Crime Scene Training

Forensic Science and Art World Mysteries

The Case Of The Purported Pollock And The Polar Bear Hair

By Roxanne Palmer on November 26 2013

The estate of Ruth Kligman, mistress of artist Jackson Pollock (left), has long tried to authenticate what Kligman maintained was his last painting, "Red, Black & Silver" (right, on cover of Kligman's memoir). L: Reuters; R: Cooper Square Press

It sounds like the set-up for a cracking good mystery novel: a love affair, a long-lost painting, and a telltale polar bear hair. It’s also a real-world story of a simmering struggle between old and new guards in the art world, with expert authenticators chafing at the intrusions of forensic science into their rarefied domain. 

At the center of this story is “Red, Black & Silver,” a small, unsigned painting that was supposedly that last work of famed American artist Jackson Pollock – known mostly for his characteristic drip paintings. The painting’s longtime owner was artist Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s mistress, who said the artist made it for her only weeks before he died in a car crash. But an official authentication board set up by Pollock’s widow, artist Lee Krasner, has rejected the attribution, saying that “Red, Black & Silver” does not look like one of Pollock’s works. 

“I don’t think there’s a Pollock expert in the world that would look at that painting and agree it was a Pollock,” Francis O’Connor, a former Pollock authenticator said at a symposium this month, according to the New York Times. 

“Red, Black & Silver” was in Kligman’s hands until she died in 2010. It was slated to go on the auction block in 2012 but was removed shortly before the hammer fell so that Kligman’s estate could keep researching the painting’s authenticity. Certifying the painting as an official Pollock would likely inflate the painting’s value at auction to well above seven figures. 

New Fiber Forensic Technique Shows Promise

Enter Nicholas Petraco, the former New York City detective hired by Kligman’s estate to scrutinize the painting with the same rigor he used to bring to crime scenes. 

Forensic science is not always incontrovertible evidence, but it can build a very strong case for authenticating a masterwork or identifying a fake. An examiner can test the materials of the work – from paint pigments, to the canvas or wood it was painted on – to make sure that the age of the materials matches up with the supposed date of the work.

Analysts can look for traces of old paint pigments that are no longer used (either because they were toxic, like White Lead, or made from ground-up mummified corpses – cat and human – like Mummy Brown). They can also use infrared light to look at the lower layers of the painting, down to the initial charcoal sketch. Physicists at the University of Notre Dame have also rigged up a way to blast artworks with ion beams (harmlessly) to hunt for molecular clues. 

In the case of “Red, Black & Silver,” Petraco concentrated not on the paint but on the contextual evidence trapped beneath the surface: dust, fibers, hairs, and other things that might make a trail leading back to Pollock. A big break came when Petraco found a polar bear hair in the painting – not something that would turn up just anywhere. And it just so happens that Pollock’s East Hampton house had a polar bear-skin rug on the living room floor. 

Other clues reinforced the story. Seeds and sand trapped in the paint matched similar grains in Pollock's house, and Petraco also matched human hair and fibers from the painting to materials found in Pollock's shoes. 

Case closed? Not necessarily. O’Connor, the art expert, told the Times that while the painting might have been made at Pollock’s house, that doesn’t mean for certain that Pollock’s hand held the brush. 

This also isn’t the first purported Pollock painting of questionable provenance. A former truck driver named Teri Horton bought a painting for $5 in a San Bernadino, Calif., thrift shop, only to hear from a local art teacher that it might be a Jackson Pollock. 

“And that's when I said, 'Who the f--- is Jackson Pollock?'” Horton told CBS. 

A documentary film crew showed Horton’s painting to several experts in the art world, including the late Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hoving’s gut feeling was that the work was too “neat” and “compacted” to be a real Pollock. 

But Horton’s forensic claim may be even stronger than Kligman’s. A forensic art expert, Paul Biro, compared a fingerprint on the back of Horton’s painting to a fingerprint on a can of blue paint in Pollock’s Long Island art studio, and another fingerprint on a verified Pollock painting hanging in the Tate Modern museum in London. They matched up. But suspicions remain -- Hoving himself wrote about some investigations that suggest the Pollock fingerprint from the paint can had been transferred to other paintings after the fact. 

