LIsa Black
Cape Coral, FL
Female, 49
I spent the five happiest years of my life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office I analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now I'm a certified latent print examiner and CSI for a police department in Florida. I also write a series of forensic suspense novels, turning the day job into fiction. My books have been translated into six languages.
Usually simple black powder will show gloveprints as well as fingerprints. The bubbly sort of pattern they make will be visible.
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Yes, I love true crime. I read pretty much the entire section of the downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library while I was a secretary before I got into forensics. The books I write are fiction but I'd love to write true crime.
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At my department I mostly work with fingerprints, analyzing and comparing fingerprints that I collect off pieces of evidence or pick up at crime scenes or ones that the officers submit after they collect them at crime scenes. I will also go to crime scenes, photograph, collect prints, items of evidence, maybe test for blood or collect samples of blood with sterile swabs. There’s also a lot of time spent writing up all this information in our reports and other paperwork. If I worked in DNA or ballistics or toxicology, I would probably spend all day in the lab doing those types of analysis. So it depends on where you work, what services they provide, and what your exact position is. I hope that helps!
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That’s a good question that I’m afraid I can’t answer. I’m sure there is some way to determine the chemicals used in pepper spray. But this would be affected by a) how long does it remain on the skin before the skin absorbs it and b) most forensic chemistry labs are set up to detect illegal drugs in urine, blood or gastric contents. Identifying any kind of poison or other substance may require equipment or reference databases they don’t have.
Proving it’s the same batch of pepper spray may or may not be possible. I”m not personally involved in this kind of testing, but I can assure you it is not like television. We had a series of cases and wanted to determine the exact composition of drugs with percentages of fentanyl, heroin etc. Turned out while nearly every crime lab can determine if a drug is present, there were only one or two labs in the entire country we could find that could determine percentages, and they charged an arm and a leg.
Sorry I can’t be more help.
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My job isn't like TV--I'm not involved in every single aspect of the investigation. My job is to provide forensic support to the detectives, so in any given case I estimate I know perhaps 20% of the overall information relating to the crime. I don't know what witnesses, victims, suspects have said, what financial or phone records might show, etc. etc. The detectives would probably tell me if I asked, but I'm usually too busy with all the other cases to ask.
Who to arrest and who to prosecute is up to the detectives and the prosecutors. They don't ask my opinion, and in light of the first paragraph, I probably couldn't give them an informed one.
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There have been a few cases in which I testified where the defendants were found not guilty, and I was fine with that. In some there simply wasn't sufficient evidence, in one it was clearly self-defense, in two the defendants were charged with murder and I figured it should have been manslaughter. But that's why we have a jury system, and they did a good job.
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Yes.
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