Forensic Identification

Forensic scientists can identify the body through dental records, DNA samples or if the fingers are intact, fingerprints.

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On Sunday, December 4th at around 9:30 pm, a corrections officer was shot in her vehicle in New York City. Alastasia Bryan, 25 was sitting behind the wheel of her gray sedan when a man walked up to her vehicle and shot her to death through the window (NBCNewYork). The suspect has yet to be identified, but surveillance videos show a man exiting his vehicle, walking up to Bryan’s vehicle and shooting her to death. After the shooting, the unknown shooter walked back to his vehicle and drove off (NBCNewYork). Whether or not Bryan was intentionally targeted or not is still unknown. Sunday night investigators were seen examining the scene where they found numerous bullet holes in the driver side window of the gray sedan (NBCNewYork).

This information will help investigators cluster the symptoms with a particular disease and rule out irrelevant information. The surveillance of the components gather in this step will put a perspective on the abnormal health events that are occurring on the outbreak timeline.

Before hearing the guest speaker Sarah Rosen speak on Thursday, I did not know what to expect. I had an idea about what she did for a living but I did not know the amount of detailed work that is required for her job. While speaking, Rosen had a specific themed that seem essential when it came to her line of work and that was the importance of identity. Before her lecture, it never really crossed my mind that one’s distinctiveness and identity is very vital even after they have passed away. I’ve always associated death with “the end” of someone’s life but I never considered how much detailed work is needed to determine a dead person’s remains especially after a traumatic event such as war crime or a murder.

One of the first steps taken by an anthropologist to identify a victim is to analyze the bones and construct a biological profile. Correspondingly, a biological profile is the sex,age at death,height,race,injuries,and diseases that may have left marks on the bone.For example, in the text it states,”Several parts of the skelton give clues to age, the structure of the skull,teeth….he pelvis and skull are the easiest to and most accurate to determine sex.” This

The objective of this paper is to analyze a criminal investigation tool for identification of an unrecognizable and unidentifiable body. The paper specifically examines forensic facial recognition and the four different categories of techniques that aid in identification. The four techniques include, two-dimensional facial reconstruction, photographic superimposition, three-dimensional clay facial reconstruction, and three-dimensional computer-based facial reconstruction. As these techniques are discussed, the paper further outlines the limitations of each technique and the controversy over forensic facial reconstruction. There are researchers that oppose this method of identification and find it unreliable and more of an art than

Another common method for identifying dead bodies is dental comparison. This method is especially valuable for decedents who are not visually identifiable and are not able to be identified by fingerprint comparison. Like fingerprint comparison, dental identification requires a pre-existing dental records (ante-mortem record) [44]. If these records are accessible for comparison, a positive identity can be set up, as distinctive configurations of the bony structures of the jaw, roots of the teeth and adjacent sinuses frequently exist and are unique for every individual [45].

The identity of the deceased is an important part of postmortem examination, for various reasons. These include ethical and humanitarian need to know how an individual died and who was it, especially for the information to living relatives. Identifying individual’s age, biological sex, and stature which eventually generates a biological profile for previously unknown individual. These examinations are done by forensic anthropologist when dealing with bones of the deceased individual to aid law enforcement in establishing profile on the unidentified remains.

On the skull, the nasal width was 17 mm and the height was 25 mm. Although the nasal spine is very small and the orbital opening is rectangular, the nasal silling is sharp and the prognathism was straight. The final ethnicity determination while using the skull, is the nasal index. The nasal index is 34.4 mm. When using the femur to help in the determination, the fingers can fit under the curvature of the femur. The remains show the body as being of white (European) descent. Having the results be ⅗ white and ⅖ african, it was strenuous, to come to a set determination, until the femur was put into

As a forensic anthropologist working on the “fox hollow murders” and examining the heavily fragmented and commingled remains that were found burned, different strategies and forensic methods were employed in recovering and identifying the victims. Some of the remains retrieved showed significant burns making it harder for forensic anthropologist to distinguish between the remains. Nonetheless, forensic anthropologists noted that there were two distinct types of states in which the remains were burned, a green state, and a dry state. The bones that were burned in a green states were easily recognized by the pronounced attachment of flesh to the bones and the fresh appearance of the remains, whereas the dry state didn’t have

To specify the gender of the corpses from skeletal remains, the most precise method is DNA identification. However, this method is costly and takes longer, so the other identification techniques are used instead. The first technique that is widely used is considering the features of the bones. In general, an evidence from the corpses such as some pieces of bones, especially the skull and pelvis can be used to identify their gender. To use this technique, the forensic scientists require the observation skills in order to classify the difference between male and female bones (see Figure 1 and 2 [1]). Although this technique is uncomplicated, saving time and cost, and the forensic scientists can fairly accurately determine the gender by using this technique (apparently an accuracy rate of 90% or more), the crucial disadvantage is there are some

Crime scenes tell a story. Whether it is a long story with a lot of evidence, or if it’s a short story with a lot of information missing can be determined on how you use what you see. In traditional crime scenes investigators rely heavily on fingerprints and DNA found at the crime scene. Each can be useful but also has their faults. When it comes to fingerprints, you may not get a full print, it could only be a partial or even an individual who is not in the system. Most fingerprints found at crime scenes are only smears making them worthless. DNA samples can be extremely beneficial, but only if you get lucky. I say this because it is so much that could go wrong while trying to obtain information from a DNA sample. The body could have already

Levels of accuracy considered suitable for an archaeological context are likely to be too low for a forensic situation, since legal implications are more significant (Scheuer, 2002). Setting that aside, many chapters have been utilised by forensic anthropologists, for example Chapter 3 -Documentation of Sex Differences and Age Changes in Adults- to classify age and sex of human remains for a given forensic case. This would contribute to part of the biological profile of the human remains as previously mentioned. Here determining the age and sex of the human skeletal remains is done through a scoring system based on observations of morphological features. Many of these scoring systems, including those used for cranial suture closure (Meindl and Lovejoy, 1985; Mann, Symes and Bass, 1987; Todd and Lyon, 1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c), cranial morphology (Acsádi, and Nemeskeri, 1970) and others (e.g. Phenice, 1969) are founded on samples from skeletal collections and historical excavations. Komer and Grivas (2008) showed that skeletal collections do not accurately represent living or decedent populations from which they were sourced and are subject

In the District of Columbia, I had the chance to volunteer/intern at the Superior Court, in their social services division. There they have the child guidance clinic that works on the welfare of child and those who cause a lot of trouble and get in trouble with the law. That clinic began in March of 1996, helping and providing mental health evaluations and reports to probation officers and judges of the Family Court. These forensic evaluations are for the assisting of the child’s life, so whether they do a psychological evaluation, sex offender risk, psycho-educational, violence risk, parenting competency, neuropsychological, transfer or waiver.