July 8, 2009 California Budget Cuts Jeopardize Crime Labs Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking extreme measures to cope with California’s $24 billion deficit including a $20 million cut from the Justice Department's crime lab, charging local police departments for processing rape kits and other evidence, and the early release of criminals.
July 8, 2009 Ecstasy Showing Up As Cartoon-Shaped Pills Ecstasy and Ecstacy-like pills shaped like Snoopy, Ninja Turtles, and the Simpsons are showing up on Kansas City streets. The shapes are a marketing ploy to represent the drugs as being fun and lighthearted but present a far greater risk.
July 8, 2009 DNA Identification Laminated in Government Id Cards Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. can now incorporate its SigNature DNA into laminates typically used in travel documents, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and other government issued identification cards. Id cards can now carry a unique DNA marker for security and identification purposes.
July 8, 2009 Houston Crime Lab Facing Scrutiny on Murder Case The Houston crime lab is facing more scrutiny over past forensic analyses. A deathrow inmate convicted of murder is now seeking a new trial, claiming that the crime lab analyst who testified in his case ommitted crucial evidence.
July 8, 2009 Profile: Michael Baden, Detective of Death Michael Baden, a 74-year-old forensic pathologist, has made his reputation solving high-profile cases.
July 8, 2009 New Field in Animal Forensics Melinda Merck, a veterinarian from Atlanta, is the center of a budding animal-crime-solving movement.
July 8, 2009 New Products: Holster, Case Management Software, and more Read about the latest Safariland IWB Holster, the newest Case Management Software from IntaForensics, and a new Sampling Products Catalog from Nasco.
July 1, 2009 10% Discount on iPhone Forensics Workshop iPhones store an enormous amount of information useful to corporate security professionals and law enforcement agents. Enterprises must adequately manage sensitive data which may put their company at risk. Law enforcement agencies and freelance forensic examiners must process the iPhone for evidence linking its owner to crimes.
July 1, 2009 Supreme Court Ruling Requires Crime Lab Analysts to Testify Get ready to trade your lab coat for a suit coat, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last Thursday will require crime lab analysts to appear in court and submit to cross-examination if their reports are used as evidence. This ruling could have tremendous impacts on how crime labs operate and exacerbate the backlog problems that plague crime labs nationwide.
July 1, 2009 The Man Without a Fingerprint A Singaporean cancer patient was detained by U.S. customs because his cancer treatment had made his fingerprints disappear. A forensic expert explains other ways people can lose—intentionally or unintentionally—one of their unique identifiers.
July 1, 2009 Florida Police Fleet Going High-Tech The DeLand, Florida, police fleet used a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to purchase 18 digital video cameras and audio recorders to fit into patrol cars. "Whatever a camera captures or records is visual evidence pretty hard to dispute in a court of law," Deputy Chief Randel Henderson said.
July 1, 2009 Oregon Case Puts Reliability of Science On Trial Inside the Oregon State Penitentiary, Philip Scott Cannon spends every waking moment poring over legal documents. The "bullet lead analysis" that was the prosecution's primary tool in an otherwise circumstantial case against him has since been discarded as bad science.
July 1, 2009 Sagem Sécurité Wins Contract For Advanced Facial Recognition System In Australia Sagem Sécurité has signed a contract with the New South Wales Government’s Roads and Traffic Authority to supply and maintain a biometric face recognition system with a 15 million image database, for driver licenses.
July 1, 2009 HyperVision Video Camera Records 1 Million Frames Per Second Shimadzu Scientific Instruments has designed the compact HyperVision HPV-2 to meet the demand for high-speed video cameras that are functionally advanced and easy to use. The HPV-2 achieves ultra-fast recording at speeds of 1 million frames per second.
July 1, 2009 Family of UCLA Lab Fire Victim Criticizes Investigation Relatives of staff research assistant Sheri Sangji, who died of burns from a chemical explosion at UCLA, say a state investigator ignored key information and seek harsher penalties for the university.
July 1, 2009 Crime-Lab Work Techniques Questioned in Murder Trial Crime lab techniques have come to the forefront in a 25-year-old cold case. Attorneys are challenging the handling and storage of evidence in the Maine murder trial of a woman found stabbed to death in 1983. The defense claims the samples of Thomas Mitchell’s DNA cannot be connected to the Flagg case during the years the case had gone cold.
June 24, 2009 In New York, Number of Killings Rises With Heat There were more homicides in New York City last year in September than in any other month: 52. Next highest was August, with 51. Variations, of course, exist. There were 48 homicides last March, for instance, The New York Times reports.
June 24, 2009 Outrage Over Rape Kit Backlog The growing nationwide rape kit backlog has been featured prominently in the news. Aside from the implications for the individual sexual assault victims in these cases, many argue that failing to test each kit allows the offender to remain at large and precludes the opportunity of discovering linked attacks and repeat offenders. By Rebecca Waters
June 24, 2009 Budget Decrease Could Lead To Crime Increase District Attorney Ed Jagels in Kern County, California, fears that county budget cuts forcing layoffs in his department will result in important evidence not being analyzed in the crime lab, allowing some misdemeanor cases, including gang cases, to go unprosecuted.
June 24, 2009 Online Forensic Library FORENSICnetBASE provides access to references and resources covering every aspect of forensics and law enforcement, from criminal justice and forensic investigation to counterterrorism, cyber crime, and money laundering.
June 24, 2009 Mount Royal College Opens Crime Lab The Mount Royal Criminal Justice Research Lab, the only independent research crime lab in Alberta, Canada, has been in operation a couple months. It will conduct research on identity theft, human trafficking and border security.
June 24, 2009 Automated Plasmid DNA Purification Many of today’s applications require rapid isolation of pure plasmid DNA and automation can meet these high-throughput needs. To this end, Hamilton Robotics has introduced a tested and verified protocol for automation of the Promega Wizard SV 96 Plasmid DNA Purification System.
June 24, 2009 Fido Verdict Quickly Identifies Explosives, Narcotics and Liquid Threats ICx Technologies has released Fido Verdict, a palm-size instrument capitalizing on the miniaturization of Raman-based spectroscopy instruments, to help military and law enforcement officials identify explosives, dangerous liquids, narcotics, and other threats.
June 24, 2009 Police Forensics Inspire Sculptures Scottsdale, Arizona, has broken ground on a piece of public art that they are calling the "Garden of Evidence," a series of sculptures adjacent to a new police station. The work is being created by New York artist Dennis Oppenheim and is inspired by the forensic work being done at the new municipal complex.
June 24, 2009 Nuclear Forensics: Preparing for the Worst Experts in the Government Accountability Office, fear that in the event of a nuclear attack, the U.S.’s nuclear forensic experts and analytical facilities would be unable to cope with the job at hand, the Associated Press reports.