"I figured that the $5 picture was not a fake but a decorator’s piece," Hoving wrote. "You know, 'Gimme some big abstract -- like Pollock -- but make it with the colors of my new living room.' There are dozens [of those] around."

Biological Evidence Collection Manual

Across the nation, headlines tell the story of evidence that has been mishandled, misplaced, lost, or destroyed. Often the blame for these mishaps is directed toward property and evidence custodians housed in law enforcement agencies nationwide. Many law enforcement agencies do not properly address, recognize, or support the efforts of their property rooms. Although these agencies bear ultimate responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the evidence, the real problem lies with a systemic failure to properly account for evidence from collection through final disposition. This failure reduces the public’s confidence in the criminal justice system to produce just results in criminal and civil proceedings.

Biological evidence refers to samples of biological material—such as hair, tissue, bones, teeth, blood, semen, or other bodily fluids—or to evidence items containing biological material (DNA Initiative 2012). This biological evidence, which may or may not have been previously analyzed at a forensic laboratory, should be retained in an appropriate storage facility until needed for court or for forensic testing. Such evidence is frequently essential in linking someone to or excluding someone from crime scene evidence. The criminal justice system depends on presenting evidence to judges and jurors to help them reach a conclusion about the guilt or innocence of the defendant.

Please use the link below to download your copy (You will need Adobe Reader to view this manual):

Biological Evidence Collection Manual 

 

High Risk Stops: Officer Survival Tip of the Week

Watch listen and learn as Lt. Dave Smith (Ret - the infamous JD Buck Savage) discusses high risk traffic stops and some concerns they all carry. (Officer.com)

Watch High Risk Stops Video HERE

 

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Social Media and Law Enforcement

Potential Risks

By Gwendolyn Waters, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin

Law enforcement always has been a dangerous profession because officers risk their lives to form a barrier between criminals and society.

In the past, police could to some extent protect themselves and their loved ones from threats. Today these risks have changed. The power of the Internet—social media in particular—has brought danger home to officers and their families. They cannot shield themselves as easily from the repercussions of their jobs defending the community.

The Internet has been available for widespread public use since the early 1990s.¹ In its two decades of existence, the Web has become an integral part of everyday life. It is difficult to recall how society functioned without it. Compared with the lifespan of the Internet, social media, which began to evolve in 2003, remains in its infancy. Users add their own content to any social media site that allows it.²Webpages, such as Facebook and Wikipedia, are not static; individuals continually modify them by adding commentary, photos, and videos. The web no longer is a fixed object for passive observation. It has become a dynamic venue for proactive—often passionate—interaction. The growth, power, and influence of social media have proven phenomenal as evidenced by the decline of traditional newspapers and the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.³

Law enforcement agencies recognize the influence of social media. Many departments are drafting and adopting policies addressing the use of networking engines.⁴ In many cases, however, these plans miss a crucial part of the issue. While departments are concerned with minimizing the negative impact that speech not protected by the First Amendment may have on the department’s interests, they sometimes may neglect their responsibility to protect their employees.

Characteristics

Information obtained from public records (e.g., birth, death, and real estate) has been available online for years. By increasing exposure of personal information, social media has raised the threat level. This new entity has a unique nature that makes it powerful and unpredictable. Several characteristics combine to make it especially threatening to law enforcement. 

The structure of social media encourages self-promotion.⁵ It offers easy access to an unlimited pool of potential “friends.”⁶ Individuals who crave validation can achieve a feeling of connection not available in their offline lives. People who have a desire for attention, notoriety, or fame are attracted to it. To get noticed, they often post entertaining or provocative information.

