62
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
D.
The State of the Practice
1.
Continuing Themes
Throughout the short history of forensic science, some common themes have
developed, mostly in the form of controversies and complaints. In the
closing
section of this chapter, we enumerate the most pervasive of these and com-
ment briefly on the current state of the profession with regard to some of
these concerns.
a.
Recognition and Collection of Evidence
Perhaps the most bitter and persistent complaint throughout the history of
criminalistics has been the lack of adequate training in crime scene proce-
dures. In fact, most of the “police science” or “crime detection” books*
specifically address, at least in part, the audience of nonscientifically oriented
police officers and detectives who are virtually always the first to arrive at a
scene. More often than not, a law enforcement officer
or evidence collection
technician with minimal scientific training is the person tasked with the all-
important charge of recognizing and collecting evidence. Less and less often
will a criminalist from the laboratory be called to the crime scene, and the
decision to do so is usually that of those already there. The individual making
decisions about what evidence to collect and the person given the responsi-
bility to collect it vary widely between jurisdictions, so it is difficult to gen-
eralize. Although numerous well-credentialed authors have stressed the
importance of allowing the criminalist access to the scene,** budget con-
straints and resource management often preclude even the possibility. For
instance, even in those jurisdictions where
a homicide might justify the
services of a criminalist, dusting for prints at the site of a burglary might not.
O’Hara and Osterburg, then members of the New York City Police
Department, in
Introduction to Criminalistics
, published in 1949, are partic-
ularly critical of this situation. They speak of the “inability of civil service to
attract competent personnel” and, in the face of the already present separa-
tion of the criminalist from the crime scene, emphasize the “importance of
field work for the working criminalist,” describing the analysis as “a routine
affair which may be entrusted to an ordinary technician.” They also point
out the paucity of texts written “to make a
detective out of the scientist,”
noting, even then, the trend toward training specialized officers to collect
evidence for the criminalist waiting in the laboratory.
* A great number of these books have been written throughout history. They include Gross,
1891; Else and Garrow, 1934; May, 1936; Grant, 1941; Svensson and Wendel, 1955; Nickolls,
1956; Cuthbert, 1958; Jones and Gabard, 1959; Williams, 1967; Kind and Overman, 1972;
Fisher, 1992.
**
Ibid
.
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The Evolution of Forensic Science
63
In Kirk’s 1953
Crime Investigation
, he points out that “The investigator …
must understand (a) what physical evidence is; (b) how to collect and pre-
serve it; (c) how to obtain from it the information it carries; and (d) how to
interpret the information so obtained.” He espouses the presence of the
criminalist at the scene stating “categorically that more laboratory failures
are due to inadequate collection of the existing evidence than are caused by
the failure of the laboratory to examine it properly.” Svensson (Svensson and
Wendel, 1955) a Swedish author, in
Crime Detection
, provides one of the first
specific descriptions of proper crime scene procedure. He emphasizes the
duty of the responding officer in preserving the
scene and stresses the care
with which evidence should be handled.
L. C. Nickolls, then director of the Metropolitan Police Laboratory, New
Scotland Yard, in
The Scientific Investigation of Crime
, published in 1956,
provides some of the most compelling justification for calling the analyst to
the scene. He describes the functions of the
scientist
as:
• To examine the general circumstances of the crime and form an opinion
from the scientific angle of the nature of the events preceding the police
investigation.
• To examine the scene of the crime for any unusual articles or fragments
of material which have meaning to him in his special capacity as an
expert but for some reason might not be suspected as being of value to
the lay mind.
• To suggest from the examination of the scene what possibilities of future
scientific
action exist and, therefore, what kind of samples the police can
expect to find of scientific value.
• Most important — to see for himself what the exact circumstances of the
crime have been so that at the subsequent examination of the various
scientific exhibits and also, if necessary, at the trial, the expert will know
these circumstances. He will thus not be making examinations or giving
evidence when has no first-hand knowledge of the reason why he is making
the examination or of what value or purpose is his subsequent evidence.
In 1959, Leland Jones, one-time commander of the Scientific Investigation
Division of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), and Gabard wrote
Scientific Investigation and Physical Evidence; A Handbook for Investigators
. In
a surreal prescient comment (re: the Simpson case) he ironically suggests that
the most valuable physical evidence may be worthless if inefficiently handled.
He divides the handling of physical evidence into four phases:
1. Gathering all potential evidence at scene or elsewhere.
2. Marking it correctly.
3. Keeping the chain of continuity straight.
4. Preventing contamination.
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64
Principles and Practice of Criminalistics
For reasons that continue to elude us (which means they must be adminis-
trative or fiscal), the system continues to try to force square pegs into round
holes, placing the onus of all-important evidence collection on those least
trained to recognize it, and sequestering the criminalist in the laboratory
with the expensive equipment.
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