News All - Florida Forensic Science

Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police

April 16, 2019/in Attorney, Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

The tech giant records people’s locations worldwide. Now, investigators are using it to find suspects and witnesses near crimes, running the risk of snaring the innocent.

Florida Woman Faced 10 Years for ‘Meth’ That Was ‘Just a Rock’

March 27, 2019/in Chemistry News, News /by Forensic Competency

Melissa Morales was riding her bicycle near the Flamingo Diner just off of U.S. Highway 1 in Stuart, Florida, when she was stopped by a Martin County sheriff’s deputy. It was 10 p.m. but still warm on an evening in late October 2018, and Deputy Steven O’Leary told Morales he stopped her because her bike had no lights.

Morales apologized and promised to get lights, but O’Leary decided to search her purse regardless. Inside, he found what he described as a “white, rocklike substance.” He then ran a field test that he said yielded a positive result for methamphetamine. The 37-year-old Floridian told O’Leary that what he claimed was meth was “just a rock.”

The Myth of Fingerprints

March 22, 2019/in Biology News, News, Patterned Evidence News /by Forensic Competency

At 9:00 a.m. last December 14, a man in Orange County, California, discovered he’d been robbed. Someone had swiped his Volkswagen Golf, his MacBook Air and some headphones. The police arrived and did something that is increasingly a part of everyday crime fighting: They swabbed the crime scene for DNA.

Normally, you might think of DNA as the province solely of high-profile crimes—like murder investigations, where a single hair or drop of blood cracks a devilish case. Nope: These days, even local cops are wielding it to solve ho-hum burglaries. The police sent the swabs to the county crime lab and ran them through a beige, photocopier-size “rapid DNA” machine, a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment affordable even by smaller police forces. Within minutes, it produced a match to a local man who’d been previously convicted of identity theft and burglary. They had their suspect.

A New Method of DNA Testing Could Solve More Shootings

March 12, 2019/in Biology News, News /by Forensic Competency

POLICE FOUND 19 spent shell casings scattered in the San Diego street where Gregory Benton was murdered on April 12, 2014. Benton and his cousin had gone to buy cigarettes, a witness later said. As they returned to a family party, two men pulled up in a car behind them. They got out, and at least one of them opened fire.

Witnesses didn’t get a good look at the men or the car, so when police sat down to review their leads, the shell casings were the best evidence they had. They sent the casings to the San Diego Police Crime Lab, which just happened to be trying out a new DNA testing technique.

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One Twin Committed the Crime — But Which One? A New DNA Test Can Finger the Culprit

March 11, 2019/in Biology News, News /by Forensic Competency

One night in November 1999, a 26-year-old woman was raped in a parking lot in Grand Rapids, Mich. Police officers managed to get the perpetrator’s DNA from a semen sample, but it matched no one in their databases.

Detectives found no fingerprints at the scene and located no witnesses. The woman, who had been attacked from behind, could not offer a description. It looked like the rapist would never be found.

Orlando Police Seek Money for Rapid DNA System to Solve Crimes, but Some Fear ‘Guilty by Machine’

March 5, 2019/in Biology News, News /by Forensic Competency

The Orlando Police Department is seeking state funding to buy a new DNA-testing technology that would allow officers to test and compare evidence in less than two hours, without shipping it to a state lab.

In its pitch for $250,000 to Orange County’s legislative delegation, the agency said the technology, known as Rapid DNA, “has the potential to change the paradigm for law enforcement and its capacity to solve cases,” including by identifying suspects or linking crime scenes.

FBI Scientist’s Statements Linked Defendants to Crimes, Even When His Lab Results Didn’t

February 28, 2019/in Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

Court records and FBI Lab files show statements by prosecutors or Richard Vorder Bruegge, the most prominent member of the Forensic Audio, Video and Image Analysis Unit, veered from his original conclusions in at least three cases.

Webinar: DNA Dystopia

February 25, 2019/in Attorney, Biology News, News /by Forensic Competency

March 5, 2019 @ 2:00 p.m. Eastern, 60 minutes

This session will focus on helping your client navigate the landscape of DNA dystopia. Learn about DNA collection of minors; expansion of rogue databases; spread of Rapid DNA; the mining of genealogical databases by law enforcement; and the linking of forensic databases with genealogical ones. Attend this session and learn how to fight these threats to your clients’ privacy rights in the age of genetic surveillance.

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Close Enough: Police Departments Are Using “Reverse Location Search Warrants” to Force Google to Hand Over Data on Anyone Near a Crime Scene

February 20, 2019/in Attorney, Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

On the night of March 16, 2017, the city of Raleigh, North Carolina suffered its biggest fire in a century. The flames scorched 10 buildings, including churches and businesses. A seven-story apartment complex, then under construction, was reduced to ashes. The fire ultimately caused $50 million in damages.

Over the next year, authorities investigated the fire but seemed to struggle to determine its cause. According to a report by local NBC affiliate WRAL, the Raleigh police went to extreme lengths to find out if an arsonist may have set the blaze. Investigators served a search warrant to Google, asking that the company to provide the coordinates of any phones that were in the area between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. on the night of the fire. It was likely for naught—police ended up classifying the cause of the fire as “undetermined.”

Dozens of Cities Have Secretly Experimented with Predictive Policing Software

February 11, 2019/in Attorney, News /by Forensic Competency

The use of PredPol—a predictive policing software that once advocated for a controversial, unproven “broken windows” approach to law enforcement—is far more widespread than previously reported, according to documents obtained by Motherboard using public records requests.

