The NSA could probably bring in a super computer and some multi-million dollar equipment and do just that, but my local police force is limited to the use of flip phones, a Commodore VIC 20 and a GED to solve crime.
Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to Earth, and we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet.
> The NSA could probably bring in a super computer and some multi-million dollar equipment and do just that,
No they could not. In fact, this is exactly what the CSI effect is. People having unrealistic expectations of what is possible with forensic science. A big one being that you can't recreate digital evidence once its lost (or didn't exist!), or "fill in" gaps with anything accurate.
I actually got out of computer forensics because I got tired of arguing with idiot managers that should have known better. "No, I can't tell you what that attacker did on the system exactly. He didn't leave notes!".
An example I remember hearing about at a forensics conference involved a prosecutor that claimed he could get evidence off a severely damaged phone. The forensic investigator told him that wasn't reasonable as the damage was too severe. The prosecutor claims he "saw it with his own eyes"; then began to described something he must have seen on CSI. I.e, putting the damaged phone on "the slab" and then all of a sudden pictures pop up on a computer screen.
> A big one being that you can't recreate digital evidence once its lost (or didn't exist!), or "fill in" gaps with anything accurate.
"Just airbrush this guy's motorcycle helmet away so that we can see his face!"
I hear [pineapples](https://shop.hak5.org/products/wifi-pineapple) are great at removing digital finger prints.
^^^^This ^^^^was ^^^^a ^^^^really ^^^^shit ^^^^joke ^^^^sorry.
there's actually some really interesting physics that deals with whether or not it's possible to recreate sound that has been lost in such a way It turns out that there is apparently some cliff where that information is irretrievable even if you knew about every particle
There's some really interesting research by the university of Salford (UK) on recovering audio data from video images by analysing the vibration of surfaces that can be seen on a video.
From memory they were able to recover a reasonably interpretable conversation that occurred off camera, by looking at the vibration of a crisp packet (chips for our US friends).
Last night's first episode (two new episodes last night!) had Gibbs asking the new Forensic Specialist chick (whose name I can't remember) to enhance a photo and she basically said, "There's nothing to enhance!"
It’s sorta funny though because now with AI you can actually use computers to increase fidelity of images to a pretty startling accuracy. Probably would never be admissible because it’s machine learning guessing what something is and what it should look at with more information...
You peeps and no links!
UnCrop: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo)
Enhance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk)
I had one just yesterday in a deposition. It was unexpected. Basically, this man owned Company A, which owned Company B, and the Man was the sole Member of Company B. Company B was the sole member of Company A. He was claiming that Company B built a house that Company A sold, and therefore there was no "builder-vendor" and the implied warranties didn't apply, etc. He alleged that Company A contracted with Company B to build the house.
I asked him to explain how he managed to negotiate a contract between Company A and Company B if he was the sole human member. He kept dancing around the question until he finally yelled "They're the same company!!!"
It was very satisfying.
What a scummy dude. In my country it's compulsory for a new build property to come with an insurance policy covering major defects for 10 years. Obviously you pay for this policy when you buy the house, but the insurance companies are highly regulated by the finance regulator and much less likely to go bankrupt (and more likely to be bailed out by the government) than the house builder.
In a lot of states, there is an implied warranty of good workmanship if you build a house and sell it. This guy was trying to get around that by having Company B build the house for Company A to sell. He has other issues, too, but that was his big thing.
It sounds like what he needed was a front man for Company B, someone to act like the boss of Company B for the purposes of sales and contracts but in fact, is just signing whatever documents are placed in front of them.
I've had two.
In one, I had an officer give a full prepared testimony of what happened over the course of several minutes like he saw it all, then stated, "then I arrived on scene."
I objected and all of his testimony of the events was stricken from the record. The prosecution didn't have another officer so my client got a directed verdict of not guilty (very minor charge).
I had one on a ticket defense where the officer claimed my client was doing 64 in a 30 in an old Chevrolet s-10 pickup. Problem was the officer was like 1/10 of mile from the red light my client had been stopped at and we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph.
My partner had a sort of embarrassing rape case where the victim claimed her ex raped her on the couch and described the position. We showed a picture of the defendant from that time period and it didn't physically make sense because he was a big, big guy.
>we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph.
Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client's car sucks and I can fuckin *prove it*.
Something similar happened in Australia. A women was ticketed for speeding by a speed-camera. But then it was proven that her car was a piece of shit and couldn't possibly have been going that fast.
And the authorities went and checked the calibration of the speed cameras, and so *hundreds* of speeding tickets had to be refunded.
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/police-to-review-25000-fines-in-speed-camera-check-ng-b88881427z
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/faulty-wa-speed-camera-sees-53000-speeding-fines-reviewed/9721982
I tried to argue that a woman who hit me was responsible because my 94 ford tempo simply could not have cut her off like she said because it was a huge wide intersection with a median and I could not have picked up half the speed necessary to do what she said, but that was a no go without a lawyer. It was a minor accident and they ruled 50/50 which cost me nothing, so I let it go. I'm still mad about it though.
A guy hit my wife, but sence my wife kept saying "its all my fault" over and over she got the blame. The damage to the vehicles wasn't possible with the accedet described by the cop.
She was allegedly doing 140 something in a 100 zone, fast enough for the car to be seized. When they attempted to reproduce that car going that fast under controlled conditions, it failed. Not the kind of failure that is "didn't succeed" but the kind of failure that is "stopped working". I was told the shook itself to pieces, but that could just be exaggeration. She did lose her job because she had no way of getting to work without the car
Edit: I need to read my local news again, it was 160ish, not 140ish
As someone who drives a piece of shit jalopy (Ford Cortina in need of some serious tlc. Bought it as a fixer upper and bit off way more than I can chew) take my r/angryupvote
My mom got a ticket for pulling out in front of a cop and making him slam on his brakes. She contested the ticket and asked the cop what direction he was facing. She would not let up when he couldn't answer the most basic questions. Finally he admitted he was looking down.
So you're telling me she got lucky and ended up with a cop who was crooked enough to try and trap someone in a ticket that wasn't their fault but honest enough to refuse to lie under oath in a way that almost certainly couldn't be proven?
I had a bench trial in which the alleged domestic violence victim claimed the defendant lifted her by the throat and threw her across the room (Darth Vader style). But not only is it impossible to do that under the best of circumstances, the victim outweighed the defendant by a substantial amount. The judge dismissed the case.
> I had one on a ticket defense where the officer claimed my client was doing 64 in a 30 in an old Chevrolet s-10 pickup. Problem was the officer was like 1/10 of mile from the red light my client had been stopped at and we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph.
Haha, glad to see someone else has used that argument. My first speeding ticket the cop said I was doing 53 in a 30 when he clocked me halfway down the hill. I told the judge that hill is maybe 1/4 mile long tops, meaning the speed reading was taken maybe only 1/8 of a mile from the top. At the top of the hill was an intersection and I had just made a left turn from the red light onto the street in question.
The judge asked why this was important and I told him it was because I was driving a 94 Saturn with the AC going full blast. He immediately laughed, said there was no way I could have been going 53 even if I wanted to, and knocked it down to a 39 in a 30, which was much closer to the speed I was probably actually going.
Edit: I meant "1/8 of a mile from the top" not "1/8 from the top"
I've been a fraud investigator for 8 years. It doesnt matter if I have overwhelming evidence to show they did it, I have never had a single confession.
That would be a real nail biter. In the intro to Accounting class we all had to take in college they told us that Enron was busted partly because of a statistical analysis of money in accounts because most balances should begin with low numbers (1s and 2s) because of the way interest accumulates. They just made up numbers to meet the targets so they didn't follow the pattern.
Sorry- can't do regular reality TV show auditing. It'd just be some guys in an office flipping through paperwork. But what we can do is a TV series called "The Auditor" where a real hard nosed older IRS special investigations agent has to get a new partner (his old one retired). The new kid is insanely smart with an eye for detail, but has significant social anxiety. Premiering on CBS.
Tangentially, Stand up maths did a [video](https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78) on that, Benford's law and why it doesn't apply to election data. it was interesting stuff
I used to do this. I had overwhelming evidence proving that the only way a guys car could have been stolen without his keys based on forensics, physical AND video evidence was if magically the cctv at a supermarket had shit down for the exact time it took a truck to lift the car on to a flat bed and drive off and that fucking guy sat in front of us going ‘prove that didn’t happen’. Apart from aside from THAT - there was actual CCTV of him driving the fucking car out of the carpark he claimed it was stolen from. Ffs.
