PI Newswire

Law Enforcement Training and Resource Group LLC., (www.letrg.com) has come out with a new suite of applications for all smart phones. The suite is built around the needs of the first responder’s response to services calls.

This suite is available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smart phones and should be used with those phones with at least a 5 megapixel camera (for best results). The suite of more than a dozen different applications comes complete. The applications are divided into: tools, calculators, and evidence.

Tools include a caliper, level (in degrees and percentage of slope), audio officer notes, field contact report, DOA notes, and References files. The three calculators included are Skid Mark Calculator (for minimum speed, Yaw, and friction factor), pictorial blood spatter trajectory calculator, and a pictorial digital dimension calculator. The evidence applications include two for photos (pre-scaled and scaled photo sets), two apps for video (again one pre-scaled and one for scaled video) along with a field contact audio recorder.

After a simple two step setup, the suite is ready to use. All evidence files are encoded with metafiles that include: agency identifier, officer identifier, case number, GPS location of the scene, date, time, and picture/video/audio numbering.

Upon completion of the call the responder should download the case folders onto a computer with a DVD disk drive and then label the DVD with the case number for evidence, remembering to always follow agency SOPs.

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Any experienced crime scene officer will tell you that the key to doing the job well is protecting the crime scene. What does that mean? In a nutshell, it means securing the scene, limiting access to only essential personnel, and keeping complete and accurate records of everything that happens there. These steps require work and diligence on your part, but your effort will pay off when you end up with high quality results that will stand up in court.

As you know, the first person on the scene should secure it. However, the first officer on the scene is often confronted with many challenges, especially when dealing with a major crime. Before securing the scene, the officer must establish priorities. For instance, if the officer finds victims needing medical aid, the officer must first provide assistance and call for help. At the same time, the officer must be alert to the presence of suspects and deal with them accordingly.

Once the victims and possible suspects have been taken care of, the first officer can focus on the scene itself. After getting everyone out of the scene, the officer must secure it and prevent anyone from entering. The first officer should also call for a search warrant so that crime scene officers can search the scene and collect evidence. With the scene properly secured, a search warrant can be obtained if needed.

Think carefully when you secure your scene. Keep in mind that it is always better to secure a larger area than you need. You can always shrink the perimeter once you begin processing, but you can’t expand it. In fact, if you do extract evidence from outside of the area you originally secured for your scene, that evidence will be considered questionable in court. After all, who’s to say that that evidence was there when the crime took place? The last thing you want is to have evidence thrown out because you didn’t do your job right. Better to be safe than sorry.

Once you establish the outer perimeter of your scene, you need a way to secure that boundary. Everyone uses crime scene tape for this job, but tape doesn’t necessarily stop people from entering. You should also have officers stationed around the perimeter of the scene to make sure unauthorized people don’t enter. And of course, the larger the scene, the more officers you’re going to need, so plan accordingly.

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Wrestling with the challenges of documents in the digital age, U.S. officials are destroying millions of paper federal court records to save storage costs — and raising the ire of some historians, private detectives and others who heavily rely on the files.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration says at least 10 million bankruptcy case files and several million district court files from 1970 through 1995 will be shredded, pounded to pulp and recycled. Files designated as historically valuable, however, will be kept in storage.

Federal archivists spent years consulting legal scholars, historians and others about which files to purge after realizing that sorting and digitizing just the bankruptcy cases would cost tens of millions of dollars. None of the civil or criminal cases up for destruction went to trial, and docket sheets that list basic information such as names of defendants and plaintiffs will be saved from each case.

Such reassurances haven’t allayed concerns of some of those whose work relies on the paper documents.

Cornell Law School professor Theodore Eisenberg said it’s precisely the mundane, every day records with no clear historical significance that, when looked at as a whole, are critical to establishing legal trends upon which court policy is often based.

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Federal and State Approach: Qualifying Under Daubert
As mentioned previously, before you can be offered as an expert you must establish your qualifications. Each state handles the issue in its own way and you should work with the attorney who hires you to make sure you know what you need to know to properly establish your credentials through testimony. In federal court the approach is consistent throughout the system. You must be able to meet the reliability standards defined in the Federal Rules of Evidence as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993); General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522U.S. 136 (1997) and Kumho Tire v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999).

The first thing to understand is that the decision whether you will be allowed to testify is up to the judge. He or she serves as the initial gate keeper. If you pass muster with the judge and are allowed to testify, the jury will then be the final arbiter of your testimony making its decision based on the admissible evidence after they determine how much weight to give to your testimony.

In 2000 the Federal Rules of Evidence were amended to incorporate the Daubert analysis. Rule 702 Fed. R. Ev. provides that the expert witness may only testify if:

1.the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data;
2.the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods; and
3.the witness has applied the principles and theories reliably to the facts of the case.