Constraints do not exist for social media. Anyone can post anything online with little fear of repercussion. The anonymous online environment can encourage inflammatory and shocking behavior. Individuals sometimes create screen names or new identities that allow them to act outside their normal inhibitions and sometimes participate in caustic and less ethical activities they otherwise would avoid. Anonymity hampers efforts to control these actions.⁷

Pooling of like minds often occurs online. This bolsters confidence and gives the impression of support for socially unacceptable conduct. Copycat behavior can make the first well-publicized transgression the impetus for many more. Social media can engender a mob mentality wherein one small stimulus spurs a wide-scale reaction that feeds on itself and grows out of control.⁸ Incidents develop faster, reach farther, and spread more rapidly than anything society has dealt with before.

In the past, simple things, such as post office boxes and license plate confidentiality, provided protections. These are ineffective today. Instant access to private information makes it easier for an individual to learn personal facts about an officer. This also eliminates any “cooling off” period during which individuals might reconsider their retaliatory actions. Outraged offenders easily could get to officers’ doorsteps before their patrol shifts end, leaving them unable to defend their homes or families. The combination of these factors—narcissism, anonymity, lack of restraint, copycat behavior, crowd mentality, and lack of a cooling off period—makes social media a uniquely significant force that constantly seeks a point of focus.

Focal Point

Characteristics intrinsic to law enforcement make it a natural focal point for this trend. In this public profession, officers’ duties occur in a societal arena allotting them no privacy. Social media significantly has increased officers’ community exposure. Police often are surrounded by cameras and amateur reporters who broadcast every action and their opinion of it to a worldwide audience. Due to its public nature, policing is an easy topic for network discussion.

To the community, law enforcement can be fascinating and contentious. It involves drama, intrigue, and excitement that society finds captivating. The number of crime dramas on television and in theaters validates this. Additionally, the police officer’s role often is ambiguous to the public. Wrongdoers do not appreciate officers and may resent them. Police can represent controversial figures to some people.

Anyone can  post anything online with little fear of repercussion.

Conflict with criminals is inherent to law enforcement. On a regular basis, police officers face lawless individuals. With increased exposure of personal information through social media, preventing these antagonists from crossing the line that separates officers’ professional and personal lives is difficult. Prevention relies on self-restraint or respect for the law, neither of which are strengths of criminals.

Impact

The nature of social media and law enforcement makes their relationship particularly volatile. Few significant issues have been noted; however, the potential exists for police to be impacted by attacks on their credibility or through “cop baiting.”⁹

Personal credibility is essential for law enforcement. Through social media, people easily can attack a police officer’s character. If an officer’s integrity is compromised, courtroom testimony and investigations are at risk. Law enforcement officers can find their honor under serious attack online at any time. Even erroneous information can reach a significant audience, to include potential jurors and internal affairs investigators, possibly causing irreparable damage to officers’ reputations.

Cases have occurred where comments posted online by officers have led to disciplinary actions. These behaviors have been the key focus of social media policies currently in place. Postings by the public—over which departments have no control—can be more damaging. Regardless of their level of truth, negative comments create lasting impressions.

Empowered by social media, cop baiting presents a crisis for law enforcement. Questionable videos of police officers are popular on sites, such as YouTube, and can be financially rewarding to malefactors who file claims or lawsuits. For some individuals, a citation or jail time is worthwhile if a cash payoff results. Cop baiting could become so common that officers may not know whether they are facing a situation that is legitimate, staged, or exaggerated for someone else’s benefit. This puts officers’ personal and professional well-being at stake.

Threat

Considerable problems can occur, with the greatest danger being the personal threat to officers and their families. Because of social media, law enforcement officers are public figures more so than ever before. Barriers between their professional and personal lives have been diminished. Police may have no expectations that their homes and families will be protected from the dangers they face on the job.

Motivated individuals could destroy a law enforcement officer’s sense of security without breaking any laws. With cell phone Internet access and a police officer’s name, an antagonistic traffic violator could have a satellite image of the officer’s home displayed on the phone by the time the officer returns to issue the citation. While this is not a violation of law, it certainly would send an intimidating message to the officer. A note could be left on the front door, or a photo of a child could be posted on a social networking site with a seemingly innocuous comment, such as, “Isn’t officer so-and-so’s daughter cute?”