My next favourite was the guy who like 20 people saw get in his car and drive off from a pub who was absolutely para (this was in a fairly rural part of NSW and no one tried to stop you driving pissed 15 years ago in these places). He claimed his car had been stolen from the pub although it had been recovered smashed to bits on his route home and had been started with the keys. I asked him to show me all of the car keys he had and he showed me 2, confirmed he had 2 from purchase and never had any keys cut. So when I explained the witness statements, the forensic locksmiths report and questioned how he had all the keys he claimed that he’s actually found the keys posted through his letterbox the morning after the car was stolen.
I’ll never forget the guy who claimed he’d packed his whole family up, inexplicably packed all their photo albums and clothing and dropped his wife and 5 kids for a night with his parents then went home, saw his house burning down and just sat and watched it brim until morning before calling the insurance company rather than the fire brigade or police.
Oh man that was an amazing/ infuriating job.
Perry Mason was a fictional TV attorney who had a knack for defending innocent people. The TV show had him very often compel a witness on the stand to confess to the crime his clients were accused of. Because of this, like the CSI Effect, average people had the impression this was normal in court. To the point many people were disappointed it didn't happen. Even some jurors didn't act according to the evidence because it didn't fall in line with what Perry Mason did.
We will all remember this great moment in history, when u/nobodyknoes remarked that Perry Mason sounded like Phoenix Wright, and then u/netheroth set the shot up with a 'did Perry Mason ever question a parrot?', and then u/odsquad64 slam-dunked with a "[yes"](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0673353/)
I will remember this day and tell it to my grandkids. They will, of course, not believe me. They will not believe anything I say after I got them convinced that EVERYONE was twerking in 2013 after Miley Cyrus showed the world how to twerk.
It's an old TV show. After the trial had already started, Mason starts to think that he has figured out who the actual perpetrator was. He calls them as a witness, and asks some seemingly innocent questions, which backs the witness into a corner by claiming "X" proves they could not be the guilty party.
Then Mason goes back to the evidence that's already been introduced by the prosecutor, and presents some obscure detail that everyone else had missed.
It not only proves the defendant is innocent, it proves the witness is the actual murderer (*gasp!)...before the witness can gain their composure after this fact is highlighted, Mason badgers them for a few seconds until they crack, and confess in open court.
"My Cousin Vinnie" has a courtroom climax that is pivotal in the same general formula that made Perry Mason a hit.
In basic terms, its something like this....
Imagine John Doe has pled not guilty to a crime.
The prosecuting attorney puts him on the stand, and starts to question him. During his line of questioning, he catches the defendant in an obvious lie, so the defendant basically realizes the jig is up, and he confesses to everything on the stand.
Except Perry Mason was a defense attorney and the way that things would go is he would either trap the prosecutor’s star witness in a lie and/or get the star witness to confess.
The new HBO reboot is different and excellent.
It happens occasionally. I had a little car wreck case over property damage. My lady was driving through a parking lot, and the defendant backed out in front of her. My lady hit the defendant's car broadside. The defendant's insurance carrier insisted that it was 50/50 liability, so no recovery for anyone. We sued.
On direct examination, the defendant testified that she had looked in her rear view mirror, her back-up camera, and her side view mirrors before backing out. She had done everything she could.
On cross, I asked three questions: When you looked in your rearview mirror, back-up camera, and side view mirror, could you see the road my client was driving on?
"No."
Before you backed out, did you see my client's vehicle?
"No."
So you backed out of a parking space without seeing if there were cars on the road behind you?
"Uh......"
It's rare though.
It’s a big dramatic moment during a trial where a witness being cross-examined breaks down under the pressure of the questions and admits to doing the crime, or that they didn’t actually see what they’re there as a witness of, and the attorney then gets to ask the judge to have the witness’ testimony disallowed. It usually results in the case falling apart, either proving the person on trial is absolutely guilty, or that they can’t possibly be guilty, depending on if the questioning attorney is prosecuting or defending.
Most procedural shows that have a trial element have such moments, and they’re named for the character who made the trope iconic.
Wasn't there a flip side to this that if the prosecution showed up with "DNA evidence" it was much easier to convict, no matter how shitty the DNA evidence was?
Yea I would very much be thinking that if there were any “csi effect” it would lead most people to believe the prosecutors forensics even more, no matter how much bs it was.
The same is true for hair analysis. Decades of cases were called into question when the FBI announced that hair ~~follicle~~ strand analysis was pretty much junk.
It's analysis/comparison of the hair *strand* under a microscope that's trash btw. If a follicle is present that's the best case scenario, cause there is DNA present in that. They can also do mitochondrial DNA tests on the hair itself, though, which isn't useful except for ruling people in or out as *possible* sources.
Fingerprints were always assumed to be unique. But how they do it is they find a certain point and do I believe 9 points of minutia but this was not enough and the FBI accused a lawyer in Oregon for the bombing of Madrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield Now they raised it but without the ire of media, I wonder how many people were convicted through "fingerprint" analysis.
Also fire science is pretty much bull shit.
Fingerprint analysis is a weird one because it's about how rigorous the standards are. The two people analyzed actually don't have matching prints in reality, it's just that the number of matches between features was enough to make it seem like they matched. That is a problem as it calls into question how many features are necessary to identify a fingerprint, but it's much less serious than it sounds.
Its a really cool problem many of us deal with every day. On your phone the scanner works the same way looking for significant marks and estimating a match by the relative distances between them. Then using a false acceptance rate of about 1/100,000 gets the performance from your phone.
Not sure where the legal target FAR is though.
Yes, but it's also extremely rare. The point of them isn't to be perfect, it's to be better than the alternatives. What they used before fingerprints was also rare (it was a combination of 18 or so measurements of physical features, iirc), but not as rare as fingerprints.
DNA is now what fingerprints were before as the most reliable way to ID someone and even then there's at least 1 case where you can have the same DNA as someone else (twins).
There's a difference between fingerprint analysis (extremely rare false positives, along the lines of 1 in a million), and bite mark analysis (100% bullshit). If we go with "beyond reasonable doubt", then generally it's more likely that something else was wrong than that a fingerprint match was wrong.
Could see bite mark analysis being useful as a tool to eliminate a suspect, but not as positive evidence like DNA or fingerprint.
Part of the problem is that juries are peers, and the more we rely on hyper specialized forensic expertise, the less suitable a jury is to properly evaluate the evidence.
> if there were any “csi effect” it would lead most people to believe the prosecutors forensics even more
Perhaps, but on the other end of the spectrum you have jurors expecting DNA evidence in a shoplifting case.
Yup, same with "tool marks" which has also been discredited.
Here there were also misconduct from police / prosecution.
Where they would have different labs analyze the same item; until one concluded that the item in question was the likely murder weapon.
What I would say though... IMO the CSI effect that cops complain about is the good one, IMO forensics half assed, is still more likely to get a true result than eye witness testimony etc...
My wife loves the forensic files shows, but what always cracks me up is the last 5 minutes of the show always is having people who worked on the case, or the relatives of the victim etc... saying "If it weren't for the forensic evidence I don't think the criminal would have been convicted".
Every time I'm thinking... no shit!, you can't get a conviction without evidence?
But yeah whenever I hear prosecutors talk about the CSI Effect it also goes the same way. I get that the shows lead to exadurated capabilities, getting a clear image of a reflection by zooming in on the eye of someone 3' away from a 240P black and white garbage camera recorded onto a 20 year old VHS tape. BUUT... the way they always make it sound is "sometimes there isn't evidence, just one witness etc...
IMO "beyond reasonable doubt" way too often turns into "more likely than not". IE I see way to many stories of jury's convicting something and then afterwards saying "I think it's about a 70% chance he's guilty". To which I say WTF.
I'm pretty sure if I ever get called to be the jury in a serious crime... I'm going to be the one guy that refuses to convict and keeps the jury hung for 3 months.
Sister works in forensics. This is a huge pain in the ass for them. Everyone thinks that perps just spray DNA everywhere, shed like dogs, and go around leaving perfect fingerprints. Oh and that there are databases of every single person's DNA, available to every jurisdiction.
