Crime Labs, Juries and the Future

Although the history of forensic science can be traced to the early part of the 20th Century, the vast majority of government crime labs came into being in the 1960s and 1970s and they’re all having significant difficulties now in making the transition to the technologies of the 1990s and beyond.

The money to support them adequately just isn’t there and government bureaucracy has a mind set which does not encourage change.

My experience is that it’s very easy to start a laboratory and do a very good job of building it up from scratch. Laboratories started to meet certain objectives, normally fulfill those goals. But goals and technologies change with time. And government laboratories, as with many government institutions, have a great deal of difficulty adapting themselves.

What does it take to develop or maintain a first-class crime lab?

The first and most important question is: How much territory do you want to cover?

About 80% to 85% of the work that typically comes into a crime laboratory relates to the analysis of drugs: heroin, cocaine, marijuana and the like. Some laboratories treat this as their sole mission.

The vast majority, however, go beyond to evidence analysis--materials collected at the scenes of crimes--hairs, fibers, paint chips, soil and biological materials, specifically blood and semen stains.

But the skills and equipment needed to analyze DNA is different and a great deal more expensive than that which is needed to analyze fibers.

Diversity of evidence necessitates diversity in equipment and that doesn’t come cheaply. You need sophisticated microscopes for hair analysis, comparison microscopes for ballistics. For DNA, still different but highly specialized tools are needed.

One of the most important things in forensic work is to avoid contamination. Crime laboratories have tremendous expenditures for disposable glassware and other supplies.

The physical plant is a very important consideration. For example, the removal of trace evidence from clothing must be done in an isolated room.

The selection of personnel is also critical. There’s a good deal of analytical diversity required. But most crime labs are government-run and normally part of the civil service system. That often imposes significant restrictions and hampers flexibility in hiring.

Finally, the relationship of the crime to lab to other governmental agencies is an important issue and one of the most difficult to address.

I can speak from 20 years of experience running a major crime laboratory: The problem of civilian control of the scientific endeavors of a crime laboratory is significant. Police agencies are very reluctant to hand over control of any part of their organization to civilians. For the most part, many of them distrust civilians and it takes police agencies with the most liberal outlook to make these very necessary moves.

The days of having police officers as laboratory directors or going to crime scenes as evidence collectors must come to an end.

Today, the functions of the laboratory have become so sophisticated that they require in-depth training in science. From an economic point of view, it’s ludicrous to have a police officer sitting in the laboratory, who should be out on the street.

My understanding is that one of the major recommendations made by the Christopher Commission was to civilianize the LAPD laboratory. From what I hear, the lab is moving in the right direction; a number of positions once held by uniformed personnel have been transformed into civilian positions.

Forensic laboratories aren’t luxuries any more because juries demand the best evidence available.

I pity the poor prosecutor who goes into court with a blood or a semen stain and doesn’t marry the analysis of those items with DNA evidence. Jurors will expect to hear about the best that forensic science has to offer.

Even though they might not understand all the details of it, they’ll understand one thing: When that defense attorney stands up and says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, you know they didn’t even bother to look for DNA.” They’ll understand that.