PredPol claims to use an algorithm to predict crime in specific 500-foot by 500-foot sections of a city, so that police can patrol or surveil specific areas more heavily.

Prisons Across the U.S. Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People’s Voice Prints

February 7, 2019/in Attorney, Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

ROUGHLY SIX MONTHS ago at New York’s Sing Sing prison, John Dukes says he was brought out with cellmates to meet a corrections counselor. He recalls her giving him a paper with some phrases and offering him a strange choice: He could go up to the phone and utter the phrases that an automated voice would ask him to read, or he could choose not to and lose his phone access altogether.

Dukes did not know why he was being asked to make this decision, but he felt troubled as he heard other men ahead of him speaking into the phone and repeating certain phrases from the sheets the counselors had given them.

Spring Training – March 4-8

February 6, 2019/in Attorney, Biology News, News, Patterned Evidence News /by Forensic Competency

Download the agenda.

Could Fingerprint Scanners Replace Check-In Lines at Airports, Baseball Games and Hospitals?

February 5, 2019/in News, Patterned Evidence News /by Forensic Competency

When Apple introduced an electronic fingerprint scanner to its iPhone in 2013, it started doing away with annoying password log-ins required for many smartphone apps.

Today, a group of prominent D.C.-area investors thinks the same process can be applied to real-world inconveniences, such as standing in line at the airport, waiting to get into a hockey game or ordering a drink, where driver’s licenses and credit cards are still the primary way consumers prove their identities.

Florida Man Spent 41 days in Jail for Heroin. But It Was Actually Detergent, Cops Say

February 4, 2019/in Chemistry News, News /by Forensic Competency

For nearly six full weeks, 29-year-old Matt Crull said he sat inside a Florida jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

The charge was trafficking heroin, according to CBS12. It came with a steep potential punishment and bond, which frightened Crull, who said an officer mistook laundry detergent for heroin.

Secondary Transfer of Organic Gunshot Residue After Handshakes, Arrests

February 1, 2019/in Chemistry News, News /by Forensic Competency

Secondary transfer is a bugaboo in forensic science. As instrumentation has picked up increasingly microscopic trace evidence, the concern an innocent person could by implicated by DNA or other molecules from a crime scene has become an increasing focus of defense arguments—and of laboratory research.

Organic gunshot residues can be transferred through weapons handling, handshakes and arrests, according to new trials undertaken by a Swiss and Australian team and published in the journal Science and Justice.

Amazon Facial-Identification Software Used by Police Falls Short on Tests for Accuracy and Bias, New Research Finds

January 31, 2019/in Attorney, Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

Facial-recognition software developed by Amazon and marketed to local and federal law enforcement as a powerful crime-fighting tool struggles to pass basic tests of accuracy, such as correctly identifying a person’s gender, research released Thursday says.

Sheriff: State Privacy Laws ‘Have Not Kept Pace’ with Technology

January 30, 2019/in Attorney, Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

With new technology like smart devices and facial recognition, lawmakers are weighing ways to balance privacy rights with law enforcement investigations.

The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee Wednesday workshopped how to balance protecting an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, while not hindering law enforcement’s investigative power.

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Florida Court: Prosecutors Had No Obligation to Turn Over Facial Recognition Evidence

January 29, 2019/in Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

A Jacksonville man argued he had a right to see photos of other potential suspects returned in a police search that relied on controversial biometric technology. The court disagreed.

Death is Different XXV

January 28, 2019/in Biology News, News /by Forensic Competency

Seminar Agenda

Thursday, February 21, 2019

7:30-8:30    Continental Breakfast provided

8:30- 8:45   Opening Remarks- Tania Alavi

8:45-10:15 DNA for Dummies- Deborah A. Goins

10:15-10:30 Networking Break

10:30-11:30 Effectively Working with Experts- Kate O’Shea & Dr. Heather Holmes

11:30-12:30 Case Law Update- Peter N. Mills

12:30-1:30 Lunch on your own

1:30-2:30    National Trends- Emily Olson-Gault

2:30-3:45    Preservation Capital Record- Valerie Linnen

3:45-4:00    Networking Break

4:00-5:00    The Art of Storytelling: What modern Story Theory reveals about structuring our clients’ narratives in ways that inspire understanding and empathy in jurors- Melissa Fay Greene Keynote Speaker

Friday, February 22, 2019

8:00-9:00    Continental Breakfast provided

9:00-9:15    Opening Remarks- Tania Alavi

9:15-10:45 Latest developments in Neuroimaging- Dr. James R. Merikangas

10:45-11:00 Networking Break

11:00-12:00 Roper Extension- Karen M. Gottlieb and Dr. Neena Malik

12:00-1:00 Lunch on your own

1:00-2:00    Death Penalty Practice from a Prosecutor’s Point of View- Brian Cavanagh and Catherine Vogel

2:00-3:30    Jury Selection- Matt Rubenstein

3:30-3:45    Closing Remarks

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The FBI Says Its Photo Analysis Is Scientific Evidence. Scientists Disagree.

January 25, 2019/in Digital Forensics News, News /by Forensic Competency

The bureau’s image unit has linked defendants to crime photographs for decades using unproven techniques and baseless statistics. Studies have begun to raise doubts about the unit’s methods.