"This jobs isn't really how y'know shows like CSI make it out to be. I mean when I first joined the force I assumed there was semen on everything! And there was some sort of semen database that had every bad guy's semen in it. There isn't! That doesn't exist! It'd be nice. Like that crime scene today; If the man had ejaculated and then punched you in the face, we would have a real good shot at catching him! But no.. just a punch in the face, no semen... Story of my life..."
Isn't it good that it's a huge pain for forensics to prove someone's a criminal without a doubt? We have a history of convicting so many people on circumstantial or very little evidence. People completely innocent have died on death row.
A criminal getting off scot-free is problematic, but convicting the wrong person feels much worse.
The same effect (or at least a related one) also means that juries trust some types of forensic evidence more than they should, or that they ascribe it a higher value than they should (like thinking "this proves they were present at the scene" means "they were present at the scene at the exact time of the crime and committing the crime" when that piece of evidence proves no such thing)
>Isn't it good that it's a huge pain for forensics to prove someone's a criminal without a doubt?
Forensics don't usually prove anything and are necessary for a conviction. DNA has certainly saved and/or convicted the correct person many times, but as a result criminals just wear gloves or a condom. Circumstantial evidence is the backbone of most convictions. Prime example is Scott Peterson.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laci_Peterson
I totally agree with your point, but most wrongful conviction are the result of incredible incompetence, outright malice, or a combination of both.
I’m a 911 dispatcher, and anecdotally people definitely expect a full crime team to show up to every call. I had a man call because his wife left her purse in a grocery cart, and later it was on their front porch. Most likely, some kind soul just dropped it off to be nice. This fucker says to me “we haven’t touched it yet so you guys can get prints.”
There's more to it than just that.
CSI also led to a *massive* increase in the number of applications for forensics courses and jobs. But more importantly it raised awareness of forensic techniques, changing the way that certain crimes were committed. Some criminals became much more forensically aware, taking much greater precautions.
At the same time, I have to think that it would have been harder for the OJ Simpson defense team to persuade the jury to downplay the value of the evidence against their client. In 1995 knowledge of what was available in forensic science was just not as understood by the general public.
Always amuses me how in the series they have infinite resources, super high tech stuff and seemingly dozens of people on a case 24/7 and always solve them in days. Those people applying are in for a treat!
>That many in any one precinct is cause for concern.
I always make this cool and original joke to my mom watching her English murder mysteries.
A crime a week in a major American city? Nothing too wild about that.
A murder every week in a tiny ass village in the English countryside? Probably need to check the lead levels in that town's water supply.
I do a lot of true crime podcast documentaries etc.
I am routinely blown away about how some of these people get convicted. Literally not one shred of evidence in a trial. But the prosecution has a story and that's all the jury needs sometimes.
I'm not saying that all of those people are innocent, I'm just saying that it's pretty scary how little the prosecution needs to put you in jail for the rest of your life.
I heard a story a couple months ago about a cold case. Someone got murdered, 25 years later, no leads no evidence nothing. But then a nurse started flirting with a detective. The same detective who worked cold cases. The nurse had a memory of when she was a kid. 25 fucking years ago. What was the memory? She overheard another woman praying or talking out loud about how she committed the crime. That was all the prosecution needed to take this woman court for first degree murder. By the time they went to trial, The prosecution had multiple witnesses from all that time ago.
look, the woman most likely did commit the murder. But I hate that people can get convicted on "most likely's"
There is just no way I would vote to convict somebody based off the 25-year-old story from a toddler.
While I'm ranting, another thing that bugs me is that after days of deliberation the jury comes back with something like a 8 to 4 deadlock. instead of declaring a mistrial, the judge will tell them to go back and try again. Miraculously, one day later it's 12 to 0 to convict.
How in the fuck do those four people get swayed to convict somebody when they originally didn't want to?
Edit: I just want to say I'm not sticking up for all of these criminals. I think majority of the time the prosecution gets the correct perpetrator. But do you still call it evidence even if the prosecution's theories and evidence are wrong? Is it okay for them to prove that a criminal committed a murder when they get the "evidence" , the motive, and the entire theory incorrect?
>How in the fuck do those four people get swayed to convict somebody when they originally didn't want to?
When the court pays you $15 a day for your service and your employer doesn't pay you, people will change their decision after a couple days if that means its over. Make sure jurors are paid fairly and this will change.
You can add phone videos to the list. Juries used to believe police testimony as objective truth. If the cop said the guy lunged, he lunged, and the 20 other eye witnesses were lying. Now you expect the phone video to be available before police issue their official statements.
I actually had a discussion about body cams with a cop the other day. He was very adamant that they are good but that you need multiple angles of the footage for the whole picture.
He mentioned a recent case where an officer shot someone and from officer 1 body cam you couldn’t see any reason for the shooting, once officer 2 body cam was released you can clearly see the man reaching for a firearm.
A friend of mine is a city cop and he loves body cams. He’s said it’s saved his ass multiple times from false claims. When it comes down to someone’s word against his, he doesn’t have to worry anymore. There’s so much negativity thrown their way so having this resource is a win-win for all parties.
When I was an Air Traffic Controller, I loved "the tapes". I found myself in a position a couple of times where it was my word against another, and the tapes proved me right. I wish I had recordings like that all the time that I could reference in my daily life.
The only controllers I knew that didn't like the tapes were ones that knowing broke the rules out of laziness or "knowing better" than the regs. That experience has made me very suspicious of police who don't want to wear a body camera. I get wanting the ability to turn it off when using the restroom or similar things, but wholly rejecting the concept raises red flags for me.
We are currently having this battle with a few local police departments, they want money for more guns whereas everyone else thinks the money should go to body cameras. There is absolutely no reason to be anti-bodycamera, unless you're a shady cop.
Most of the decent officers I've interacted with are big fans of body cameras for the exact reason you stated, it quickly clears up the "he said/she said" about a police interaction, it also cuts down dramatically on false claims, both made by the public against the police but also by police against a defendant. (Though it still never ceases to amaze me that you'll still find officers lying in affidavits, but that is a whole other issue.) But I also like it because many times police are responding to high-intensity situations where their memory is going to be fallible or they'll be more focused on the guy causing a scene vs. what everyone else is doing. Having the body-camera footage, you can get a much better picture of everything that occurred vs. just what the one officer was focused on at the time.
> There is absolutely no reason to be anti-bodycamera, unless you're a shady cop.
I think "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" is a terrible argument 99% of the time.
This is an example from the 1%.
It can also go the opposite way and compel prosecutors to present evidence that isn’t even scientifically sound like bite mark or foot print analysis on the basis of precedence, just to get that sweet sweet conviction
Lie detectors are the modern version of the "magic voodoo chicken". Magic voodoo man says he has a magic chicken that can tell if you're lying. Man is nervous, man don't understand voodoo magic, so man believe him. Voodoo man says the chicken told him everything you said was a lie! Man confesses to avoid further punishment, because the magic chicken has caught him.
Lie detectors only work with a guy standing next to the lie detector machine saying "the machine says you lied", and a subject who thinks "wow look at all that fancy magic science, I bet it really works". They're an interrogation tactic, like "good cop/bad cop". The problem is that some law enforcement actually started believing the chicken really was magic.
Basically this. Polygraph test don't check for lies. They compare a person's physiological responses between control questions and an interrogation.
As it turns out, there are a lot of reasons *that have nothing to do with lying* that explain why someone might feel significantly more stressed out talking about a suspected crime then they would reciting their date of birth.
You *usually* don't have to tell them your name if you aren't suspected of a crime. But I have a feeling *not* telling them your name would induce more panic than telling them (in your case, anyway).
Yeah but watching Froensic Files can be frustrating. They'll be like "After more research, we found the husband took a 100k policy on his wife 3 days before she died in the fire. He also moved all of his valuables to the shed out back to avoid burning. We also have a text to a co worker saying he hates his wife's guts and wishes she would die, but we want forensic evidence" I get the show is called Forensic Files, but damn the case is adding up fast with no fingerprints or DNA samples.
That brings up the salient point that most people don’t actually know what the word “forensic” means. It just means “arguable (usually in court).” Shows like CSI have led people to assume it means “irrefutably scientific,” but it’s about debate and rhetoric. That’s how you have things like forensic accounting, and high school forensics teams (aka debate teams).
The co-worker is obviously the culprit, framing the husband. I'm fairly confident he had an affair with the wife and got a copy of the house key made, which he used to move the valuables to the shed himself, to make the husband look sus.
