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Scanning for ID

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MorphoIdent

MorphoIdent™. Copyright ©2009 MorphoTrak Inc. All rights reserved.

 

 

Morpho (Safran group) recently announced the FBI’s certification of the company’s compact high speed livescan fingerprint scanner, the MorphoTop™ Model 100R. Designed for civil applications, the device provides high speed imaging of fingerprints for background checks, travel ID verification, and other uses.

The company’s handheld MorphoIDent™ was designed for use by government officials, such as police and Border agents. This fingerprint scanner offers real-time fingerprint identification by connecting with the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) database.

Unless your mystery/crime story takes place in the past, you should consider equipping your fictional law enforcement officers with a fingerprint scanner.

Digging Mona Lisa

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Who posed for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”? CNN’s Ben Wedeman reported that scientists may soon find the answer to this age-old question.

In Florence, Italy, old records indicate the burial site for Lisa Gherardini, the second wife of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. That’s Lisa as in Mona Lisa. The records led to a derelict building standing on the remains of a Franciscan convent.

Silvano Vinceti and his team exhumed and identified Lisa Gherardini’s remains. Bone fragments will be sent to universities, where researchers will analyze DNA and compare the DNA profile with DNA profiles of two confirmed relatives of Gherardini.

“Once we identify the remains,” Vinceti told CNN, “we can reconstruct the face, with a margin of error of 2 to 8 percent. By doing this, we will finally be able to answer the question the art historians can’t: Who was the model for Leonardo?”

While these efforts may reveal the true face of the Mona Lisa model, the mysterious smile is another matter. The smile did not belong to Gherardini, Vinceti claims. Rather, da Vinci lifted the smile from his longtime assistant, Gian Giacomo Caprotti.

DC’s New Crime Lab

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Firearms analysis

Firearms analysts keep a reference library of bullets to match bullets recovered from crime scenes. Source: Katye Martens/Stateline. (Stateline is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Center on the States that provides daily reporting and analysis on trends in state policy.)

On November 27, the Pew Center on the States website posted Maggie Clark’s article, “D.C. Crime Lab: An Experiment in Forensic Science.” The new crime lab reflects many of the recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences’ 2009 report on the state of forensic science. For example, the lab is staffed only with civilian scientists.

Many jurisdictions have crime labs tied to the local prosecutor’s office or police department. D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson told Clark that close connections between crime labs and police can expose labs to harsh criticism. “If the crime lab is within the police department,” Mendelson said, “defense attorneys could say to an analyst, ‘well, you work for law enforcement, you’re just proving the police officer’s case.’ It’s better for the justice system when forensic analysis is done by a separate agency.” The D.C. lab is an independent lab; its director answers to the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety.

Dr. Max Houck, director of the D.C. Department of Forensic Science, said that D.C.’s civilian-led crime lab can lead the way to similar changes in other U.S. crime labs.

“We need a national strategy on forensic science,” Houck said. “Here, we are running the agency as a science-based organization and as a peer with other agencies like the medical examiner or law enforcement with the focus really being on the science.”

A science-based crime lab operating independently of a police department is not a new idea. In 1914, Sir Lomer Gouin, premier of Quebec, announced the establishment of the Laboratoire de Recherches Medico-Legales. It was the first forensic lab in North America.

Say It Ain’t So, Gil (Grissom)

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Microscope

 

“Forensic Science Falls Short of Public Image,” according to Maggie Clark’s article posted on the Pew Center on the States website. Smith contrasts the way that forensic experts on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation leverage science and real forensic science practice. People (especially writers) should appreciate that CSI and similar shows exist in an alternate universe. Yet Smith notes that the CSI effect – jurors’ unrealistic expectations about forensic science – still plagues courts.

Smith also describes several scandals in forensic labs. In one recent case, a Boston-based drug chemist confessed that she falsified drug test results. More than 1,000 people are in jail based upon her evidence. Certain forensic analysis methods have also come under fire:

Specifically, bite mark analysis, where perpetrators are identified by matching a mold of their teeth to bite marks found on a victim’s body, was found to be entirely unscientific and subject to an individual examiner’s interpretation. Another common technique, analyzing hair evidence, was found to be ineffective at producing any individual match, although it can potentially narrow the field of suspects to people who share certain hair characteristics, like color, hair-shaft form or length.

These problems have led to an increased oversight of crime labs and reevaluations of certain forensic analysis techniques.  These types of problems also provide grist for the mills operated by writers of mysteries and crime fiction.