8127/frame/fm

 
Figure 10.2
 
Analysis request.
Who determines the analyses to be performed?
The analyst is in the best position to determine which evidence might assist in
answering a legal question, but only if he has knowledge of the case circum-
stances. An investigator or attorney will sometimes ask for results that would
be useful to his case, rather than asking for an analysis to resolve some specific
issue. In this example, if the results obtained were as the attorney requested, the
prosecutor would have to dismiss the charges against the defendant, because the
shoes were found in the suspect’s closet.
8127/frame/ch10 Page 247 Friday, July 21, 2000 11:38 AM

---

248
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
a common source. At this point you are probably thinking that what has
been described so far is really not that big a deal. However, a quick look at
the original police report reveals that the shoe was collected from the suspect’s
closet, and the person who was bleeding was the victim! While this would
not have changed the final analytical results, failure to discover the misun-
derstanding before any analysis took place could, at the very least, result in
wasted time. Although it is generally prudent to obtain reference samples
from all of the principals potentially involved in a crime, this same attorney
might decide that, in this case, the victim’s reference sample is not relevant,
and therefore fail to obtain it and provide it to the analyst. The analyst’s
predictable failure to link the evidence to the suspect’s reference sample might
result in a correct analytical exclusion that would fail to address the relevant
question in the case. Unless someone thinks to get a reference sample from
the victim at this point, the case is over and justice has not been served.