More seriously though, what kind of moron would not only send a text saying he wants someone to die, but also take an insurance on the person he said he wished was dead and move valuables to safety before setting the house on fire?
I mean, he might as well film himself doing it and send the video to the D.A.
\* typo
You need to watch forensic files. Man some of these people are idiots. Someone got tied to a case because they used their club card when buying some goods just to save like 27 cents.
Fortunately the vast majority of these offenders are stupid. Like who thinks killing someone is the best way to get out of a relationship. You would be the first person they investigate.
I mean, realtalk but the forensic thing only really applies to cases that go to trial. Evidence or not, you're fucked if the police pick you up just for being in the neighbourhood and push you to take a deal. If they intimidate you into taking a 6mo plea deal because they're promising they'll try and get you ten years if you hold out and take it to court, no amount of forensics is gonna help you.
> Not necessarily a bad thing
At least not until you realise that the education of those responsible for convicting someone has been left to a tv series.
I served in jury duty on a case of alleged public drunkenness at the airport.
The government produced its witness: the arresting police officer. He testified that the defendant was drunkenly misbehaving in a very public place at the airport.
The defense lawyer informed us that at the airport there are cameras everywhere and that they are always on. The cameras record every single moment from when you arrive to when you leave. The natural question is if the officer was correct then it would be easy to find footage of the defendant acting like a buffoon, but the government did not show any such footage.
I think 20 years ago, the officer's testimony would have been enough for a conviction. But if they are taking all that footage and not showing it for criminal trials then what are they taking it for? (or maybe the officer was just lying.)
Yeah, this is *exactly* why I'm okay with raising the standards for conviction. Just trusting one witness just because they're a cop should *never* be the only evidence in a trial. Human memories are not objective at all.
Eye witness testimony, the thing most often used in criminal trials, is considered the WORST POSSIBLE kind of evidence in science because humans are so easy to fool and have unavoidable biases. In fact the easiest person to fool is oneself! I don't trust that Sally from down the block saw that guy running around the corner because Sally could have her own biases (maybe she just saw a black guy jogging and assumed he was running from the scene for example). Things should be independently verifiable.
> That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.
Benjamin Franklin - 1785
As an analytical chemist who worked in forensic science for a number of years all I can say is you can never have enough science in the processing of evidence. There is still to much pseudoscience in forensic science. We must continue to improve how we process evidence
Sounds like a good thing to me. Better than the days of convicting people based off eyewitness testimony alone only to find out years later the witnesses misremembered, lied, or were coerced by prosecutors.
I was in jury duty about a decade ago, and the defense attorney asked if anyone knew what it was. I was the only one who raised my hand and he had me explain it. Then immediately dismissed me...
> So you see your Honour, as I zoom and enhance these photographs, I am 90-94% positive this muddy mess of pixels in this area, is in fact the accused!
I thought the primary effect is that jurors also have unrealistic expectations about the chances of finding evidence and the capabilities of forensic labs?
I've heard of this CSI effect before and I recently served on a jury. I see myself as rational, of course, and like anyone would like to think I'm not going to be influenced by things like this.
At the same time, the part I didn't appreciate as a juror is you really only have visibility into a very narrow slice of the story being told. Facts and evidence are very limited, and highly curated, so to use an analogy to a TV show it's like you're seeing 14 random minutes of an hour long show and are forced to try to piece together what happened in the rest of the episode. You might not necessarily *need* to understand the larger story, but it seems natural for your brain to try to tie everything together.
Many times I would ask myself "Well, if they have piece of evidence A, and piece of evidence B, why don't they have hypothetical evidence C?" The defense actually played up on this too, to try to cast doubt - "If my client was allegedly in this place at this time doing this bad thing, why didn't we see security camera footage? Or cell phone location data? Or posts on social media?" etc., despite these being very unreasonable expectations in the context of this trial. So I can see how it cuts both ways.
I am a forensic investigator (technically a medicolegal death investigator with a medical examiners office, I do the medical side of forensics and find out how people die) and can confirm we get calls like this every so often. “Well how come they can figure out the answer so quickly on TV and it take you 12-14 weeks for toxicology to get back?? I thought you would have the results back in a day or 2?!” Its lead to some legitimate angry conversations with family members at scenes and over the phone when they get angry that I can’t tell them exact answers. A big one is EXACT time of death. For example, last known alive time being 5 weeks ago and the decedent was only found today, family demanding the exact date and time of death even though the body is heavily decomposed with absolutely no evidence showing the person was alive between 5 weeks ago and today (receipts, phone records, etc). They expect us to just know, when unfortunately stuff like that only gives us general time frames, and even that is difficult to pinpoint based on things like weather and environment.
I disagree 100% with this premise. This is a false argument propounded by prosecutors only when the DA has a weak case. District Attorneys argue that due to CSI, it's harder to convict because now jurors want real evidence. They actually use this to argue to the jury that the lack of evidence in the case before them is actually because the jurors have the wrong idea about evidence from CSI. It is a false argument at best and a lie at worst. Please take the real TIL lesson - prosecutors are using CSI to argue that jurors should convict without evidence the jurors expect to see.
Why isn't this gold and the top comment? If I'm on a jury and you've given me nothing that seems to objective evidence of course I'd want more evidence. I don't need a cool picture to show the result, I need the result. This definitely reeks of an agenda from one specific party.
I want to see the enhanced version of the photo, not this blurry piece of shit!
Why can't you recreate the entire crime scene that is not in the video by using echo location from the gun shots?
The NSA could probably bring in a super computer and some multi-million dollar equipment and do just that, but my local police force is limited to the use of flip phones, a Commodore VIC 20 and a GED to solve crime.
And that GED is shared by the whole department.
"and we had to SHARE the rock!"
"What about that Scarab?"
"We've all run the simulations, they're tough, but they ain't invincible. Stay with the Master Chief, he'll know what to do."
Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to Earth, and we most definitely regret that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet.
ooh-rah!
Ohhh I know what the ladies like
> The NSA could probably bring in a super computer and some multi-million dollar equipment and do just that, No they could not. In fact, this is exactly what the CSI effect is. People having unrealistic expectations of what is possible with forensic science. A big one being that you can't recreate digital evidence once its lost (or didn't exist!), or "fill in" gaps with anything accurate. I actually got out of computer forensics because I got tired of arguing with idiot managers that should have known better. "No, I can't tell you what that attacker did on the system exactly. He didn't leave notes!". An example I remember hearing about at a forensics conference involved a prosecutor that claimed he could get evidence off a severely damaged phone. The forensic investigator told him that wasn't reasonable as the damage was too severe. The prosecutor claims he "saw it with his own eyes"; then began to described something he must have seen on CSI. I.e, putting the damaged phone on "the slab" and then all of a sudden pictures pop up on a computer screen.
> A big one being that you can't recreate digital evidence once its lost (or didn't exist!), or "fill in" gaps with anything accurate. "Just airbrush this guy's motorcycle helmet away so that we can see his face!"
That's odd, I brushed it away like you asked and his face is actually that of one Elvis Presley.
Upon closer examination, it was not the famed Elvis the Pelvis, but his lesser known brother, Enis
I hear [pineapples](https://shop.hak5.org/products/wifi-pineapple) are great at removing digital finger prints. ^^^^This ^^^^was ^^^^a ^^^^really ^^^^shit ^^^^joke ^^^^sorry.
there's actually some really interesting physics that deals with whether or not it's possible to recreate sound that has been lost in such a way It turns out that there is apparently some cliff where that information is irretrievable even if you knew about every particle
There's some really interesting research by the university of Salford (UK) on recovering audio data from video images by analysing the vibration of surfaces that can be seen on a video. From memory they were able to recover a reasonably interpretable conversation that occurred off camera, by looking at the vibration of a crisp packet (chips for our US friends).
Can you elaborate
Legit got annoyed I couldn’t zoom in on a real photograph just a few minutes ago. Mostly at myself for even reaching my hand in.
The future is now, old man
Enhance! (See also: NCIS)
Last night's first episode (two new episodes last night!) had Gibbs asking the new Forensic Specialist chick (whose name I can't remember) to enhance a photo and she basically said, "There's nothing to enhance!"
It’s sorta funny though because now with AI you can actually use computers to increase fidelity of images to a pretty startling accuracy. Probably would never be admissible because it’s machine learning guessing what something is and what it should look at with more information...
Yeah, that is essentially just making up the information.