 

Management

To protect their people, agencies can implement internal management mechanisms to lessen this potential threat. To provide the most effective protection, departments should designate a social media manager to handle specific core functions.

Ongoing training on current issues, the hazards of social media, and self-protection is essential. Due to the web’s rapidly changing environment, one-time training is not sufficient. Individuals alone cannot keep up with social networking’s constant evolution. A dedicated manager must ensure personnel are updated through e-mails, memoranda, briefings, and trainings.

The social media manager must facilitate the elimination of employees’ personal data from social networking sites and guarantee consistency for all personnel. Most of these websites will remove information if petitioned to do so. Each has its own procedures for making that request. These sites must be monitored to ensure the files do not reappear.

Internet and social media alerts provide e-mail notification any time a specified word is mentioned or searched online. Many search engines offer these services free of charge. Personnel alerts could be directed to private e-mail accounts to avoid conflict with employee unions over privacy of off-duty activities. The social media manager would monitor agency alerts.

Many businesses have realized that paying attention to social media conversations can provide a wealth of information on consumer trends and product strengths and weaknesses. Law enforcement agencies could benefit from listening for commentary about the department and its programs and personnel. This would allow them to capitalize on their strengths and to identify and mitigate negative images or potential dangers. Providing the most effective protection against an impending attack requires identifying the risk early and strategizing a defense. Consistent monitoring of networking sites would provide an early warning system against any threats being developed or discussed online.

Monitoring trends and incidents that might precipitate copycat behavior is crucial. Attention must be paid to these activities because one quickly could precipitate others. Social media issues develop rapidly and spread extensively. The best defense against a threat is to recognize it early and identify ways to bolster the agency’s defenses against it.

Agencies serve their best interests by protecting officers from dangers easily propagated through social media. Departments are impacted by claims or lawsuits, compromised officer credibility, damaged department image, and relocation expenses associated with plausible personal threats. Social networks present risks that law enforcement agencies must acknowledge. Hoping that large-scale impacts will not occur does not lessen the costs when they do; proactively addressing the possibility will.

Departments should initiate programs to foster awareness, education, and diligent management of employees’ online exposure. These actions may not protect officers and agencies from the hazards social media presents, but they will minimize exposure and provide the greatest level of defense currently available.

Conclusion

It can be more cost effective to develop solutions after problems occur, rather than taking preventive actions that might not prove necessary. The concern with this approach is that the relationship between the police and social media is volatile. Social networks generate momentum, and law enforcement agencies provide a stimulus for that energy. Departments must take responsibility for protection from this threat before they become blindsided by a sudden viral attack on their officers.

End Notes

¹ Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff, “Brief History of the Internet,” Internet Society, December 2003, http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml (accessed September 10, 2012).

² Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media,” Business Horizons 53, no. 1 (2010): 59-68.

³ Kaplan and Haenlein, 59-68; and “State of the News Media 2010 Executive Summary,” The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism,http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/chapter%20pdfs/ 2010_execsummary.pdf (accessed September 10, 2012); Jon Katz, “Online or Not, Newspapers Suck,” Wired Magazine 2.09 (1994),http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09news.suck.html (accessed September 10, 2012); Erik Qualman,Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2009); and Michael Cornfield, “Yes, It Did Make a Difference,” Taking Note, (2008),http://takingnote.tcf.org/2008/06/yes-it-did-make.html (accessed September 10, 2012).

⁴ Information and assistance on policy development can be found on the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Center for Social Media website at http:www.IACPsocialmedia.org/
gettingstarted/policydevelopment (accessed September 10, 2012).

⁵ Christine Rosen, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism,” The New Atlantis no. 17 (Summer 2007): 15-31.

⁶ “Friends” on social networking sites include contacts whose profiles persons link to in their own profiles. On some sites, people have to accept the link; in others, they do not.

