Okay, so now I want to talk a little bit about a brief history of forensic science. Your readings have a lot of really great information about forensic science timeline. They've expanded a little more than what I even go into here. I'm going to talk a little bit about forensic science in general, and then I'll focus in on U.S. forensic science for a couple of minutes as well. Now, of course, all of us are familiar with Sherlock Holmes, who really was...
a catalyst for interest in investigative sciences and detective and forensic evidence and how it can be used in a case. Now, Sherlock Holmes was not a real detective. He was a character developed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but he had key foundational characteristics in terms of using his observational skills. to identify evidence using logic to deduce what part those evidence items had in tying again the criminal to the crime scene or the criminal to the victim, etc.
But when we go into actual history, it's just as interesting. So we can look back as early as 1790 BC at the of Hammurabi, which was just an indicator of one civilization in the world that tied medicine and the law together. So we find that in early civilizations, the primitive... legal codes were combined with religious doctrines and social precepts into a unified moral code.
And so there were less police and more More establishment of a moral code that was kind of regulated and held in place by the religious. persons in that particular civilization. So the Code of Hammurabi is just one example of a fundamental law that regulated government and morality and was a model of legal and judicial reasoning. So the Code of Hammurabi did have a presumption of innocence, which still holds true today in most societies, that suggests that both the accuser and the accused have the opportunity. to provide evidence to support their case.
So it didn't have to be forensic evidence. It could be circumstantial. It could be testimony.
But both parties had the right to present their evidence during some type of trial or some type of hearing, depending on the civilization. Now moving into the 1200s AD, both Asia and Europe were already beginning to evaluate and use evidence in bodies in wrongful death cases. So one example is in China. This was the Washing Away of Wrongs by Song Tzu, which was printed in 1247 and is known as the oldest textbook in forensic medicine.
Now this was written as a guide for magistrates that were conducting investigations and it contained in it a major source of information about Chinese pathology and understanding of anatomy. Now over in Europe in 1250 King Richard was the first authority in Europe to He essentially invented the coroner system where an expert would examine a body to determine if wrongdoing had happened. So we're starting to see...
enough crime and enough understanding of the need for justice in many civilizations that we're seeing it all over the world. Now things stayed pretty well. not well documented up until about the 17 and 1800s. Now we do know that as early as 600 AD, some Middle Eastern civilizations were using fingerprints as an identification method for debt. So the debtor would put his fingerprint in ink on an item of paper and that would indicate that he was the debtor.
for a particular loan that he took out. We also know that the Chinese were using fingerprints as well as very crude chemical tests for blood that created crystals if blood was present. And also they were, it's kind of gross, but they were tasting body fluids like semen to identify the body fluids present in the commissioning of a crime. So we're definitely seeing use of very crude forensic analysis even this early in human civilization. Now in the 1800s it really starts to get interesting so we had several scientists who pioneered fingerprints and blood typing and biometrics which all were used in the early, early, late 1800s, early 1900s, and some still continue today.
Hans Gross was a Swiss scientist who is really known as the creator of the field of criminalistics. He wrote a book in 1891 called Criminal Investigation and that really established the science of forensic science in Europe. And he particularly coined the transfer principle that's really attributed to Edmund Le Card. He also opened the first criminological institute in the world in Switzerland.
But the first crime lab in the world in 1891 was the one that he was working on. which the difference between the two is is a little nebulous I think the Criminal Institute evaluated crime but also did a good bit of research and and the police laboratory was the laboratory that Edmund Locard is credited with starting the first police laboratory now Edmund Locard I'm not sure you may know we'll talk about this later but there's something called the Locard exchange principle and again hung's Gross really first described it, but it became famous because of Emman-Lukard. And the Lukard exchange principle states that for every interaction between two people or a person and an object, there's a transfer of material.
So if we're talking about, let's say, me touching my laptop while I'm working on this lecture, certainly I cut my finger this morning. So there might be a difference. be trace blood on my finger that could be transferred to the laptop.
