathology, in the department of pathology, Georgetown University School of Medicine; ad junct professor in the Georgetown University Law School; and adjunct professor in the American Univer sity Center for the Administration of Criminal Justice. Mr. English received his B.S. de gree at St. Joseph's College, Phila delphia, Pa., in 1989 and his M.A. degree at George Washington Uni versity, Washington, D. C, in 1967. He served on the staff of the FBI Laboratory, Document Section, from 19If-2 to 1966 when he joined the Institute of Criminal Law, Georgetown University Law Center, to establish the Forensic Sciences Center. He is active in the Ameri can Academy of Forensic Sciences, the AAAS, the International ^4ssociation of Chiefs of Police, Phi Delta Kappa, Society of Former
Special Agents of the FBI, and the Chesapeake Bay Chapter of the In ternational Association for Identi fication. He is chairman of the steering committee of the American Society for Testing Materials which is in the process of organizing a new permanent committee of ASTM in the forensic sciences. This month he is chairing the forensic sciences session at the East ern Analytical Symposium, Novem ber 19, New York, Ν. Υ.
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 4 2 , NO. 13, NOVEMBER 1970
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Report for Analytical Chemists law schools t o furnish those students who, in their professional lives, will be required t o act on information furnished by scientific experts. 9. Curricula improvement in our medical a n d nursing schools for those who will be in positions t o preserve or t o destroy utterly, evidence which could lead to t h e identification of an assailant. (See also Rose, John C , M . D . "Medical Centers and Crime Laboratories," Proceedings of The First Georgetown Conference on Surface Analysis, October, 1969.) M a n y rapists have gone free t o strike repeatedly b e cause emergency room hospital per-
sonnel had no professional p r e p a r a tion to alert them to the importance of avoiding commingling of articles of the victim's clothing, and obtaining adequate and proper swab specimens while ensuring against evidential contamination and disturbance of chain of custody. These are but a few of the problems t h e N a t i o n faces in law enforcement and the preservation of a just order. T h e y represent some of the more important problems which grow directly out of those of t h e Nation's crime laboratories. Other problems exist in the state of research and t h e consequent state
AMERICAN CHEMICAL
of the a r t in a number of the crime laboratory disciplines, in the state of expert qualification and certification standards, in legal education, and t h e continuing professional preparation of law students, lawyers, and judges in the sophisticated utilization of expert testimony. W h a t is most important is t h a t informed Americans, especially scientists as well as all others who share a dedication t o the improvement of the administration of justice and of the h u m a n condition, be informed in this area, as in all others which are crucial to the wellbeing of society and its members.
SOCIETY
ACS Short Courses
JANUARY SESSIONS The following ACS Short Courses are newly scheduled for January 1971. The premier session of "Fluorescence and Phosphorescence Spectrometry" is being offered in Philadelphia. To register or obtain complete information on the courses, convenient lodging, and student discounts, please write to Education Office, American Chemical Society, 1155—16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036. During the two-week period prior to a course, registration should be made by telephone: area code 202, 737-3337 ext. 258.
forecasting, marketing, new ventures, finance, cost accounting, project and product development, and evaluation of operations. Because business and economic aspects are becoming more critical relative to technological factors, the course will emphasize competitive aspects of the chemical business. No previous training in business or economics is required.
FLUORESCENCE AND PHOSPHORESCENCE SPECTROMETRY
GC/MS/COMPUTER TECHNIQUES Jan. 8-9—New York City. Dr. Francis W. Karasek, Dr. William H. McFadden, and Walter E. Reynolds; fee $85; required text, L. S. Ettre and W. H. McFadden, eds., "Ancillary Techniques of Gas Chromatography," John Wiley & Sons, Inc., $17.50. This course first reviews the fundamentals of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, and then presents in more depth the principles important to the GC/MS combination instrumentation. Subject matter includes the characteristics of the different types of mass spectrometers, the GC/MS interfaces, discussion of instrumentation, the GC/MS combination, and computerization of the output. Although a B.S. in chemistry or related science is a desirable background, anyone with sufficient experience—or the assigned responsibility—to work with the instrumentation will benefit from the course.
BUSINESS ASPECTS OF CHEMISTRY Jan. 15-16—Chicago, III. sponsor, Chicago Section.
Dr. Aimison Jonnard; fee $80;
This course is designed to give chemists and chemical engineers a pragmatic introduction to the business and economic practices which govern the management of chemical corporations. Topics include economics of pricing and price
Jan. 21-23—Philadelphia, Pa. Dr. George G. Guilbault; fee $115; required text, G. G. Guilbault, éd., "Fluorescence: Theory, Instrumentation, and Practice," Marcel Dekker, New York, 1967, $17.75; sponsor, Philadelphia Section. This new course introduces the basic principles and practical applications of all types of luminescence. Emphasis is on fluorescence and phosphorescence, but chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, electrogenerated luminescence, and others are also covered. Topics include effects of structure and environment on luminescence; assay of inorganic and organic substances using luminescence; instrumentation; monitoring of a solid surface. There will be hands-on laboratory sessions with a variety of instruments. The course will be of value to chemists, biochemists, clinical and medicinal chemists, spectroscopists, and technicians. Two years of college chemistry and math is sufficient background.
MODERN ORGANIC SYNTHESIS Jan. 27-28—New York City. Edwin Vedejs; fee $75.
Dr. Barry M. Trost and Dr.
This course is intended for individuals who are concerned with putting organic molecules together. It covers both the methods and tools of organic synthesis, with heavy emphasis on modern aspects of synthesis. Individual syntheses are selected which afford maximum exposure to a variety of concepts and tools. Research supervisors, bench chemists, and teachers will all benefit from the course.
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