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The Detroit Free Press made an astonishing discovery last month. The city’s former crime lab had been abandoned. As the paper reported, “Thousands of rounds of live ammunition, sealed evidence kits and case files — some containing Social Security numbers of rape and assault victims” sat unattended in an old elementary school building, accessible to anyone who happened upon them.

The lab was closed in 2008 after another investigation revealed habitually sloppy analysis among the lab’s workers, and an error rate as high as 10 percent, a jaw-dropping figure considering that those analysts’ testimony can send someone to prison. The city expected the results of that investigation could have reopened thousands of cases and subject Detroit to hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Detroit is far from the only jurisdiction to suffer from embarrassing crime lab ineptitude. Scandals have plagued state crime labs in North Carolina, California, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, West Virginia and Mississippi; the city crime labs in Houston, Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Oklahoma City, Washington and San Francisco; the county lab in Nassau County, New York; and even at the FBI and Army crime labs.

What’s going on? Most of these scandals were exposed after DNA testing cleared someone who was convicted based on testimony from crime lab analysts. DNA testing, which is actually grounded in solid science, is showing that forensic analysis isn’t as certain or as scientific as it is often claimed to be. It’s also showing us that forensics is plagued by bias, both intentional and unintentional, and that bias is caused by poorly structured incentives that often reward crime lab workers for helping win convictions, not for sound analysis. The Innocence Project estimates that bad forensic science contributed to about half of wrongful convictions that were later exposed by DNA testing.

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Prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment charging a 64-year-old criminal defense attorney in Washington for his alleged participation in a scheme to fabricate evidence to benefit a client charged in a drug trafficking case.

The attorney, Charles Daum, a solo practitioner in the District, was charged in a seven-count indictment along with two private investigators.

The indictment said Daum was part of a plan to produce evidence to convince jurors that the drugs police seized from a client actually belonged to another person. Daum was charged with, among other crimes, three counts of influencing a juror and two counts of inducing perjury. Click here for a copy of the 16-page indictment.

Daum did not return messages seeking comment at his law office or by e-mail. His lawyer, David Schertler of Washington’s Schertler & Onorato, said in a statement that Daum is “shocked by the allegations made in the indictment and adamantly denies the charges” that government brought against him.

“These charges threaten to chill the important work done by all criminal defense attorneys in our ethical obligation to zealously defend our clients,” Schertler said. “We are anxious for the opportunity to defend Mr. Daum in the same criminal justice system which he has served so long to vindicate both his personal and professional reputation.”

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Why would anyone falsely confess to a crime they didn’t commit? It seems illogical, but according to The Innocence Project, there have been 266 post-conviction DNA exonerations since 1989—25% of which involved a false confession.

A new Iowa State University study may shed light on one reason for those false confessions. In two experiments simulating choices suspects face in police interrogations, undergraduate subjects altered their behavior to confess to illegal activities in order to relieve short-term distress (the proximal consequence) while discounting potential long-term (distal) consequences.

“The thing about these exoneration cases is that they all pertained to heinous crimes; that’s why there was DNA evidence available. And so we wanted to determine why someone may be willing to falsely confess to one of those crimes,” said Stephanie Madon, an ISU associate professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “We thought it might have to do with the pay-off structure of police interrogations. Some interrogation methods—like physical isolation and the presentation of false evidence—have immediate consequences for suspects that encourage them to confess. Though they also face consequences that encourage them to deny guilt—such as the possibility of conviction and incarceration—these consequences are more distal.

“So the suspect is weighing these two consequences at once and that’s going to shape their behavior,” she continued. “That’s what we were interested in understanding. Which of these consequences is going to influence confession decisions—those that are happening right now, or the ones that may happen in the future?”

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MIDWEST CITY — Nine years after a fatal shooting, a Texas private investigator nicknamed “The Rhino” reported to the slain woman’s parents that he had found new evidence.

He told the parents he’d found an unfired .25-caliber bullet last year in the backyard of the crime scene. He told police the same thing.

In a report to the parents, James Leroy Richards promised to have the bullet checked for fingerprints. He wrote he firmly believes the bullet was from “the murder weapon.”

Police allege he is a liar.

Richards, 58, goes professionally by the name Richard Lee James and also is a bounty hunter.

Richards was charged Sept. 9 with a misdemeanor — obstructing an officer in the performance of his official duties.

Oklahoma County prosecutors say they are disappointed they couldn’t charge him with a felony.

Midwest City police still are investigating the death of Nancy Probst.

The partially nude woman was shot in the head inside her house on Nov. 16, 2000. She was 32. Her baby girl, in a nearby crib, was unharmed.

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Much attention has been paid to the highly publicized court arraignment involving former Major League Baseball player Roger Clemens.

Clemens had been indicted by the U.S. Supreme Court for purportedly lying under oath during his 2008 testimonial regarding his alleged involvement with performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens vehemently told members of the Congress that he had not taken any such drugs, despite claims from others – such as ex-teammates and trainers – that he had.