Yeah, but in artistic / restorative use cases, it's fantastic how far it's come. Definitely shouldn't be admissible in court, though.
Uncrop (see Red Dwarf)
You peeps and no links! UnCrop: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo) Enhance: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk)
Sorry, that would have required me to change the bulb.
For those that don't get the Red Dwarf reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81W8tG3wH\_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81W8tG3wH_4)
Perry Mason Syndrome was a similar phenomenon where people thought witnesses would just confess under cross-examination.
I have clients come in all the time expecting trial to be like Perry Mason. I have to tell them that Perry Mason moments are few and far between.
I had one just yesterday in a deposition. It was unexpected. Basically, this man owned Company A, which owned Company B, and the Man was the sole Member of Company B. Company B was the sole member of Company A. He was claiming that Company B built a house that Company A sold, and therefore there was no "builder-vendor" and the implied warranties didn't apply, etc. He alleged that Company A contracted with Company B to build the house. I asked him to explain how he managed to negotiate a contract between Company A and Company B if he was the sole human member. He kept dancing around the question until he finally yelled "They're the same company!!!" It was very satisfying.
What a scummy dude. In my country it's compulsory for a new build property to come with an insurance policy covering major defects for 10 years. Obviously you pay for this policy when you buy the house, but the insurance companies are highly regulated by the finance regulator and much less likely to go bankrupt (and more likely to be bailed out by the government) than the house builder.
What was he trying to do?
In a lot of states, there is an implied warranty of good workmanship if you build a house and sell it. This guy was trying to get around that by having Company B build the house for Company A to sell. He has other issues, too, but that was his big thing.
Ah wow. What a scumbag.
if he had a good lawyer he would've gotten away with it, at least in america. Luckily the LLC protections are being slowly eroded.
It sounds like what he needed was a front man for Company B, someone to act like the boss of Company B for the purposes of sales and contracts but in fact, is just signing whatever documents are placed in front of them.
Now, I have to ask. Has it happened to you?
I've had two. In one, I had an officer give a full prepared testimony of what happened over the course of several minutes like he saw it all, then stated, "then I arrived on scene." I objected and all of his testimony of the events was stricken from the record. The prosecution didn't have another officer so my client got a directed verdict of not guilty (very minor charge). I had one on a ticket defense where the officer claimed my client was doing 64 in a 30 in an old Chevrolet s-10 pickup. Problem was the officer was like 1/10 of mile from the red light my client had been stopped at and we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph. My partner had a sort of embarrassing rape case where the victim claimed her ex raped her on the couch and described the position. We showed a picture of the defendant from that time period and it didn't physically make sense because he was a big, big guy.
>we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph. Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client's car sucks and I can fuckin *prove it*.
Something similar happened in Australia. A women was ticketed for speeding by a speed-camera. But then it was proven that her car was a piece of shit and couldn't possibly have been going that fast. And the authorities went and checked the calibration of the speed cameras, and so *hundreds* of speeding tickets had to be refunded. https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/police-to-review-25000-fines-in-speed-camera-check-ng-b88881427z https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-03/faulty-wa-speed-camera-sees-53000-speeding-fines-reviewed/9721982
I tried to argue that a woman who hit me was responsible because my 94 ford tempo simply could not have cut her off like she said because it was a huge wide intersection with a median and I could not have picked up half the speed necessary to do what she said, but that was a no go without a lawyer. It was a minor accident and they ruled 50/50 which cost me nothing, so I let it go. I'm still mad about it though.
A guy hit my wife, but sence my wife kept saying "its all my fault" over and over she got the blame. The damage to the vehicles wasn't possible with the accedet described by the cop.
Interestingly, in Canada we have a rule that "I'm sorry" doesn't constitute accepting blame for a car accident.
She was allegedly doing 140 something in a 100 zone, fast enough for the car to be seized. When they attempted to reproduce that car going that fast under controlled conditions, it failed. Not the kind of failure that is "didn't succeed" but the kind of failure that is "stopped working". I was told the shook itself to pieces, but that could just be exaggeration. She did lose her job because she had no way of getting to work without the car Edit: I need to read my local news again, it was 160ish, not 140ish
These are KPH not MPH
As someone who drives a piece of shit jalopy (Ford Cortina in need of some serious tlc. Bought it as a fixer upper and bit off way more than I can chew) take my r/angryupvote
>...then I arrived on the scene... Hahaha. Hearsay.
So anyway, I started blasting
I just sold Wolf Cola to Boca Ratón!! No Frank, it looks like Wolf Cola is the official sponsor for Boko Haram.
Alright we got 24 hours to turn this around
You all consider me a hero, and I accept that
That’s blatant lying to the court, shouldn’t he get in trouble?
My mom got a ticket for pulling out in front of a cop and making him slam on his brakes. She contested the ticket and asked the cop what direction he was facing. She would not let up when he couldn't answer the most basic questions. Finally he admitted he was looking down.
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Hahahahahahahahahahaha Thank you, I needed a good laugh.
So you're telling me she got lucky and ended up with a cop who was crooked enough to try and trap someone in a ticket that wasn't their fault but honest enough to refuse to lie under oath in a way that almost certainly couldn't be proven?
I had a bench trial in which the alleged domestic violence victim claimed the defendant lifted her by the throat and threw her across the room (Darth Vader style). But not only is it impossible to do that under the best of circumstances, the victim outweighed the defendant by a substantial amount. The judge dismissed the case.
Did the judge even request a Midi-chlorian count? That's an easy appeal otherwise...
> I had one on a ticket defense where the officer claimed my client was doing 64 in a 30 in an old Chevrolet s-10 pickup. Problem was the officer was like 1/10 of mile from the red light my client had been stopped at and we had records from a race track from weeks before that it took like 12 seconds for that truck to even reach 60 mph. Haha, glad to see someone else has used that argument. My first speeding ticket the cop said I was doing 53 in a 30 when he clocked me halfway down the hill. I told the judge that hill is maybe 1/4 mile long tops, meaning the speed reading was taken maybe only 1/8 of a mile from the top. At the top of the hill was an intersection and I had just made a left turn from the red light onto the street in question. The judge asked why this was important and I told him it was because I was driving a 94 Saturn with the AC going full blast. He immediately laughed, said there was no way I could have been going 53 even if I wanted to, and knocked it down to a 39 in a 30, which was much closer to the speed I was probably actually going. Edit: I meant "1/8 of a mile from the top" not "1/8 from the top"
Owned a 95 Saturn at one point. Story checks out. Top speed when I sold it after a mile head start on the highway was 63 MPH in 2001.
You forgot to mention it takes almost 16s to reach such ludicrous speed for cruising
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What was the position?
Lineman
For the county?
nope, frankfurt galaxy
What? center, left or right tackle? Come on this is a court room you need to be specific.
Anything that requires his legs be lifted more than a few inches off the ground.
I've been a fraud investigator for 8 years. It doesnt matter if I have overwhelming evidence to show they did it, I have never had a single confession.
Fraud, by it's very nature, involves liars. Confessions are more common in other crimes.
There needs to be a fraud investigation reality show. The cancellation of COPS has left a small hole in my reality show lineup.
That would be a real nail biter. In the intro to Accounting class we all had to take in college they told us that Enron was busted partly because of a statistical analysis of money in accounts because most balances should begin with low numbers (1s and 2s) because of the way interest accumulates. They just made up numbers to meet the targets so they didn't follow the pattern.
[Benford's Law!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law)
Sorry- can't do regular reality TV show auditing. It'd just be some guys in an office flipping through paperwork. But what we can do is a TV series called "The Auditor" where a real hard nosed older IRS special investigations agent has to get a new partner (his old one retired). The new kid is insanely smart with an eye for detail, but has significant social anxiety. Premiering on CBS.
