Crime Lab Tour

As part of the summer internship, we visited a local crime lab yesterday where I learned the following:

• Forensic specialists can sometimes determine whether a light bulb (like a headlight) was on or off when a car crashed.
• They can sometimes also tell how fast it was going when it crashed.
• They can sometimes recover a serial number after it's been filed off of a gun. When the serial number is punched on the gun, it disturbs the steel molecules below the actual numbers it punches, so even after you've filed off the visible numbers, disturbed (weakened) molecules remain. The forensics people can use muratic acid (I think) to dissolve those weakened molecules, which often gives them a faint trace of the serial number someone tried to obliterate.
• On the door of the gun lab there was an NRA bumper sticker that read, "Charleton Heston Is My President" next to a big NRA logo. We asked if that was a joke. They didn't think our question was funny.

I also learned a tiny bit about the following databases: NIBIN (guns; compares pictures of cartridge cases), CODIS (dna), AFIS (fingerprints), and IAFIS (the newer fingerprint database via FBI). They played stupid when we asked them if they thought fingerprint evidence was scientific or reliable. It's not. (Sorry, I don't have time to find better links to back up that claim. If you know more about the fingerprint controversy, please share!)

Bottom line: CSI it ain't, but we knew that already, didn't we?

Posted 07:15 AM | Comments (6) | 1L summer