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A Strange case of Will West: Turning Point of Personal identification from Anthropology to Fingerprint Analysis

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Photo from the Collection of the National Law Enforcement Museum, Washington, D.C. (1960). At the turn of the 20th century, investigators had tinkered with fingerprinting, but the technique was not widely used. The FBI Investigators relied on the much-trusted Bertillon system, which "measured dozens of features of a criminal's face and body and recorded the series of precise numbers on a large card along with a photograph. That system, which had been used by investigators following its initial implementation in 1882 in Paris, met its match -- so to speak -- when convicted criminal Will West was marched into Leavenworth federal prison in Kansas in 1903. "From the Bertillon measurements thus obtained, [the record keeper] went to the file, and returned with the card the measurements called for, properly filled out...and bearing the name, “William West.” This card was shown to the prisoner, who grinned in amazement, and said, “That’s my picture, but I don’t know wh...
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Cyber CSI: The Challenges Of Digital Forensics

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Forensics is changing in the digital age, and the legal system is still catching up when it comes to properly employing digital evidence. Broadly speaking, digital evidence is information found on a wide range of electronic devices that is useful in court because of its probative value. It’s like the digital equivalent of a fingerprint or a muddy boot. However, digital evidence tendered in court often fails to meet the same high standards expected of more established forensics practices, particularly in ensuring the evidence is what it purports to be. Technology changes evidence This is not the first time that technology has impacted the way evidence is gathered and presented in courts. And it’s not the first time that there have been problems in the way new evidence is used. You might remember the case of the death of  Azaria Chamberlain  at Ayers Rock (Uluru) more than 30 years ago. Forensics played a key role in the conviction of Lindy Chamberlain in 1982. Howev...
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Forensic Ballistics

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For law enforcement personnel, a callout to a crime scene may begin a long and complex series of interlocking investigations into the nature, cause, and persons responsible for  the incident. Specialists known as crime scene investigators  assist law enforcement officers and detectives to uncover the  clues at the scene. Because the United States has more firearms,  and more firearms violence, than any other country, these clues  often involve evidence left behind by firearms.  Firearms have been used for hundreds of years. The world’s  oldest gun was found by archeologists in China. They believe it  was dropped on a battlefield in Manchuria in 1288. By the 1600s,  firearms were becoming essential equipment for the armies of  European nations, and helped pave the way for conquerors who spread out across the globe to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia. By the 1900s, millions of firearms, and the ammunition for them, were ...
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