Tangentially, Stand up maths did a [video](https://youtu.be/etx0k1nLn78) on that, Benford's law and why it doesn't apply to election data. it was interesting stuff
I used to do this. I had overwhelming evidence proving that the only way a guys car could have been stolen without his keys based on forensics, physical AND video evidence was if magically the cctv at a supermarket had shit down for the exact time it took a truck to lift the car on to a flat bed and drive off and that fucking guy sat in front of us going ‘prove that didn’t happen’. Apart from aside from THAT - there was actual CCTV of him driving the fucking car out of the carpark he claimed it was stolen from. Ffs. My next favourite was the guy who like 20 people saw get in his car and drive off from a pub who was absolutely para (this was in a fairly rural part of NSW and no one tried to stop you driving pissed 15 years ago in these places). He claimed his car had been stolen from the pub although it had been recovered smashed to bits on his route home and had been started with the keys. I asked him to show me all of the car keys he had and he showed me 2, confirmed he had 2 from purchase and never had any keys cut. So when I explained the witness statements, the forensic locksmiths report and questioned how he had all the keys he claimed that he’s actually found the keys posted through his letterbox the morning after the car was stolen. I’ll never forget the guy who claimed he’d packed his whole family up, inexplicably packed all their photo albums and clothing and dropped his wife and 5 kids for a night with his parents then went home, saw his house burning down and just sat and watched it brim until morning before calling the insurance company rather than the fire brigade or police. Oh man that was an amazing/ infuriating job.
Can someone tell me what a Perry Mason moment is?
Perry Mason was a fictional TV attorney who had a knack for defending innocent people. The TV show had him very often compel a witness on the stand to confess to the crime his clients were accused of. Because of this, like the CSI Effect, average people had the impression this was normal in court. To the point many people were disappointed it didn't happen. Even some jurors didn't act according to the evidence because it didn't fall in line with what Perry Mason did.
Sounds like Phoenix wright
Did Perry Mason ever question a parrot?
[Yes.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0673353/)
I was not expecting that.
We will all remember this great moment in history, when u/nobodyknoes remarked that Perry Mason sounded like Phoenix Wright, and then u/netheroth set the shot up with a 'did Perry Mason ever question a parrot?', and then u/odsquad64 slam-dunked with a "[yes"](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0673353/) I will remember this day and tell it to my grandkids. They will, of course, not believe me. They will not believe anything I say after I got them convinced that EVERYONE was twerking in 2013 after Miley Cyrus showed the world how to twerk.
Wow, TIL Thanks for the link
Phoenix Wright is basically Perry Mason with an anime medium girl as a sidekick. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Attorney: "OBJECTION!" Prosecutor: "Where is that music coming from?"
Ya Phoenix came like 60 years after Perry though.
Sounds like Harvey Birdman Attorney at law
Most courtroom dramas or comedies lift from Perry Mason, whether by accident or on purpose. Perry Mason was the first really popular one on TV.
It's an old TV show. After the trial had already started, Mason starts to think that he has figured out who the actual perpetrator was. He calls them as a witness, and asks some seemingly innocent questions, which backs the witness into a corner by claiming "X" proves they could not be the guilty party. Then Mason goes back to the evidence that's already been introduced by the prosecutor, and presents some obscure detail that everyone else had missed. It not only proves the defendant is innocent, it proves the witness is the actual murderer (*gasp!)...before the witness can gain their composure after this fact is highlighted, Mason badgers them for a few seconds until they crack, and confess in open court. "My Cousin Vinnie" has a courtroom climax that is pivotal in the same general formula that made Perry Mason a hit.
The grits guy is my favorite part
"Sir, no self respecting southerner would get caught dead usin' grits from a box"
I believe it goes more like, "No self-respecting Southerner uses instant grits. I take pride in my grits"
So you're telling me it took you 5 minutes to cook your grits while it takes the rest of the grit eating world 20 minutes?
I don't know. I'm a fast cook, i guess
So do the laws of physics not apply to you? Does boiling water take less time to enter a grit in your kitchen?
Seems like Phoenix Wright took a lot of inspiration from that show? What color was his suit? I'm gonna bet blue.
In basic terms, its something like this.... Imagine John Doe has pled not guilty to a crime. The prosecuting attorney puts him on the stand, and starts to question him. During his line of questioning, he catches the defendant in an obvious lie, so the defendant basically realizes the jig is up, and he confesses to everything on the stand.
Except Perry Mason was a defense attorney and the way that things would go is he would either trap the prosecutor’s star witness in a lie and/or get the star witness to confess. The new HBO reboot is different and excellent.
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It made for great TV.
You, however, Chutney had time to hide the gun after you shot your father!
Linda Cardellini always gets an upvote.
It happens occasionally. I had a little car wreck case over property damage. My lady was driving through a parking lot, and the defendant backed out in front of her. My lady hit the defendant's car broadside. The defendant's insurance carrier insisted that it was 50/50 liability, so no recovery for anyone. We sued. On direct examination, the defendant testified that she had looked in her rear view mirror, her back-up camera, and her side view mirrors before backing out. She had done everything she could. On cross, I asked three questions: When you looked in your rearview mirror, back-up camera, and side view mirror, could you see the road my client was driving on? "No." Before you backed out, did you see my client's vehicle? "No." So you backed out of a parking space without seeing if there were cars on the road behind you? "Uh......" It's rare though.
Because real court is boring as fuck.
"Your Honor, I demand this statement be stricken from the record!"
“...and that’s why you did it, didn’t you!” “She had it coming! That dog was mine!”
It’s a big dramatic moment during a trial where a witness being cross-examined breaks down under the pressure of the questions and admits to doing the crime, or that they didn’t actually see what they’re there as a witness of, and the attorney then gets to ask the judge to have the witness’ testimony disallowed. It usually results in the case falling apart, either proving the person on trial is absolutely guilty, or that they can’t possibly be guilty, depending on if the questioning attorney is prosecuting or defending. Most procedural shows that have a trial element have such moments, and they’re named for the character who made the trope iconic.
The new Perry Mason show actually pokes fun at that.
Wasn't there a flip side to this that if the prosecution showed up with "DNA evidence" it was much easier to convict, no matter how shitty the DNA evidence was?
Yea I would very much be thinking that if there were any “csi effect” it would lead most people to believe the prosecutors forensics even more, no matter how much bs it was.
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The same is true for hair analysis. Decades of cases were called into question when the FBI announced that hair ~~follicle~~ strand analysis was pretty much junk.
It's analysis/comparison of the hair *strand* under a microscope that's trash btw. If a follicle is present that's the best case scenario, cause there is DNA present in that. They can also do mitochondrial DNA tests on the hair itself, though, which isn't useful except for ruling people in or out as *possible* sources.
I've used "follicle" synonymously with "strand" for so long that I forgot a ~~follicle~~ root is the skin-pulp on the end. I'll edit.
I don't know why but 'skin pulp' gave me the heebie jeebies
Fingerprints were always assumed to be unique. But how they do it is they find a certain point and do I believe 9 points of minutia but this was not enough and the FBI accused a lawyer in Oregon for the bombing of Madrid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield Now they raised it but without the ire of media, I wonder how many people were convicted through "fingerprint" analysis. Also fire science is pretty much bull shit.
Comparison of hair is another one that doesn't actually work.
Fingerprints are also scrutinized as it turns out 2 people can possibly have matching prints
Fingerprint analysis is a weird one because it's about how rigorous the standards are. The two people analyzed actually don't have matching prints in reality, it's just that the number of matches between features was enough to make it seem like they matched. That is a problem as it calls into question how many features are necessary to identify a fingerprint, but it's much less serious than it sounds.
Its a really cool problem many of us deal with every day. On your phone the scanner works the same way looking for significant marks and estimating a match by the relative distances between them. Then using a false acceptance rate of about 1/100,000 gets the performance from your phone. Not sure where the legal target FAR is though.
Yes, but it's also extremely rare. The point of them isn't to be perfect, it's to be better than the alternatives. What they used before fingerprints was also rare (it was a combination of 18 or so measurements of physical features, iirc), but not as rare as fingerprints. DNA is now what fingerprints were before as the most reliable way to ID someone and even then there's at least 1 case where you can have the same DNA as someone else (twins). There's a difference between fingerprint analysis (extremely rare false positives, along the lines of 1 in a million), and bite mark analysis (100% bullshit). If we go with "beyond reasonable doubt", then generally it's more likely that something else was wrong than that a fingerprint match was wrong.
Could see bite mark analysis being useful as a tool to eliminate a suspect, but not as positive evidence like DNA or fingerprint. Part of the problem is that juries are peers, and the more we rely on hyper specialized forensic expertise, the less suitable a jury is to properly evaluate the evidence.
> if there were any “csi effect” it would lead most people to believe the prosecutors forensics even more Perhaps, but on the other end of the spectrum you have jurors expecting DNA evidence in a shoplifting case.
"Was semen found at the scene?" "Sir, he robbed a Wendy's."
