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A.
Asking the Right Question
At the beginning of this book, we warned you that we would continually be
returning to a consideration of 
 
The Question
. This chapter is no exception.
 
1.
Translating the Legal Question into a Science Question
When the evidence arrives at the door to the laboratory, the first duty of the
analyst is to find out from the detective or attorney what he expects from
the laboratory analysis. What pertinent question does he hope you can help
him answer? Let’s first take a very straightforward example. Fibers are found
adhering to a broken window at the scene of a burglary. A suspect was
 
If you don’t ask the right question, 
you won’t get the right answer, 
no matter how brilliant your analysis.
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Good Forensic Practice — Obligations of the Analyst
247
apprehended as he was apparently fleeing from the incident on foot. The
jacket he was wearing was confiscated as evidence, and fibers from the jacket
have been submitted as reference samples along with the evidence fibers from
the window glass. The detective wants to know if the suspect was at the scene.
The analyst translates this question as, can the evidence fibers collected from
the window glass be distinguished from reference fibers collected from the
suspect’s jacket? She will also advise the detective that, to link the suspect to
the scene, he needs to link not only the jacket to the scene, but also the jacket
to the suspect at the time of the burglary.
Helping the attorney or detective understand the question is not as trivial
as one might think. The following request in Figure 10.2 was received by the
crime laboratory serving a major metropolitan city. The most obvious gaff
in this note is the request by the district attorney for a particular result
ostensibly beneficial to his case — the “matching” of some blood on a piece
of evidence to the suspect. Perhaps the attorney can be forgiven this particular
slip in his role as an advocate. Regardless, the analyst should explain to the
attorney that the test will determine 
 
if
the evidence and reference could share