Also oils on my finger and perhaps even my cat's hair because I was sitting on the couch and I touched my shirt which has the cat hair on it and it could be transferred to the laptop through a secondary transfer event. Likewise any cleaning cleaning chemicals that I may have used to wipe down any traces of hand sanitizer if I sanitized my mouse will also be transferred from the devices to my skin. Now all of that has been transferred but in forensic science the question is do we have the ability to detect that transfer okay and that has been largely the explosion of research and development and use of trace levels of forensic evidence over the past 30 years Alright, looking in a little bit at U.S. history.
So the first crime laboratory was established in Los Angeles by August Vollmer. And it was established in coordination with the LAPD in 1924. Now the FBI crime laboratory was established in 1932. The FBI itself was established in 1907, but they didn't have a crime laboratory. specifically separate until 1932. And looking into really the things that have really revolutionized our evaluation of data and transferring.
comparison would be databanks and databases. So I'll go, I'll start with APHIS because APHIS, the fingerprint databank, really began in 1924 when the FBI began archiving and searching fingerprints using the Henry system. We'll talk about that as well a little bit later. But they went to an electronic format that made searching much more quickly in 1974. and then APHIS, the fingerprint database, was fully searchable in 2000 and has been ever since.
The National Crime Information Center, or NTIC, is a databank that mainly your police agencies use, and they contain any information about persons. So you'll find that any police officer who pulls you over is going to ask the dispatcher to run your plates, run your driver's license, and run your driver's license in NCIC to see if you have any outstanding warrants for your arrest. And that NCIC is... as the name implies, a national data bank. So you wouldn't just be searching in Virginia, but also throughout the country.
Looking at DNA CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System, really be... It began as a pilot program in the FBI laboratory in 1990. Congress established a mandate for a national data bank in 1994, and then that data bank was implemented nationally in 1990. 1998. And then another really prominent data bank is NIBIN which looks at bullets and casings and allows for comparison and matching between bullets and between casings and that was established in 1997. So you see that I guess some of these years may seem really old to some of you but I got started in forensic science in 2003. And so a lot of these databases were very new when I got started and have really developed their maturity over the past 20 years. So next I want to talk a little bit about forensic science and the scientists and the different specialties within forensic science.
And so the next question I want to ask you is, true or false, the same forensic scientist conducts analyses on fingerprints, DNA, and bullet comparisons. So take a thought about that. Think about what you've seen on CSI.
The answer is false. So for the most part forensic scientists are specialists. They typically develop their expertise in one area of forensic science and have coursework that backs them up in that area. as well as an intensive one to three year apprenticeship and training program before they are considered to be a fully qualified forensic scientist that can independently examine evidence.
So, for example, as a DNA analyst, I only looked at body fluids and DNA evidence. And so that was a one year training program where I learned how Virginia's crime laboratory identifies body fluids, conducts DNA analyses. And then I did mock trials to test my ability to testify on forensic DNA. evidence and let's see a toxicologist would oh back to me so as a forensic biologist I would be expected to have coursework in biology so I have molecular biology genetics biochemistry all of the things that you would expect of a molecular biologist in contrast dr. peace who is a toxicologist in the forensic science department here at VCU she's a toxicologist And so the coursework that she has is very different in her preparation. So she's taken physical chemistry, organic chemistry.
I took organic too. But biochemistry, instrumentation. It's a solid chemistry degree that she's taken to prepare for her field of toxicology.
And then the training that she conducted was specializing for six months in a toxicology unit. Um. Another example is Professor Walcott, who is a firearm specialist. She graduated from VCU's master's degree and took specialized courses in areas like physics and advanced crime scene investigation so that she could become a ballistics and firearm specialist. And the firearm specialty is interesting because it requires a two-year training program, more like an apprenticeship.
Thank you. before a forensic ballistics expert is considered to be qualified.