Forensic Science

When the 57-year-old Alzheimer's victim came home from day-care at a Tacoma, Wash., hospital, her disheveled clothes made her daughters suspect that she had been raped. Their fears were confirmed when a medical examination of the woman, who remembered nothing, showed semen. Law enforcement officials immediately had a suspect: Alan J. Haynes, 34, the day-care center's van driver. He was the only man who had been alone with the woman.

On March 1, 1957, a 7-month-old girl named Jeaneen Marie Klokow died at home. Sheboygan, Wisc., investigators ruled that she'd fallen off her mother's couch by accident. For decades, that was that. Except she'd been killed. And decades would separate the medical advances and nagging consciences that resulted in her mother's guilty plea to second-degree murder in Sheboygan on Monday morning. “It's really an incredible thing,” Sheboygan County District Atty. Joe DeCecco said by phone on Monday, and he would know: Prosecuting someone nearly 56 years after the fact required improvisation.

Fingerprints, like hair, semen and blood, carry DNA, and police are using the discovery to track down criminals, Australian scientists report in the June 19 Nature. Researchers at the Victoria Forensic Science Center tested objects regularly handled by volunteers, including leather briefcase handles, telephone handsets and a personal locker handle. But they also found that the last person who handled the objects did not necessarily leave more DNA than previous users.

Eli Cirino's high school science project was quite literally an overnight success. Students in the 10th-grader's honors chemistry class at Granada Hills Charter High School were asked to make a video illustrating a scientific concept, so Eli chose ionic bonds. After finishing his project - a combination of music, live action romance and animation titled "Good Chemistry" - and uploading it to YouTube, Eli told a few friends and posted the link to Reddit. The video began to rack up a respectable number of hits - when he went to bed that night, it was at 300. The next morning, Eli received an excited text from his co-star: Their project had shot up to 62,000 hits.

On March 1, 1957, a 7-month-old girl named Jeaneen Marie Klokow died at home. Sheboygan, Wisc., investigators ruled that she'd fallen off her mother's couch by accident. For decades, that was that. Except she'd been killed. And decades would separate the medical advances and nagging consciences that resulted in her mother's guilty plea to second-degree murder in Sheboygan on Monday morning. “It's really an incredible thing,” Sheboygan County District Atty. Joe DeCecco said by phone on Monday, and he would know: Prosecuting someone nearly 56 years after the fact required improvisation.

The Supreme Court announced Thursday a potentially significant change in how crime lab reports are used in trials, ruling that a defendant has the right to cross-examine in front of the jury the experts who prepared these reports. Crime labs have been subjected to criticism in the last decade, much of it because of DNA evidence that has shown at least 240 prisoners were in fact not guilty.

An influential California commission said Thursday that forensic science errors are a major contributor to wrongful convictions and called for better training, more monitoring and stronger standards in the real world of "CSI." The report cited the Innocence Project at New York's Cardozo Law School, which identified forensic science testing errors in 63% of a set of nationwide DNA exoneration cases analyzed.

In one hand, he holds a blood-smeared cotton swab over a beaker. In the other, he delicately clasps a dropper filled with a chemical solution. Matthew Forneris pauses and looks to his forensic science professor for instructions. Very carefully, he's told, he must squeeze a drop of the liquid onto the tip of the swab. But the college junior squeezes a bit too hard and the solution squirts onto the table, onto his hand -- everywhere but onto the swab.

How significant were some of the "errors" in evidence collection admitted by criminalist Dennis Fung? Sealed wet blood samples in plastic bags, allowing degradation of DNA by bacteria. A degraded DNA sample gives no result, not a false result. A degraded DNA sample thus cannot produce a false identification--the DNA fingerprint of another person. If a sample produces a positive result, then it was not significantly degraded. If it is degraded, it benefits the defendant.

If nothing else, if and when this trial ends, each juror will be awarded a degree in forensic science. PETER J. DUFFY Rowland Heights

The Los Angeles Police Department this week announced that it has made considerable progress in analyzing DNA evidence from thousands of rapes and sexual assaults that had been left untested. Police officials acknowledged, however, the department has more work to do to resolve the DNA backlog. Police Chief Charlie Beck was honored Friday by the California Forensic Science Institute for his efforts on the issue. Gov.-elect Jerry Brown, who, as attorney general, orchestrated the use of new DNA testing in a serial killer case this year, and two others were also honored.

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a pending challenge to a ruling last year requiring lab technicians and other forensic specialists to be available to testify at trials. In last year's 5-4 decision, the justices said the experts who prepare lab reports are "witnesses" for the prosecution and therefore must be prepared to be cross-examined by the lawyer for the accused. Justice Antonin Scalia said the Constitution gave defendants a right to be "confronted" with all the witnesses against them, including lab technicians.

Joe Keiper squinted into a microscope and pressed the dead maggot with a pair of surgical forceps to determine how much human flesh the fat white larva had eaten. The forensic entomologist had plucked hundreds of them off a corpse found inside a Cleveland house the day before Halloween. "Understand insects, and you can understand death," said Keiper, a slender, balding scientist of 40. For nine years, Keiper has studied all things creepy-crawly as the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's director of science and curator of invertebrate zoology.

With the busiest death chamber in the nation, it was only a matter of time before Texas positioned itself to become the first state to admit that it executed a person who was wrongfully convicted. And now that day is at hand. According to a nationally respected fire engineer, the so-called scientific evidence used to convict Cameron Todd Willingham of setting a blaze that killed his three daughters in 1995 was not scientific at all. In his scathing report to the Texas Forensic Science Commission, Craig Beyler found that the arson investigators on the case had a poor understanding of fire dynamics and based their conclusions on erroneous assumptions, sloppy research and a dash of mysticism.

The Supreme Court announced Thursday a potentially significant change in how crime lab reports are used in trials, ruling that a defendant has the right to cross-examine in front of the jury the experts who prepared these reports. Crime labs have been subjected to criticism in the last decade, much of it because of DNA evidence that has shown at least 240 prisoners were in fact not guilty.

In June, Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas made a bold grab for a crown jewel of local law enforcement: the DNA unit of the sheriff's crime lab. With the lab's director out of town and the sheriff recently deposed by corruption charges, Rackauckas submitted a brief agenda item to county supervisors two business days before their regular meeting. "Our aim is to make significant changes in the way forensic DNA analysis is conducted," Rackauckas wrote. The D.A.'

Months had passed, and still Rick Crowl couldn't purge images of the Lehmer baby from his mind. There'd been no obvious wounds on the 3-month-old, nothing you could see. No signs of massive trauma; no signs of any trauma. No skull fracture, no collarbone bruises, no head injuries, no bleeding in the eyes, no gross bleeding under the scalp. Yet Thomas Bennett, the state medical examiner, had diagnosed shaken-slammed baby syndrome. Thomas Bennett had called Jonathan's death a homicide.

The renowned forensic scientist who gave key testimony for O.J. Simpson in the criminal trial is establishing an institute at the University of New Haven. Henry Lee, 59, said he'll retire as director of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory in about 2 1/2 years. He's seeking donations for the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science and is trying to raise a $1-million endowment for a scholarship fund.

Patricia Cornwell's name comes with more than a whiff of myth and expectation. Almost every woman writing thrillers with extreme violence gets compared to Cornwell's bestselling work featuring forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta. Interviews focus less on the books and more on Cornwell's Armani suits, personal security concerns or her obsession with solving the Jack the Ripper murders.

In their cocoons of leather upholstery, soothing high-tech sound systems and automatically activated personal seat settings, drivers have come to regard their car interiors as mobile extensions of the homes that are their private refuges. The courts have tended to disagree.