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.
This is certainly possible, but would be a very iffy way to frame someone. First you have to talk this other person into cooperating while you make a mold of their finger. THen you can use some epoxy based putty to cast the finger. Provided this goes well the pattern should be an exact duplicate, so that's good. Now you have to coat that with something to form a fingerprint. Don't use your own sweat and oils in case we do touch DNA on the print. On CSI they used cooking oil spray, which might work but depending on how long or short it is until the print is processed, it might be too soft and just smear when the tech powders it. Then you have to put this cast finger to a piece or pieces of evidence that you are SURE the crime scene tech will print. This is where it gets tricky. Say you stage a break-in and you put it on the window frame or broken glass. Maybe the frame is too rough to hold a decent print, maybe the tech fingerprints 15 pieces of broken glass and then gives up. Maybe you take great pains to put it on the murder weapon and then a traumatized witness or a clumsy tech smudges the print when they pick it up. Maybe you leave it on a note in the victim's pocket (paper is also very iffy!) and then EMS cuts the shirt off and leaves it in the driveway or throws it out in the ER or it gets soaked in blood. THEN when the tech lifts the print, it needs to look consistent with the 'background' from the item and the manner in which it was gripped. Of course if the rubber flakes off into the print that might get more attention than you want. THEN if we decide to do DNA analysis on the print (which is possible even after it's been processed with powder or superglue) the DNA results might be utterly negative or show animal strains (?) or whatever. Again, that might raise a red flag with an analyst, or they might simply figure that there wasn't enough sample to get a profile. So you MIGHT get away with it. Or you might not.
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I actually haven't done DNA analysis in a lot of years, and that was before STRs (the method mostly used now) but from what I pick up from the analysts, yes, it's not like TV where you wait in the hall for your DNA results. It's a time consuming process and at certain points there's no way to do it quickly. First they have to determine if DNA is present. Then they have to estimate about how much is present, to know if they need to 'amplify' the same or not or how much. Then the actual testing is done. During all this they also need to run positive and negative controls and do other quality control measures. There's also paperwork, lunch breaks and I doubt too many labs operate round the clock. Then of course there's first-in, first-out; your case doesn't get to jump the line, so how long it takes depends on how long that line is. At our state lab it used to be close to a year, but things have gotten much better and now it's more like weeks to months. If we want something more quickly, we can send it to a private lab which can promise us a one-week turnaround--for $1800 PER sample. But even disregarding queues and monetary considerations, even if the lab dropped everything else and worked overtime, it would still take a couple days.
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We had a person borrow money from a kind elderly gentleman, then ask for more and beat him to death when he refused. The person then went home and mailed the victim a check, trying to show that the debt was being paid and there was no ill will. That's what passes for extreme cleverness in my neck of the woods.
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Every part of a fingerprint is unique to the person. Whether the latent print has sufficient information to identify it to a person depends on its clarity and volume and the experience of the examiner. There's usually more activity around the center of the finger pad than at the edges or the tip, for example. But exactly how much of what type of information an examiner needs to make an identification--unfortunately there's no simple answer for that. Fingerprints aren't like DNA, there's no handy table of X allele plus Y allele times population data, so there's no neat way to quantify it. On this topic, my pet peeve: When characters on TV say "It's just a partial." Unless your perpetrator stood at the crime scene and rolled his fingertip over something, from one edge of the nail to the other, then EVERY latent print is a partial!
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I actually do not know that, sorry. I attend autopsies but only to observe, so I don't have anything to do with that--but I can tell you that the organs (except eyes or bones) are all dissected and examined so they would definitely be no longer transplantable. So organ harvesting is done before the autopsy.
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That's a tough one. I've had cops put tools back into pry marks to show that they fit and unload weapons to make them 'safe' (which is an okay idea under certain circumstances, but usually not). I did something really stupid just a few days ago--after we had painstakingly located some spent casings in thick grass, I put a marker down, took a picture, then took the marker and went back to my car to get an envelope for the casings. Doh! Luckily another CSI standing there hadn't taken her eyes off them. A good 15 years ago at my lab an old-school trace evidence person took the shorts from a decomposed body and washed them in order to read the tag info...I remember the look of horror on the cops' faces when I had to tell them that all the hair and fiber and other trace evidence had been washed down the drain. Happily it didn't matter, the victim's boyfriend was convicted anyway.
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I honestly have no idea, and suspect it would depend on where you are applying--whatever the hiring agency's policies are. I'll ask my boss and get back to you.
OKAY! I finally asked my supervisor about this, and unfortunately the news is not too encouraging. If you were found guilty of a felony, you might have a real problem getting a job with a law enforcement agency. But just because the crime was a felony doesn't necessarily mean that was your charge, you could been found guilty of first degree misdemeanor or some lesser charge, and that might not preclude you from employment. Also, smaller agencies might be willing to waive this exclusion especially with military experience. And this is only in the event that you were convicted. If you were simply charged with the crime but not convicted, then most likely it isn't a problem at all. The only way to know for sure is to ask a few of the places you'd be interested in working at and see what they say.
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