PSYC 162 Study Guide - Summer 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Federal Government Of The United States, Dna Profiling, Receiver Operating Characteristic
PSYC 162
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Week 7
6. Jury Selection
13. Judges and Juries as Decision-Makers
Forensic Identification
- Fingerprint evidence
- Bite-mark analysis (forensic odontology)
- Bloodstain pattern analysis
- Microscopic hair comparison
- Analysis of fiber evidence
- Analysis of fire debris (arson detection)
- Handwriting analysis
- Firearms/ballistics analysis
- DNA evidence
National Academy of Sciences
- The NAS is a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars that was established by an Act
of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863
- Charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science
and technology
- A 2009 report (Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward) called
into question most of these forms of forensic evidence (excluding DNA evidence)
FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades
- Microscopic hair comparisons cannot uniquely identify one person. We do not know the
proportion of people in the general population who have the same hair characteristicss.
Latent Print Analysis
- Latent = “left behind”
Fingerprint History
- 1880: Dr Henry Faulds published the first paper on the subject in the journal Nature. Returning to
the UK in 1886, he offered the concept to the Metropolitan Police in London but it was dismissed
- 1880: The following month Sir William James Herschel, a British civil servant based in India,
wrote to Nature saying that he had been using fingerprints for identification purposes (e.g.,
putting fingerprints on contracts) since 1860. However, Herschel did not mention their potential
for forensic use.
- 1892: Sir Francis Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and
identification and encouraged its use in forensic science in his book Finger Prints
- 1892: Juan Vucetich, an Argentine police officer who had been studying Galton pattern types for
a year, made the first criminal fingerprint identification. He successfully proved Francisca Rojas
guilty of murder after showing that the bloody fingerprint found at the crime scene was hers, and
could only be hers
The Case of Francisca Rojas
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- In 1892, two boys were brutally murdered near Buenos Aires, Argentina. Initially, suspicion fell
on a man named Velasquez, a suitor of the children's mother, Francisca Rojas. But even after
torture, the police could not get him to confess
- Investigators found a bloody fingerprint at the crime scene and contacted Juan Vucetich, who was
developing a system of fingerprint identification for police use. Vucetich compared the
fingerprints of Rojas and Velasquez with the bloody fingerprint. Francisca Rojas had denied
touching the bloody bodies, but the fingerprint matched one of hers
- Confronted with the evidence, she confessed—the first successful use of fingerprint identification
in a murder investigation. Adopted by the province of Buenos Aires in 1903, it spread rapidly
throughout the Spanish-speaking world
Juan Vucetich’s Early Fingerprints
- In 1892, two boys were brutally murdered in the village of Necochea, near Buenos Aires,
Argentina. Initially, suspicion fell on a man named Velasquez, a suitor of the children's mother,
Francisca Rojas. But even after torture, the police could not get him to confess.
- Investigators found a bloody fingerprint at the crime scene and contacted Juan Vucetich, who was
developing a system of fingerprint identification for police use. Vucetich compared the
fingerprints of Rojas and Velasquez with the bloody fingerprint. Francisca Rojas had denied
touching the bloody bodies, but the fingerprint matched one of hers.
- Confronted with the evidence, she confessed—the first successful use of fingerprint identification
in a murder investigation. After the Rojas case, Vucetich improved his fingerprint system, which
he called "comparative dactyloscopy." Adopted by the province of Buenos Aires in 1903, it
spread rapidly throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
The Uniqueness of a Pattern Match
- A common question: In a pattern-matching analysis, is the pattern in question (e.g., fingerprint)
unique to one individual on the planet in the same way that DNA is?
- A better question: Is the pattern in question sufficiently distinctive to be useful in a criminal
investigation for identification purposes?
- Let’s start by asking that question with regard to fingerprints
Crime Scene Technicians (not Forensic Psychologists) Locate Prints
- This technician is using powder to develop latent prints
Fingerprints
- Your fingerprint pattern is thought to be distinctive (unique?) and does not change over the
course of your life
Your Textbook on Fingerprint Evidence
- “The use of forensic science in the criminal justice system rests on the claim that prints found at
the crime scene can be examined to reveal the identity of a criminal.”
- “After more than a century of use in the courtroom, and after tens of thousands of defendants
have been convicted based on fingerprint evidence, the research in support of this claim is
exceedingly weak.”
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