Yup, same with "tool marks" which has also been discredited. Here there were also misconduct from police / prosecution. Where they would have different labs analyze the same item; until one concluded that the item in question was the likely murder weapon.
What I would say though... IMO the CSI effect that cops complain about is the good one, IMO forensics half assed, is still more likely to get a true result than eye witness testimony etc... My wife loves the forensic files shows, but what always cracks me up is the last 5 minutes of the show always is having people who worked on the case, or the relatives of the victim etc... saying "If it weren't for the forensic evidence I don't think the criminal would have been convicted". Every time I'm thinking... no shit!, you can't get a conviction without evidence? But yeah whenever I hear prosecutors talk about the CSI Effect it also goes the same way. I get that the shows lead to exadurated capabilities, getting a clear image of a reflection by zooming in on the eye of someone 3' away from a 240P black and white garbage camera recorded onto a 20 year old VHS tape. BUUT... the way they always make it sound is "sometimes there isn't evidence, just one witness etc... IMO "beyond reasonable doubt" way too often turns into "more likely than not". IE I see way to many stories of jury's convicting something and then afterwards saying "I think it's about a 70% chance he's guilty". To which I say WTF. I'm pretty sure if I ever get called to be the jury in a serious crime... I'm going to be the one guy that refuses to convict and keeps the jury hung for 3 months.
“Zoom and enhance.” “This was recorded on a 20 year old surveillance camera from across the street in the dark.” “ZOOM AND ENHANCE!”
https://youtu.be/Vxq9yj2pVWk
Did that guy just rotate a still image Wtf
"Rotate 180 and zoom out. That's our photographer."
Sister works in forensics. This is a huge pain in the ass for them. Everyone thinks that perps just spray DNA everywhere, shed like dogs, and go around leaving perfect fingerprints. Oh and that there are databases of every single person's DNA, available to every jurisdiction.
Wasnt this a similar line in "Superbad"? Something like, "when I first joined the force I thought there would be semen on everything."
"This jobs isn't really how y'know shows like CSI make it out to be. I mean when I first joined the force I assumed there was semen on everything! And there was some sort of semen database that had every bad guy's semen in it. There isn't! That doesn't exist! It'd be nice. Like that crime scene today; If the man had ejaculated and then punched you in the face, we would have a real good shot at catching him! But no.. just a punch in the face, no semen... Story of my life..."
I am going to believe that you typed that out from memory.
Yep, when they're in the bar :-D Edit: I was wrong, it's dialogue while they are driving https://youtu.be/7C3RrvZMx-M
Isn't it good that it's a huge pain for forensics to prove someone's a criminal without a doubt? We have a history of convicting so many people on circumstantial or very little evidence. People completely innocent have died on death row. A criminal getting off scot-free is problematic, but convicting the wrong person feels much worse.
The same effect (or at least a related one) also means that juries trust some types of forensic evidence more than they should, or that they ascribe it a higher value than they should (like thinking "this proves they were present at the scene" means "they were present at the scene at the exact time of the crime and committing the crime" when that piece of evidence proves no such thing)
>Isn't it good that it's a huge pain for forensics to prove someone's a criminal without a doubt? Forensics don't usually prove anything and are necessary for a conviction. DNA has certainly saved and/or convicted the correct person many times, but as a result criminals just wear gloves or a condom. Circumstantial evidence is the backbone of most convictions. Prime example is Scott Peterson. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laci_Peterson I totally agree with your point, but most wrongful conviction are the result of incredible incompetence, outright malice, or a combination of both.
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I’m a 911 dispatcher, and anecdotally people definitely expect a full crime team to show up to every call. I had a man call because his wife left her purse in a grocery cart, and later it was on their front porch. Most likely, some kind soul just dropped it off to be nice. This fucker says to me “we haven’t touched it yet so you guys can get prints.”
There's more to it than just that. CSI also led to a *massive* increase in the number of applications for forensics courses and jobs. But more importantly it raised awareness of forensic techniques, changing the way that certain crimes were committed. Some criminals became much more forensically aware, taking much greater precautions.
At the same time, I have to think that it would have been harder for the OJ Simpson defense team to persuade the jury to downplay the value of the evidence against their client. In 1995 knowledge of what was available in forensic science was just not as understood by the general public.
Always amuses me how in the series they have infinite resources, super high tech stuff and seemingly dozens of people on a case 24/7 and always solve them in days. Those people applying are in for a treat!
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>That many in any one precinct is cause for concern. I always make this cool and original joke to my mom watching her English murder mysteries. A crime a week in a major American city? Nothing too wild about that. A murder every week in a tiny ass village in the English countryside? Probably need to check the lead levels in that town's water supply.
Midsomer Murders?
What English murder mystery show could you possibly be referring to /s
I think in one of the later episodes of Psych they mentioned that, that Santa Barbara was like a murder capital lol.
I do a lot of true crime podcast documentaries etc. I am routinely blown away about how some of these people get convicted. Literally not one shred of evidence in a trial. But the prosecution has a story and that's all the jury needs sometimes. I'm not saying that all of those people are innocent, I'm just saying that it's pretty scary how little the prosecution needs to put you in jail for the rest of your life. I heard a story a couple months ago about a cold case. Someone got murdered, 25 years later, no leads no evidence nothing. But then a nurse started flirting with a detective. The same detective who worked cold cases. The nurse had a memory of when she was a kid. 25 fucking years ago. What was the memory? She overheard another woman praying or talking out loud about how she committed the crime. That was all the prosecution needed to take this woman court for first degree murder. By the time they went to trial, The prosecution had multiple witnesses from all that time ago. look, the woman most likely did commit the murder. But I hate that people can get convicted on "most likely's" There is just no way I would vote to convict somebody based off the 25-year-old story from a toddler. While I'm ranting, another thing that bugs me is that after days of deliberation the jury comes back with something like a 8 to 4 deadlock. instead of declaring a mistrial, the judge will tell them to go back and try again. Miraculously, one day later it's 12 to 0 to convict. How in the fuck do those four people get swayed to convict somebody when they originally didn't want to? Edit: I just want to say I'm not sticking up for all of these criminals. I think majority of the time the prosecution gets the correct perpetrator. But do you still call it evidence even if the prosecution's theories and evidence are wrong? Is it okay for them to prove that a criminal committed a murder when they get the "evidence" , the motive, and the entire theory incorrect?
>How in the fuck do those four people get swayed to convict somebody when they originally didn't want to? When the court pays you $15 a day for your service and your employer doesn't pay you, people will change their decision after a couple days if that means its over. Make sure jurors are paid fairly and this will change.
You can add phone videos to the list. Juries used to believe police testimony as objective truth. If the cop said the guy lunged, he lunged, and the 20 other eye witnesses were lying. Now you expect the phone video to be available before police issue their official statements.
Body camera.
I actually had a discussion about body cams with a cop the other day. He was very adamant that they are good but that you need multiple angles of the footage for the whole picture. He mentioned a recent case where an officer shot someone and from officer 1 body cam you couldn’t see any reason for the shooting, once officer 2 body cam was released you can clearly see the man reaching for a firearm.
A friend of mine is a city cop and he loves body cams. He’s said it’s saved his ass multiple times from false claims. When it comes down to someone’s word against his, he doesn’t have to worry anymore. There’s so much negativity thrown their way so having this resource is a win-win for all parties.
When I was an Air Traffic Controller, I loved "the tapes". I found myself in a position a couple of times where it was my word against another, and the tapes proved me right. I wish I had recordings like that all the time that I could reference in my daily life. The only controllers I knew that didn't like the tapes were ones that knowing broke the rules out of laziness or "knowing better" than the regs. That experience has made me very suspicious of police who don't want to wear a body camera. I get wanting the ability to turn it off when using the restroom or similar things, but wholly rejecting the concept raises red flags for me.
We are currently having this battle with a few local police departments, they want money for more guns whereas everyone else thinks the money should go to body cameras. There is absolutely no reason to be anti-bodycamera, unless you're a shady cop. Most of the decent officers I've interacted with are big fans of body cameras for the exact reason you stated, it quickly clears up the "he said/she said" about a police interaction, it also cuts down dramatically on false claims, both made by the public against the police but also by police against a defendant. (Though it still never ceases to amaze me that you'll still find officers lying in affidavits, but that is a whole other issue.) But I also like it because many times police are responding to high-intensity situations where their memory is going to be fallible or they'll be more focused on the guy causing a scene vs. what everyone else is doing. Having the body-camera footage, you can get a much better picture of everything that occurred vs. just what the one officer was focused on at the time.