⁷ Deborah G. Johnson, “Ethics Online,” Communications of the ACM 40, no. 1 (January 1997): 60-65; and Julie Zhuo, “Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt,” The New York Times, November 29, 2010,http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/opinion/30zhuo.html (accessed September 10, 2012).

⁸ Christian Russ, “Online Crowds—Extraordinary Mass Behavior on the Internet,” http://i-know.tugraz.at/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/8_online-crowds.pdf (accessed September 10, 2012).

⁹ Cop baiting is when individuals intentionally create confrontational situations with officers to exploit them for personal or political motives.

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Undetectable Guns a Law Enforcement Challenge

WASHINGTON November 14, 2013 (AP)

By PETE YOST Associated Press

 Associated Press

With a law banning undetectable firearms about to expire, federal agents are focusing attention on the latest twist in high-tech weaponry: guns made entirely out of plastic. 

3-D industrial printers that can create plastic models and prototypes now can make guns that can't be picked up by metal detectors. 

A longtime ban on undetectable firearms is scheduled to expire Dec. 9 and two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Bill Nelson of Florida, have called for a ban on plastic guns. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., also has introduced legislation on the issue. 

"The expiration of this law, combined with advances in 3-D printing, make what was once a hypothetical threat into a terrifying reality," said Schumer. "We are actively exploring all options to pass legislation that will eliminate the problem." 

In a meeting with reporters Wednesday, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said plastic guns present a special challenge for law enforcement agencies. 

The agents said that in order to comply with current law, a person manufacturing a gun must use a certain amount of metal in the finished product so that the firearm is detectable by scanners at airports, federal buildings, sporting events — any place where security screening is in place. If the law expires, someone could legally make and sell firearms that are undetectable. 

A loophole in the existing law allows someone to make an illegal gun legal by simply attaching a removable metal piece to the weapon. That piece could be removed if someone wanted to sneak the weapon into a protected location. 

Israel's legislation would require certain major components of a gun be made of metal. 

ATF spokesman Christopher Amon said that the agency does not comment on specific legislation, but provides technical advice and assistance to members of Congress and their staff on a variety of firearms-related issues. 

The Justice Department has not weighed in on the issue.

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Jack The Ripper Mystery Solved?

The Huffington Post  |  By Meredith Bennett-Smith

Cold Case Investigation Implicates German Sailor Carl Feigenbaum. For just over 125 years, the mystery of the Jack the Ripper serial murders has been fodder for books, movies and periodic re-openings of the unsolved cases.

But after years of investigation, a retired detective is confident he has finally found the culprit behind some, if not all, of the killings attributed to the infamous "Jack."

Past attempts to identify the man who supposedly terrorized London in the late 19th century have implicated artist Vincent Van Gogh, Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll and even relatives of Queen Victoria. But retired homicide detective Trevor Marriott says that after 11 years of investigation, he believes German merchant sailor Carl Feigenbaum committed an unknown number of the murders.

Marriott, who hails from Bedfordshire, England, told British site Express that he came to his conclusion via old-school document analysis and high-tech forensic science. He also said he found that Hollywood and myth have "distorted" many facts of the case over the years.

What does appear to be true is that between Aug. 31, 1888, and Nov. 9, 1888, five women -- Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly -- were stabbed to death within one-fourth of a mile from each other in the Whitechapel neighborhood of London, reports CBS News. Some accounts claim the victims were disemboweled post-mortem; most assume a number of the victims were prostitutes and were all killed by the same man.

The former policeman's quest to uncover the truth has not always been an easy one. He took Scotland Yard to court in 2011 in a costly effort to force the agency to hand over thousands of pages of notes and tips from informants, reports The Telegraph.

By that time, Marriott had begun to zero in on Feigenbaum, a sailor whose ships often docked near the neighborhood where many of the unsolved murders occurred, according to Express.

New documents seem to disprove the theory that the victims had their organs cut out by their killer, a key aspect of the murders that had steered previous investigations toward suspects with medical knowledge, reported the BBC. Gaps of time between the murders suggested to Marriott that the killer might have been a traveler, and sailors were known to seek out prostitutes in the Whitechapel district.

