Wednesday, January 30, 2013

History of Forensics



            Forensic science was started in the 17th century and it was used as a unique discipline in which the principles and techniques of the basic sciences (biology, chemistry, and physics) are used to analyze evidence, thereby retrieving information to help solve problems related to civil and criminal law. In this section of my blog, I will speak of the history of forensic science and talk about the earlier uses of it, as well as some techniques. The scope of text will be in the United States and France. The quality of forensic science will be limited to laboratories in the United States. Forensic science is essential and vital to solving the work for criminal justice and crimes.
            "Over the past century, forensic science has developed into a large interdisciplinary field consisting of a number of different but related areas as legal medicine (pathology and anthropology); toxicology; forensic chemistry; forensic identification (including fingerprinting and DNA analysis); questioned documents; firearms; and tool marks" (Kobilinsky 193). Although forensic science began as early as the 6th century, it wasn't until the 17th century when it was used in courts as evidence. For example, in the 1800s there was a case in France with a physician named M.J.B. Orfila, he was asked to determine if a woman had poisoned her own husband through dinner. It so happened that she did by putting arsenic in the food and Orfila used analytical chemistry methods to determine the poison in his body (Kobilinsky 193). With this breakthrough, it became essential for autopsies (post-mortem examination) and it helped determine the cause and manner of the death of patients. This was the birth of another forensic science called forensic pathology.
            A technique that rapidly became popular and then routine in forensic science was fingerprinting. Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) had attempted to capture individual identities by recording measurements of a large number of physical characteristics, resulting in a unique profile for every person (Kobilinsky 193). This theory failed because the lack of reliability and the ability to establish absolute identification. William Herschel, Henry Faulds, and Thomas Taylor began the work of fingerprinting in the early 1900s. According to Kobilinsky, "These scientists laid the foundation for the comparison of latent prints found at a crime scene with exemplar (known) prints taken from an individual" (193). This lead to the Henry system in 1910 which was a classification system.
            Forensic science in crime investigation is still relatively new as it has been used starting in the 17th century, this brings up the question, how were crimes solved before then? We can only imagine the amount of criminals that were let free or got away with a crime before forensics. Without some of the techniques used now today, it makes sense that back in ancient times around 400 BC, people decided crimes by brutality and barbarism. 
Kobilinsky, Lawrence. "Forensic Science." Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement. Ed. Larry E. Sullivan, et al. Vol. 1: State and Local. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Reference, 2005. 192-197. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.




Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Gaming



            I love to play video games and that reason being is because it entertains me and all of my friends can join and play with me. My collection of video games vary from PC gaming, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 games. Back in elementary school, I was introduced to the Nintendo 64 and from then I loved to play games. I started playing Mario Kart and then expanded my curiosity of gaming from racing to adventure games. The next game I played was the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, afterwards, my love for gaming became vast and continued to evolve. I played Pokemon as a kid and it taught me dedication to level my Pokemon up to the maximum level which took forever but after that, I always persevered to finish anything that I started. Gaming has been a huge part of my life and has distracted me from many of my responsibilities but has also helped me finish many.
            I'm really into competitive gaming in my free time, but don't get me wrong, I love to play with the family and friends casually. Currently, some of my closest friends and I play League of Legends which is an online multiplayer PC game. The names of some characters and items are based on names in some of my history classes at Nova which I find completely fascinating. For example, it has a champion named Darius and in ancient history, Darius is the name of the king of Persia in 549 BC, and the company based the champion on the king of Persia. The game is five on five and the goal is to defeat the other team by destroying their nexus, in other words, their army. These games can last as early as twenty minutes and some games can last as long as an hour. The game is very competitive and there are tournaments going on year round for huge cash prizes over one hundred thousand for the winning team.
            When I game casually, I usually play when I have absolutely nothing to do on my plate such as school or work. My casual gaming usually starts on my Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and I love playing on them because of the entertainment and vibe I get from it. I feel as if I'm engulfed with technology in my life because of the wireless internet connecting to my console, wireless communication to my friends from miles away and even strangers across states and countries, all from the common console. Gaming all together is really entertaining to me and it relieves my stress from all of school and work. I have one day off during the week and I usually spend it doing homework so when I get to game, I zone out.

Bloodstain Pattern Analysis



          

            Personally, I am not a huge fan of the sciences, but I have been intrigued by the fascinating works of forensic scientists and what they can ultimately achieve for their team. Forensic science is the use of multiple different sciences and technology to discover or investigate facts of interests via criminal activity. What inspired me to write about this topic was the show Dexter as seen on Showtime. Dexter is also the name of the main character in the show as he investigates crime scenes from minor offenses and crimes to master mind criminals and highly complex scenarios. He uses forensics to learn about the scenarios and he studies this for days and perfects his own art, as he is a serial killer himself. With forensics, he learns from the mistakes of prior criminals and becomes a flawless serial killer of other criminals. Dexter has given me inspiration to learn more about his specialty of forensics and to truly understand how he does it.
            More specifically, I like the bloodstain pattern analysis, which is a specialty in the field of forensic science. Both in real life and in the show, the bloodstain pattern analysts follow the same exact steps to determining the scenario. According to my source, the steps to define if any crime scene analysis is possible are: assess the scene, observe the scene, document the scene, collect the evidence, and analyze specific scene aspects (Gardner  and Bevel 93). The purpose for the steps in this order is to recover as much functional evidence possible and document completely every picture, note, sketch and item produced from the scene. Gardner and Bevel state, "From this effort, data in the form of scene context and physical evidence are produced. These data serve as the basis of any formal crime scene analysis" (93). This is our first major step to bloodstain pattern analysis.
            The second major step to bloodstain pattern analysis after all of the evidence and items produced from the scene of the crime has been sent to the lab is to apply the analysis and reconstruct the crime scene. This part of the forensics is very exciting to me, it's as if you were told the ending to a book and you had to create the book prior to the end. There are six certain patterns that these analysts can decipher from crime scenes: radiating patterns produced by an impact to a blood mass, linear patterns produced by blood flung from another object, patterns produced by streaming volumes, produced by blood falling as a function of gravity, produced by volume accumulations, and patterns produced through contact with a blood object (Gardner and Bevel 108). Ultimately, after defining all of the patterns, the analysts can recreate a scene because of the blood. Blood drops in free flight achieve a spherical shape and the analysts use this to determine the angle of which the criminal struck a victim and so on. These complex problems that forensic scientists dealing with bloodstain patterns are sometimes infuriating, especially when solving a crime, but the importance of solving the scenario gives me the inspiration to learn about it.


Gardner, Ross M., and Tom Bevel. Practical Crime Scene Analysis and Reconstruction. Boca Raton: CRC,             2009. Print.