Latent print documentation on scenes

[jas]

Hi all. My new boss wants us to "document" latent prints on scenes by placing lifting tape over the developed print, stepping back and taking a photograph of all the tape pieces, say on a car door, and then lifting the tape. There is no requirement for taking a complete series of photographs (orientation, relationship, identification, comparison) for each developed print before or after placing the lifting tape. Everything I have learned regarding the lifting of latent prints screams to me that this is wrong. Does anyone else do this?

[sharon cook]

[Gerald Clough]

I have done that, although it wasn't required. My logic was that, if I wanted to show the precise location where a print was developed, it was difficult to do in a diagram without taking a lot of measurements. I could show orientation in a diagram, but a photograph prior to lifting pretty well settled where the impression was found and its relationships with other impressions nearby. With the overall diagram showing which numbered lifts were which in the photo and the detailed diagram for each lift showing orientation, there wasn't much I hadn't recorded about just where and how an impression was found. I was pretty much my own boss in such situations, but I might well make it a rule if I had a number of other people working. I was also under almost no time pressure to get done with a scene, since it was my scene all around, start to finish, and it would be my investigative case until it closed.

Now, when it was my own judgment, I would not likely go through the contortions necessary to photograph the tape in place on, for instance, the inside of a refrigerator door handle. But I fully understand a supervisor wanting it done. It's not quite that you don't trust your people. It's just that you're not sure they would do it the way you would do it, meaning, of course, the right way.

[Neville]

I agree with you Gerald, I photograph my numbered lifting tape on the print, its common practice here in NZ. I can't see it costs much at all, we just print to the BW laser on photocopy paper and it gets sent in with the lifts, it is very rare that I draw anything (if you saw my drawings you would understand). If it goes to court I would print to a high quality printer if I thought that it was necessary. I have been photographing my lifts since the 1980s, I don't understand the concern. Makes great evidence when you get to court. I think it is easy enough to explain why a lift is not identifiable after it is lifted if that is the case. If I think it will not lift to well I also photograph the developed print before I place the tape on it, often is the case the photo is much better than the lift.

Go for it , it is much quicker that drawing diagrams, you know the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Why wouldn't you want to?

[jas]

Thanks for everyones input. It is not such an issue of time, (and my drawings are not always the best either!) but more a concern of if you are not taking a photo of what is actually underneath the tape does that later become suspect? i.e, how do I know that is the same piece of tape in the photo? If there is just one photo of six pieces of tape, and then there are six lifts in evidence, can the defense argue if they are the same six pieces of tape in the photo?

[L.J.Steele]

Defense counsel can make all sorts of arguments -- your testimony will be establishing what the photograph shows. Problems, if any, likely go to weight not admissibility. Keep a set of notes somewhere so you can recall a year or more down the road what you photographed and why. Memory is a funny thing, especially given the usual demands of case work and delays between investigation and trial. (Pictures also may be very helpful if you are trying to support a theory of simultaneous impressions so the relationship between the prints is clear.) If the print is on a moveable item, like an envelope, you may want to document its presence at the crime scene.

A rationale from the defense PoV for complaining about failure to document the print in place is concerns about fabrication -- I've had a couple of cases where I have some suspicions about the prints precisely because no such pictures were taken. In one case, a defense expert was able to allay my concerns because the pressure distortions and foreign materials caught in the tape were consisent with the purported location of the print. In the other case, I've still got my doubts -- print was recovered in an unusual orientation on a plain white envelope allegedly found at the crime scene, but there's no photos or documentation that this specific envelope came from that scene. Defense expert agreed that the print was the defendant's but the orientation seemed odd given the victim's statement about how the envelope was handled by the burglar. Lack of a photo of the latent in place or the item at the scene for small objects for me is a yellow-flag to check the documentation further and think about possiblity of fabrication.

[Neville]

Hi Jas

There you have it from a solicitor.

Lets face it can be argued that for instance this photo of the latent is not from the door from the actual car broken into or what ever it may be; that the court may believe you or they may not. Even if you drove the car into the court with the fingerprint undeveloped so that you can show them how you do your job from a to z, they may chose to think you are a liar. You then may be accused of putting the impression there yourself from files held at the police station. The point is at some stage they will either reject or accept your evidence. Just make sure there are no black holes.

Ms Steel has spelt it out very clearly what they (the enemy) are after; your boss has spelt out what he wants so I guess you need to fill in the dots. You could photograph before you put the tape on also. If it means at court you have less hassles or less attendances it's all worth while.

I have often been told 'well they have to believe you at some stage', which is true and removing all doubt is obviously impossible, but if you are open in the way you produce your evidence there will be less flags being raised.