Perhaps most compelling was the fact that Feigenbaum's own lawyer, William Lawton, had once told reporters he believed his client had confessed to the crimes by claiming a disease made him kill and mutilate women. Indeed, Feigenbaum was eventually convicted and executed for an unrelated murder in New York City in 1894, the BBC notes.

"Jack is supposed to be responsible for five victims, but there were other similar murders before and after the ones attributed to him, both in this country and abroad in America and Germany," Marriott told Express, adding that the widely appropriated image of Jack as a well-dressed gentleman is probably nothing but an "urban myth."

But critics point out that Marriott's theory isn't exactly bulletproof. In a review of Marriott's 2007 book on the topic, The Guardian reports that Marriott shares a problem common to all "Ripperologists": a lack of hard evidence.

"[Marriott] turns initial speculation into assumed fact and presents a wodge of information that leads nowhere," the reviewer complained.

Marriott has launched a one-man show detailing his investigation. The production is currently touring the UK and Ireland.

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Sherlock Homes Inspired Present-Day Crime Scene Investigation

From the Sherlock Holmes Museum, 221b Baker Street, London, England  

Science Daily  

July 25, 2013 — Two of literature's most famous detectives had a major influence on the development of the modern crime scene investigation, according to a historian from The University of Manchester.

Dr. Ian Burney's research into the history of "CSI" has revealed that two of its founding fathers -- Frenchman Edmond Locard and Austrian Hans Gross -- were influenced by British writers Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austen Freeman. 

Conan Doyle, a doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes and Freeman, another doctor whose creation Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke is the prototype for the modern forensic investigator, were evangelists for a professionalized CSI -- according to the material analyzed by Dr. Burney. 

The historian, spoke on Friday 26 July at the 24th International Congress of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, held at The University of Manchester. 

Dr. Burney is based at the University's Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. He said: "It's surprising but clear that the fictional creations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Thorndyke were a major influence on the crime scene as we know today. 

"The stories showcased new methods of CSI: protecting the crime scene from contamination; preserving and recording the relationships between all objects in the scene, even the most trivial; and submitting minute trace evidence to scientific scrutiny. 

"So it's fair to say that Conan Doyle and Freeman helped investigators to systemize their methods to make the invisible, visible and the inconsequential, consequential. 

"It wasn't until the 1920s that dedicated CSIs began to appear as supervisors of a complex police and scientific operation, accompanied by photographers and policemen to search and protect the scene.

"Freeman and Conan Doyle helped bring this about. 

"It's amazing that both writers were able to conceive of the modern crime scene from their own imaginations -- though I would guess they were familiar with the writings of Gross and Locard."

In an English translation of Hans Gross's handbook for crime investigators, Dr. Burney discovered a passage referring to the forensics kit bag taken by English police to crime scenes as "the Thorndyke," a clear reference to Freeman's character. 

And in his textbook, Edmond Locard, repeatedly urged all students of police science to read and absorb the lessons of Sherlock Holmes. 

Dr Burney added: "During the Victorian era, there were certainly people who investigated the scenes of crimes, but they were not systematic and scientific in the way they went about their work.

"At murder scenes, the representative of "science" was a medical man -- sometimes a pathologist but often just a local practitioner. 

"But Sherlock Holmes -- and especially Dr. Thorndyke- were critical of the way Victorian pathologists might contaminate a scene and helped change practice for good." 

According to Dr. Burney, 'The Boscombe Valley mystery' is one of many examples of how like modern CSI the novels were. In this story, Holmes laments the destruction of crime scene evidence by "investigators" unaware of the need to adhere to csi protocol saying: "Oh, how simple it would all have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo and wallowed all over it." 

