Month November 2015

The Montana State Crime Lab is improving training and bringing on new forensic scientists after last year was marred by staffing shortages and shipping bodies outside of the state to be evaluated. Read more on Montana’s improvements, here.

The team, which specializes in crime scene and airplane crash recoveries, was sought out to assist first responders in recovering bodies from the site of a plane crash in Ohio.

“Since 2000, the state required that gun manufacturers fire every handgun to be sold here and send the spent bullet casing to authorities. The idea was to build a database of “ballistic fingerprints” to help solve future crimes.” The system… Continue Reading →

A 16-year-old girl was raped at a party and again at her “rescuer’s” home on February 15, 2014. An investigation quickly followed after the victim arrived at the hospital, clearly drugged and battered. Police were able to obtain an eyewitness who… Continue Reading →

Detroit is one of the many jurisdictions with a backlog of untested rape kits. Businesswomen in Detroit, learning about the backlog, quickly rallied around the cause and formed a private organization, Enough SAID (Sexual Assault in Detroit) to fundraise privately,… Continue Reading →

Yesterday we featured Valena Beety’s review of Sandra Guerra Thompson’s new book.  Below are some of my reactions to a central narrative in the book. “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”  The actual line was in past tense, says NASA… Continue Reading →

Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson has written a timely book addressing forensic reform in our legal system, Cops in Lab Coats: Curbing Wrongful Convictions Through Independent Forensic Laboratories. The Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law is publishing my book review of… Continue Reading →

Adacia Chambers has been charged with four counts of second-degree murder in conjunction with driving into a crowd of people at the Oklahoma State University Homecoming parade. A forensic psychologist evaluated Chambers in prison and found that she exhibited signs… Continue Reading →

A long forensic investigation has resulted in the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force Commander believing that Lt. Joe Gliniewicz’s death was a suicide. Investigators believe that his suicide was prompted by increased stress of stealing money from the department. Read… Continue Reading →

Last week, the city of Tulsa agreed to compensate Sedrick Courtney $8 million for the 15 years he spent in prison after a wrongful conviction for robbery. He was convicted based upon a mistaken eyewitness identification and the testimony of… Continue Reading →