Crime Scene Contamination (Essay Sample)

Everett Johnson
JO5252277
CJ250
Criminalistics
CJ250 Term Paper
Criminology
Question 1: Crime Scene Contamination
Crime scene is a location where the forensic evidence of the offense may be found. As such, a crime scene inevitably comprises of areas that the police find physical evidence, and the criminal investigation personnel. Crime scenes should allow proper access to the victim, in other words, there should be no restriction for experts like forensic scientists in their endeavor for collecting relevant information. The aim of diagnosing a crime scene is to find evidence to present in a court of law against a suspect on trial.
The issue and the notion of adulteration at the crime scene compromised by the police, in this case, could have been due to various reasons. As such, inefficient or not fully qualified police officer(s) would fail to undertake a professional criminal scenes analysis. This would result in difficulty of the real evidence restoration. The police might have been the prime suspects of the crime; thus, taking chances to contaminate the crime scenes with no proof of evidence at the crime scene of anyone being involved in crime committing.
With contaminated crime scenes, it will lead to unsuccessful crime scene investigation; it will later end up having wrong results and not unmasking the truth. As such, this could lead to an innocent person at the trial instead of the real suspect who participated in the crime. While reviewing a crime scene with contaminated crime scenes, no exact proof is being found, and that might lead to incomplete procedures and the right information not found (Brown, & Davenport, 2012). In addition to this, this misinterprets the result(s) found after undertaking the criminal investigation process.
Question 2: Collection and Gathering of Evidence
The collection process begins immediately after the crime scene has been noted and after proper documentation of the scene of a crime has been done (Brown, & Davenport, 2012). The immediate procedure of this process is to consider evidence objects that are delicate and easy to be lost.
The obvious piece of evidence is the 9mm shell. As such, this is one of the major pieces of evidence. In this case, the crime could be unraveled by restoring back the shell to its initial position. If the evidence is inadvertently moved (for example, caught in the boot treads of an EMT), police would document the inadvertent moving of the evidence and recover it from its new location. The shell should be processed for fingerprints before being declared safe. Subsequently, it is then stored in a dry plastic bag.
With prints collection that includes shoe impression and fingerprints and palm prints, there is a need for professional crime investigation procedure. Any item that does not move, such as the floor is diagnosed using black powder. A camera having high zooming power with detachable flash is used to capture the images of the prints while they are usually the core determiners of successful crime investigation. Differences between the finger of the suspect and the victim should be identified. Trap in the bottom of the shower may yield seminal fluid of the victim if sexually assaulted and forced to shower, and even potential DNA and trace evidence from the body (autopsy).
Question 3: Collection and Storage of Evidence
In a typical sexual act, it is expected that a man should reach his sexual satisfaction by ejaculating sperm. In this scenario, sperm is being retrieved from the victim's private organs if the suspect had sex with the victim without any protection and ejaculated in her or even on the sheets. The nature of the encounter that was a forceful one, the probability is that he ejaculated into her vagina. Any fluid found should be stored safely for DNA examination. The visible hair found on the drained is packed in a document container for DNA analysis in order to determine the person whose hair was pulled. Saliva found on the black ski mask is retrieved and stored in a paper packet for DNA analysis.
The emptied jewelry box is examined to know what type of jewelry was in the box, a photograph of latent fingerprints on the knob of the box is taken for crime investigation. Typically, latents are lifted using a powder and transferred to a card. As such, latents in unique evidence, for example, blood stained fingerprints would be photographed. With the dark blue Chevrolet Caprice leaving the crime scene abruptly and screeching tires leaving a long black tire track, there is a reason to match the tires threads in a suspect’s possession; this is possible provided enough of the pattern is transferred onto the asphalt. But with the spinning wheels, this is not usually the case. Before the collection of tire tracks is performed, one-to-one photography is done at the scene of the crime using a leveler, ruler, and tripod stand. It is done having the flash to a degree of 45 to the area surface containing impression.
The indication of the phone cable being cut and marked with signs from a dull knife suggests the hideous intentions of the suspects. As such, this paints a picture that the suspects did not want the victim to communicate to anyone who could rescue her including the police. For this reason, their efforts to block the communication was to cut the mobile cable that they managed to do using a dull knife. This could have also been done to disarm a home alarm system as most alarms, use telephone lines to report any case of intrusion. Often the system fails and does not activate when cut by the perpetrator.
Question 4: Evidence Documentation and Preservation
The unobvious pieces of proof that need(s) to be looked for assistance in the investigation could be the demographic information about the victim as well as the habits, lifestyle information, and history. They can be compiled to give an exquisite direction for investigation. These could be done by asking family members and close friends of the victim. A good profile of the victim could convey habits and routines that may aid investigators in determining the events of the crime and assist in determining a time of death. Interviews with witnesses who saw the crime can provide information about crime events that can later be compared with the physical evidence. Examinations can determine the type of data files contained in a computer of the victim, compare those files with known documents or archives, determine the time when and sequence in which files were created. Examination can also be used to extract files from computers and storage media (for example, flash disks, CDs), recover deleted files, convert file formats, search data files by keywords, recover passwords, and analyze and compare source codes. If the victim was active in social media, her last interactions could be examined. Consequently, if there are any interactions that would point to a potential(s) suspect(s) e.g. ex-boyfriend, former husband, co-worker, etc. could be more beneficial with the ongoing investigations.
Documentation of the criminal evidence is a crucial procedure that must be undertaken by everyone conducting a criminal investigation activity. Without records, criminal officials have to depend on their memory while making decisions upon adjusting their criminal investigation practices; the human brain can be unreliable particularly after months or even years. Documenting of criminal evidence, assisting future reference to study the behavior and criminal trends is also imperative in crime investigation. Research has shown that criminals tend to adjust their criminal strategies with time and that their current strategies to commit crimes will say more about their future strategy. Documentation of the crime evidence is a professional act of crucial importance, which helps the police determine a critical analysis of crime activity in any given neighborhood.
Question 5: Maintaining Proper Chain of Custody for Evidence Gathered
Standard work will help the judge in court during the trial session to access the documented criminal evidence and to be able to administer the right judgment to the suspects if found guilty. It is important for investigators to show that the evidence collected remained in police custody and was not tampered with since its collection.
Preservation of criminal pieces of evidence such as photos of prints could be stored on compact discs with the correct order of proof occurrence and documenting the gunshot wound(s) of the victim. The evidence would help to know the position where the suspect fired the bullet; this could also explain the type of gun used for doing it (Chisum, &Turvey, 2011). For movement reasons, to avoid contamination from happening, the hair threads collected from the drain are packed into plastic polyethene bags for not more than 60 minutes. Upon the arrival to a secure area, the hair threads are allowed to dry up. It is then transferred into a paper envelope. To have a lasting condition for evidence collected during medical forensic examination, every piece of evidence of the crime should be labeled with the name of the investigator who conducted the investigation. Right dates should be written on the specimen, and where it was retrieved from in that situation.
The grounds on which a defense attorney could attack the credibility of any evidence gathered is when there is no proper chain of evidence custody collected at the scene of the crime.The same reason could be when there are conflicting statements from the witnesses, and the evidence obtained from the site of the crime is not well-defined.
Question 6: Immediate Assessment
From my immediate assessment of the apartment, it is evident that the suspects forced their way in by ...