And Dr. Thorndyke argued in one of his earliest stories, "Message from the Deep Sea," that the scene of a murder should be treated like: "the Palace of Sleeping Beauty … Not a grain of dust should be moved, not a soul should be allowed to approach it, until the scientific observer has seen everything in situ and absolutely undisturbed. No trampling of excited constables, no rummaging by detectives, no scrambling to and fro of bloodhounds." 

The key to solving this particular murder was Thorndyke's attention to and scientific analysis of sand traces on the dead woman's pillow. 

Dr. Burney said: "When we consider the look of a crime scene today, with its protective tents and its ceremonially cloaked guardians, it is not difficult to see it as Thorndyke's "Palace" come to life."

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Reform is Demanded for Forensic Science

By Radley Balko and Roger Koppl

Last week, the state of Mississippi terminated its 20-year relationship with medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne. Hayne has come under fire from fellow medical examiners, criminal justice groups like the Innocence Project, and one of the authors of this article for his impossible workload, sloppy procedures, and questionable court testimony. In the early 1990s, Hayne and his frequent collaborator, now-disgraced forensic odontologist Dr. Michael West, helped secure murder convictions for Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both later proven innocent through DNA testing. The two were released from prison earlier this year. 

Mississippi is hardly alone when it comes to bad forensic science. It now appears that Washington, D.C., may have to retry Angela O'Brien for the 2000 killing of her 2-year-old goddaughter, Brianna Blackmond, after revelations that the prosecution's star forensic witness, a physicist named Saami Shaibani, lied about his credentials in a Wisconsin murder case. These are only the most recent and dramatic examples of forensics fraud to make the headlines. Over the years, there have been plenty of other hucksters and charlatans happy to take advantage of the ignorance of juries, prosecutors, judges, and defense attorneys in very complicated and difficult-to-understand disciplines. 

But the charlatans are only half the story. Courts have also missed plenty of mistakes from well-intentioned, conscientious scientists, too. In fact, these may be even more common—and harder to catch. Studies show that crime lab fiber, paint, and body fluid analyses, for example,  may consistently have error rates of 10 percent or higher. The error rate in fingerprint analysis is possibly between 1 percent  and 4 percent. And bite mark evidence is notoriously unreliable though still widely used.

The Chicago Tribune reported in July that L. Thomas Johnson—one of forensic odontology's pioneers—has been attempting to use statistical models to shore up the reliability of this discredited field. But Johnson's efforts have been hampered by new DNA testing in a 1984 murder, which concluded that the man convicted of the crime was not the source of saliva found on the victim's sweater. Johnson testified for the prosecution in that case. 

The use of forensic science in criminal trials is critically important. But reforms of the system are also desperately needed. It's not enough to weed out the incompetent scientists. We need to begin to monitor even the good ones. One major barrier to improving forensic evidence in criminal trials is that in most jurisdictions, the state has a monopoly on experts. Crime lab analysts and medical examiners (and to a lesser extent DNA technicians) typically work for the government and are generally seen as part of the prosecution's "team," much like the police and investigators. Yes, science is science, and it would be nice to believe that scientists will always get at the truth no matter whom they report to. But studies have consistently shown that even conscientious scientists can be affected by cognitive bias. 

A scientist whose job performance is evaluated by a senior official in the district attorney or state attorney general's office may feel subtle pressure to return results that produce convictions. In cases in which district attorneys' offices contract work out to private labs, the labs may feel pressure—even if it's not explicit (though sometimes it is)—to produce favorable results in order to continue the relationship. 

Cognitive bias can be even subtler. For some experts, merely knowing the details of a crime or discussing it with police or prosecutors beforehand can introduce significant bias to a lab technician's analysis. 

A research team led by Seton Hall law professor Michael Risinger published a study in the January 2002 California Law Review identifying five stages of scientific analysis in which bias can affect even the most professional expert's opinion. The study was careful to note that these biases were unintentional and not the result of outright fraud. But according to the study, cognitive bias can factor into the ways in which a scientist observes the initial data, records that data, and makes calculations and also how he remembers and reinterprets his notes when preparing for trial—a problem that looms larger as time elapses between the lab work and trial testimony. 