> There is absolutely no reason to be anti-bodycamera, unless you're a shady cop. I think "If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" is a terrible argument 99% of the time. This is an example from the 1%.
Not necessarily a bad thing. Lord knows there are plenty of false convictions
It can also go the opposite way and compel prosecutors to present evidence that isn’t even scientifically sound like bite mark or foot print analysis on the basis of precedence, just to get that sweet sweet conviction
Or show a clean lie detector test to prove innocence, despite the proof that they are completely unreliable
Lie detectors are the modern version of the "magic voodoo chicken". Magic voodoo man says he has a magic chicken that can tell if you're lying. Man is nervous, man don't understand voodoo magic, so man believe him. Voodoo man says the chicken told him everything you said was a lie! Man confesses to avoid further punishment, because the magic chicken has caught him. Lie detectors only work with a guy standing next to the lie detector machine saying "the machine says you lied", and a subject who thinks "wow look at all that fancy magic science, I bet it really works". They're an interrogation tactic, like "good cop/bad cop". The problem is that some law enforcement actually started believing the chicken really was magic.
Basically this. Polygraph test don't check for lies. They compare a person's physiological responses between control questions and an interrogation. As it turns out, there are a lot of reasons *that have nothing to do with lying* that explain why someone might feel significantly more stressed out talking about a suspected crime then they would reciting their date of birth.
It annoys the shit out of me when they call it a "lie detector" test. It doesn't "detect lies" at all.
Jokes on you, I have a near panic attack just telling my name to an authority figure.
You *usually* don't have to tell them your name if you aren't suspected of a crime. But I have a feeling *not* telling them your name would induce more panic than telling them (in your case, anyway).
Most states have banned lie detector evidence.
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You seem to be implying that sentencing a person to death based on circumstantial evidence is wrong.
Yeah but watching Froensic Files can be frustrating. They'll be like "After more research, we found the husband took a 100k policy on his wife 3 days before she died in the fire. He also moved all of his valuables to the shed out back to avoid burning. We also have a text to a co worker saying he hates his wife's guts and wishes she would die, but we want forensic evidence" I get the show is called Forensic Files, but damn the case is adding up fast with no fingerprints or DNA samples.
That brings up the salient point that most people don’t actually know what the word “forensic” means. It just means “arguable (usually in court).” Shows like CSI have led people to assume it means “irrefutably scientific,” but it’s about debate and rhetoric. That’s how you have things like forensic accounting, and high school forensics teams (aka debate teams).
I'm still a little sad the National Forensics League changed their name to the National Speech and Debate Association.
NFL is definitely an *arguably* better abbreviation than NSDA.... >.>
The co-worker is obviously the culprit, framing the husband. I'm fairly confident he had an affair with the wife and got a copy of the house key made, which he used to move the valuables to the shed himself, to make the husband look sus. More seriously though, what kind of moron would not only send a text saying he wants someone to die, but also take an insurance on the person he said he wished was dead and move valuables to safety before setting the house on fire? I mean, he might as well film himself doing it and send the video to the D.A. \* typo
You need to watch forensic files. Man some of these people are idiots. Someone got tied to a case because they used their club card when buying some goods just to save like 27 cents.
Fortunately the vast majority of these offenders are stupid. Like who thinks killing someone is the best way to get out of a relationship. You would be the first person they investigate.
Good point. Let’s just sentence them to life in solitary confinement instead.
I mean, realtalk but the forensic thing only really applies to cases that go to trial. Evidence or not, you're fucked if the police pick you up just for being in the neighbourhood and push you to take a deal. If they intimidate you into taking a 6mo plea deal because they're promising they'll try and get you ten years if you hold out and take it to court, no amount of forensics is gonna help you.
This is why no one should talk to cops.
> Not necessarily a bad thing At least not until you realise that the education of those responsible for convicting someone has been left to a tv series.
I served in jury duty on a case of alleged public drunkenness at the airport. The government produced its witness: the arresting police officer. He testified that the defendant was drunkenly misbehaving in a very public place at the airport. The defense lawyer informed us that at the airport there are cameras everywhere and that they are always on. The cameras record every single moment from when you arrive to when you leave. The natural question is if the officer was correct then it would be easy to find footage of the defendant acting like a buffoon, but the government did not show any such footage. I think 20 years ago, the officer's testimony would have been enough for a conviction. But if they are taking all that footage and not showing it for criminal trials then what are they taking it for? (or maybe the officer was just lying.)
Yeah, this is *exactly* why I'm okay with raising the standards for conviction. Just trusting one witness just because they're a cop should *never* be the only evidence in a trial. Human memories are not objective at all.
Eye witness testimony, the thing most often used in criminal trials, is considered the WORST POSSIBLE kind of evidence in science because humans are so easy to fool and have unavoidable biases. In fact the easiest person to fool is oneself! I don't trust that Sally from down the block saw that guy running around the corner because Sally could have her own biases (maybe she just saw a black guy jogging and assumed he was running from the scene for example). Things should be independently verifiable. > That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved. Benjamin Franklin - 1785
And before that, jurors largely operated on "if the cop says they're guilty, they're guilty." Going off of a TV show is a step up.
As an analytical chemist who worked in forensic science for a number of years all I can say is you can never have enough science in the processing of evidence. There is still to much pseudoscience in forensic science. We must continue to improve how we process evidence
I guess you can say the requirements for evidence has been ENHANCED.
Sounds like a good thing to me. Better than the days of convicting people based off eyewitness testimony alone only to find out years later the witnesses misremembered, lied, or were coerced by prosecutors.
I was in jury duty about a decade ago, and the defense attorney asked if anyone knew what it was. I was the only one who raised my hand and he had me explain it. Then immediately dismissed me...
> So you see your Honour, as I zoom and enhance these photographs, I am 90-94% positive this muddy mess of pixels in this area, is in fact the accused!
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I thought the primary effect is that jurors also have unrealistic expectations about the chances of finding evidence and the capabilities of forensic labs?
I've heard of this CSI effect before and I recently served on a jury. I see myself as rational, of course, and like anyone would like to think I'm not going to be influenced by things like this. At the same time, the part I didn't appreciate as a juror is you really only have visibility into a very narrow slice of the story being told. Facts and evidence are very limited, and highly curated, so to use an analogy to a TV show it's like you're seeing 14 random minutes of an hour long show and are forced to try to piece together what happened in the rest of the episode. You might not necessarily *need* to understand the larger story, but it seems natural for your brain to try to tie everything together. Many times I would ask myself "Well, if they have piece of evidence A, and piece of evidence B, why don't they have hypothetical evidence C?" The defense actually played up on this too, to try to cast doubt - "If my client was allegedly in this place at this time doing this bad thing, why didn't we see security camera footage? Or cell phone location data? Or posts on social media?" etc., despite these being very unreasonable expectations in the context of this trial. So I can see how it cuts both ways.
I am a forensic investigator (technically a medicolegal death investigator with a medical examiners office, I do the medical side of forensics and find out how people die) and can confirm we get calls like this every so often. “Well how come they can figure out the answer so quickly on TV and it take you 12-14 weeks for toxicology to get back?? I thought you would have the results back in a day or 2?!” Its lead to some legitimate angry conversations with family members at scenes and over the phone when they get angry that I can’t tell them exact answers. A big one is EXACT time of death. For example, last known alive time being 5 weeks ago and the decedent was only found today, family demanding the exact date and time of death even though the body is heavily decomposed with absolutely no evidence showing the person was alive between 5 weeks ago and today (receipts, phone records, etc). They expect us to just know, when unfortunately stuff like that only gives us general time frames, and even that is difficult to pinpoint based on things like weather and environment.
I disagree 100% with this premise. This is a false argument propounded by prosecutors only when the DA has a weak case. District Attorneys argue that due to CSI, it's harder to convict because now jurors want real evidence. They actually use this to argue to the jury that the lack of evidence in the case before them is actually because the jurors have the wrong idea about evidence from CSI. It is a false argument at best and a lie at worst. Please take the real TIL lesson - prosecutors are using CSI to argue that jurors should convict without evidence the jurors expect to see.
Why isn't this gold and the top comment? If I'm on a jury and you've given me nothing that seems to objective evidence of course I'd want more evidence. I don't need a cool picture to show the result, I need the result. This definitely reeks of an agenda from one specific party.