Elon Law School students dusted for fingerprints and tested for invisible blood Tuesday, May 1, as they learned about the various techniques used by crime scene investigators . Details...
The event, dubbed “CSI Greensboro,” was held at the law school, located
in the Weaver building in downtown Greensboro. Events included a mock
crime scene and presentations by experts in the fields of fingerprint
detection, blood detection and spatter and general crime scene
investigation. Professor Steve Friedland arranged the seminar for
students in his Criminal Law class.
“We’re merging the classroom with the real world,” says Friedland, a
former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of teaching
experience. “These students are learning how each of these
investigative techniques work and they’re learning how to ask the right
questions of these experts in the courtroom.”
Four breakout sessions introduced students to techniques used by
experts to decipher events at crime scenes. Former N.C. Bureau of
Investigation (NCBI) special agent Lili Johnson spent 15 years
gathering fingerprint evidence at crime scenes before being named
associate dean of the American Academy of Applied Forensics at Central
Carolina Community College in Charlotte. “Fingerprints are the primary
way of telling who was there,” said Johnson. “Prints are either on
things or in things,” Johnson said. Silk powder is used to find prints
on hard surfaces such as desktops and hardwood floors, while magnetic
powder locates prints in porous objects such as paper or styrofoam cups.
Frank Keegan, Binford Professor in the forensics program at Guilford
College, showed students how to use chemical testing to confirm the
presence of blood at a crime scene. Students then tried it for
themselves, using the Kastle-Meyer (KM) test to analyze objects for
blood. The KM test uses phenolphthalein, a colorless molecule that
turns pink in the presence of hemoglobin, which is abundant in human blood.
The morning ended with a presentation by Duane Deaver, special agent
with the NCBI. Deaver, who also led a breakout session on blood spatter
investigation, was the agent in charge of the Michael Peterson murder
case in Durham in 2001. Peterson was convicted of killing his wife,
Kathleen, at their home after a trial in which his attorneys tried to
call into question the reliability of evidence gathered at the crime
scene.
“Crime scenes are like everything else in life,” said Deaver. “They are
not perfect, and they don’t have to be.” In the hours after the murder,
Durham police allowed neighbors and Peterson family members to come and
go from the home, compromising blood evidence on the front porch and
front hallway. “This was North Carolina’s equivalent to the O.J. trial
in every way,” Deaver said. “The defense method was to attack the
witnesses and to attack the crime scene.”
Deaver focused his investigation on a staircase where Peterson’s wife
allegedly fell to her death. Blood evidence there had not been
disturbed in the hours after the crime, and blood spatter tests
eventually led Deaver to conclude that Kathleen Peterson had been
beaten on the staircase, rather than falling down it.
“We take into account every possibility,” said Deaver, who suspected foul play because the amount of blood at the crime scene
was inconsistent with someone falling down stairs. “Just because
I haven’t seen it before doesn’t mean it can’t happen.” Blood spatter
evidence on the staircase walls and on Michael Peterson’s clothing
convinced Deaver a murder had been committed.
“Crime scenes are evolutionary,” Deaver told students, advising them to
use common sense and follow cases where the evidence leads them. “There
are points in an investigation where a piece of evidence that once
didn’t matter suddenly becomes relevant.”