[Gerald Clough]

When the identification is not questioned (and it rarely is), sometimes what the defense counsel is looking for is something that must be answered, "I don't know." Most of the time, "I don't know" has little effect. Sometimes, it helps build doubt about some issue (like the actual presence of the envelope above) or an implication that you were slack, implying that if you weren't generally slack, you'd know the answer. There's always something to which you have to admit you don't know. Detective get probed to that end more than examiners. You get practiced in saying, "I don't know." with just the right tone and inflection that suggests it was rather silly to ask and sets the prosecutor up to explore with you why it's pointless, which often makes it look like desperate nit-picking.

The problem is that, when you're working a scene, you don't yet know what might become an issue. That's why we have crime scene protocols and often more elaborate protocols for major crimes where the stakes at trial will be higher. Implying fabrication rarely gets anywhere. Implying missing information is often more effective. A great deal of what's done, both in forensics and investigation, is to the end of lending confidence to basic information that's not directly produced by the more rigorous procedures. It makes a showing that the work was methodical and that a good effort was being made to find whatever was there, just simple faith in the investigation.

As to lifts, really the test is whether you could, from your documentation, go back to the scene or the object and lay the lift on the surface in the same spot and in the same orientation as it was. If even a crude or schematic drawing of an object with a rectangle showing the lift and an up arrow on the lift to show orientation will do it. Put that with the proper scene photographs, and you could nail that impression down in three dimensions in the scene years from now, or it could be done when you're long gone by anyone else.

Of course, you have to carefully review your product prior to testimony. Nothing warms a defense attorney's heart more than when your own documentation reveals your own misstatements made from plain old distortions of memory.

[L.J.Steele]

Implying fabrication rarely gets anywhere. Implying missing information is often more effective.

* * *
Of course, you have to carefully review your product prior to testimony. Nothing warms a defense attorney's heart more than when your own documentation reveals your own misstatements made from plain old distortions of memory.

Implying fabrication without something to back it up isn't very effective, agreed. As I said, a yellow-flag, that would tend to lead me to want a defense expert to look at the material with, among other things, fabrication in mind. Without an expert's back-up of at least -- looks odd -- then it may not be going far at trial.

As to memory -- it happens to us too. I just filed a reply brief in a case dealing with potential ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Trial counsel he hadn't asked for or read the transcripts of the trial some 10 years earlier. He later testified movingly about what he thought was the key turning point in the case when he thought "Crap, I'm doomed." I hadn't mentioned it in my brief. State made a big point of it to say that even if I won the point I was arguing, the attorney's error was harmless due to this other turning point. Funny thing, when I looked at the transcript to find that point -- it didn't happen the way the trial attorney recalled it. (State apparently didn't check the underlying transcript.) And there's nothing in the trial that happened in the way the attorney described this key point. So that's now in the reply brief -- makes the trial attorney look bad, and helps make my underlying point about eyewitness memory and the attorney's failure to do the research to challenge the eyewitness.

You want to take enough notes so that you can recall a few years down the line whatever it was you did and saw -- and then read over those notes before trial. Defense isn't likely to pounce on innocent mistakes, but those mistakes can add up to make you look less professional and undermine your own confidence.

[jas]

Thanks for all the input. Just to set the record straight, I do mark and photograph the position of the prints on the crime scene prior to lifitng and create an accompanying diagram, that was never my question. I grew concerned about placing the tape first and then photographing. It seems backward in my mind, sort of like photographing other evidence items after placing them in a container rather than before.

[Gerald Clough]

I understand your feeling. Of course, everything should be photographed before it's touched or manipulated and before any scene markers are placed. That's just basic crime scene.

[sandra wiese]

To add just a little clarification on how this might be accomplished:

I do not mark/photo every scene print, but there are circumstances where it is absolutely warranted to show position relative to an object, etc. One case comes to mind was a suspect chasing the victim around a car several times before bad guy beat less bad guy to a pulp. Prints and blood everywhere, but due to conflicting witness accounts, documenting the scene (vehicle exterior) was crucial. I had blood spatter and prints and actually also had BEER spatter (um, I mean: a substance consistent in color and odor with a brewed malt beverage). In any case, at this and other "mondo amounts of prints" type scenes, I would put one of those inch x inch sized numbers or letters (available at most fine forensic supply houses for very cheap) near the latent or latents, making sure first to examine how I would be laying the tape to recover that print only and not the other prints, etc. Then I photo'd the prints with the numbers/letters. THEN put down the tape and then lift. The advantage is that the numbers/letters are paper, so would come up with the tape when they were lifted (leaving the sticky back on the object, of course, but that comes off easily enough). Wish I had a pic to post to show, but I'm in a lab rat position at another agency now and so don't have access to my own old scene pics. But this worked great, especially if you have a clear glass door and prints on both sides (i.e.: bank robbery). The numbers are black on white, so show up great in photos, even from your overall shots.
(And only since I can see this response already: Yes, of course you dust the WHOLE ENTIRE AREA first. But then again you should always do this regardless of if you are numbering or photographing your latents. Though oddly enough, I've seen many a CSI-type dust-lift, dust-lift, dust-lift. I don't think they get it.)