During Clemens’ recent arraignment, he submitted a not guilty plea to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, who then set an April 5, 2011 court date. Between now and then, one of the largest factors in determining Clemens’ fate will be the legal discovery process. During this period, Clemens’ legal team and his prosecutors will go through large quantities of documents in an attempt to find relevant material. Produced evidence will also be shared among the two sides, including a 34-page index and 12 computer disks of data, which the government turned over to Clemens’ legal team on Monday.

“There’s a good deal of scientific evidence to examine,” Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin, told Walton.

According to a recent article on SI.com, “names of relevant witnesses, police reports, transcripts of recorded statements and laboratory results are likely pieces of discovery. Often the defense seeks more information from the prosecution than it is willing to share, and Walton may have to resolve disagreements as to what is sharable. Should Clemens eventually be convicted, his lawyers could challenge the conviction based on discovery decisions made by Walton that were adverse to Clemens.”

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LOS ANGELES — An American filmmaker who went to Nicaragua to make a documentary says he became an undercover operative for a Texas law firm that was suing Dole Foods on behalf of purported banana plantation workers seeking millions in damages.

Jason Glaser testified Thursday that he told none of the people he interviewed in Latin America about his dual role.

He was called to the witness stand by an attorney for six men claiming they were left sterile by pesticide exposure while working on Dole banana plantations from 1970 to 1980.

Dole investigators uncovered evidence that some Nicaraguans had lied, saying they were sterile when they had fathered children and vowing they worked on banana farms when they did not.

A judge is considering whether to overturn a $2.3 million jury verdict.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An attorney for six men who claimed they were left sterile by pesticide exposure while picking bananas for Dole Food Co. argued Thursday that they should get to keep the money despite findings of fraud in a similar case.

Dole investigators uncovered evidence that some Nicaraguans suing the company had lied, but the company deliberately withheld that evidence from the trial that ended in 2007 with jurors awarding $2.3 million to six men, plaintiffs’ attorney Steve Condie argued.

The jurors were unaware that a number of the original plaintiffs had dropped out because their testimony was under suspicion.

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An assassination researcher says Dallas police threw him in jail to stop him from selling materials that suggest President John F. Kennedy’s death was part of a conspiracy. Robert Groden, who helped force Congress to reopen its investigation of the JFK assassination in the 1976, rents a parking space across from the site of the shooting, where he questions the “lone gunman” theory, according to his complaint in Dallas Federal Court.

Groden says police Sgt. Frank Gorka arrested him in the parking lot near Dealey Plaza on June 13, claiming his booth violated Dallas ordinances that prohibit the sale of literature or films on the JFK assassination.

But Groden claims that the ordinances Gorka cited do not apply to his case, and the permits he was ordered to get do not exist.

Groden says he studied materials from the assassination as an expert for the Select Committee on Assassinations for the House of Representatives.

The self-described “leading critic of the Warrant (sic) Commission” says he wrote five books about JFK’s assassination and says he is recognized as “the world’s leading expert on the photographic evidence in the JFK case.”

The Warren Commission report, published in 1964, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots at President Kennedy from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

Though the Select Committee on Assassinations did not identify a second gunman, it found that “President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” according to the National Archives.

Groden says while he was working at his table outside of Dealey Plaza, where he sells books, DVDs and other assassination-related materials, police charged him with a Class C misdemeanor, seized his products and took him into custody for almost 9 hours.

Groden claims that Dallas City Hall and the Parks and Recreation Department told him he met all the requirements to operate his business, but Dallas police continue to deny him access.

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The evidence you’re likely to come across at a crime scene can vary greatly in size, type, and physical structure. No matter what you’re presented with, though, it’s up to you to capture all of the evidence you find and maintain its integrity; if you fail to do so, you may jeopardize your entire case when it goes to court. Let’s take a look at the best way to package the evidence you find at crime scenes.

Maintaining the integrity of the evidence requires that you preserve it in the same condition in which you found it. To accomplish this task, you first have to choose packaging that is the proper size and material to fit the evidence. This is a key point. Don’t try to get by with dropping your evidence into a plastic grocery bag you found at home or whatever container is handy in your car or at the scene, and then expect it to hold up. Various types of evidence need special packaging, so you need to come to the scene prepared with an assortment of evidence envelopes, bags, tubes, and containers. The packaging should also be clean, and preferably new, to avoid contamination.

In addition, each piece of evidence should be packaged separately and then properly labeled, sealed, and documented. These steps are crucial for establishing the chain of custody. As we all know, when a case goes to court, the defense will look for any sign of tampering or poor record keeping to try to get the evidence—and the case—thrown out. So be meticulous with your work, but also be smart. Remember that evidence tape is designed to show if someone has tampered with evidence, so it’s meant to fracture easily. It’s not meant to hold bags shut and boxes together. Your best bet is to use regular packing tape to seal your bags and boxes, and then place the evidence tape over the packing tape. Your evidence will be securely packaged, and you’ll be able to determine if tampering occurs.

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