Most jurors aren't aware of any of these biases; in fact, most give enormous weight to expert witnesses. Even out-and-out frauds like West and Shaibani can persuade jurors if they're presented in court as reputable experts, appear likeable, and can testify with conviction. A study of the first 86 DNA exonerations garnered by the Innocence Project estimated that faulty forensic science played a role in more than 50 percent of the wrongful convictions. While it's obviously not possible to completely eradicate bias and scientific error from the courtroom, a few simple and relatively inexpensive reforms could go a long way toward reducing it. Here are a few more recommendations: 

Forensic counsel for the indigent. In many jurisdictions, indigent defendants aren't given access to their own forensic experts. As a result, the only expert witnesses are often testifying for the prosecution—experts that come prepackaged with the inherent biases noted above. This undermines the whole adversarial basis of our criminal justice system. Indigent defendants should be given vouchers to hire their own experts, who can review the forensic analysis and conclusions of each prosecution expert. 

Expert independence. Crime labs, DNA labs, and medical examiners shouldn't serve under the same bureaucracy as district attorneys and police agencies. If these experts must work for the government, they should report to an independent state agency, if not the courts themselves. There should be a wall of separation between analysis and interpretation. Thus, an independent medical examiner would, for instance, perform and videotape the actual procedure in an autopsy. The prosecution and defense would then each bring in their own experts to interpret the results in court. When the same expert performs both the analysis and interpretation, defense experts are often at a disadvantage, having to rely on the notes and photos of the same expert whose testimony they're disputing. 

Rivalrous redudancy. Whether the state uses its own labs or contracts out to private labs, evidence should periodically and systematically be sent out to yet another competing lab for verification. The state's labs should be made aware that their work will occasionally be checked but not told when. In addition to helping discover errors that might otherwise go undetected, the introduction of competition to government labs would all but remove any subconscious incentive to appease police and prosecutors and would strengthen the incentive for a more objective analysis. 

Statistical analysis. The results from forensic labs should be regularly analyzed for statistical anomalies. Labs producing unusually high match rates should throw up red flags for further examination. For example, in 2004 Houston medical examiner Patricia Moore was found to have diagnosed shaken-baby syndrome in infant autopsies at a rate several times higher than the national average. This led to an investigation—and the reopening of several convictions that had relied on Moore's testimony. 

Mask the evidence. A 2006 U.K. study by researchers at the University of Southampton found that the error rate of fingerprint analysts doubled when they were first told the circumstances of the case they were working on. Crime lab technicians and medical examiners should never be permitted to consult with police or prosecutors before performing their analysis. A dramatic child murder case, for example, may induce a greater subconscious bias to find a match than a burglary case. To the extent that it's possible, evidence should be stripped of all context before being sent to the lab. Ideally, state or city officials might hire a neutral "evidence shepherd," whose job would be to deliver crime-scene evidence to the labs and oversee the process of periodically sending evidence to secondary labs for verification. 

These proposed reforms would go a long way toward correcting the problems of bias and improper incentives in the forensics system. They're also relatively inexpensive—particularly when compared with the cost of a wrongful conviction. (In the Brooks and Brewer exonerations noted above, the state of Mississippi paid for both the prosecution and defense in two high-profile murder trials, three decades of unnecessary incarceration, several rounds of appeals, and will likely have to pay each man millions of dollars in compensation.) 

The continuing stories of forensics error and wrongful convictions are troubling but not all that surprising. Our criminal justice system is centuries old. It just hasn't adapted well to the dramatic advances in science and technology over the past 30 years. But as forensic evidence becomes more and more important in securing convictions, the need for monitoring and oversight grows exponentially. Every other scientific field properly requires peer review, statistical analysis, and redundancy to ensure quality and accuracy. It's past time we applied the same quality-control measures to criminal forensics, particularly given the fundamental nature of what's at stake. 

Radley Balko is a senior editor for Reason magazine.

Roger Koppl is director of the Institute for Forensic Science Administration at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

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Anti-Hacker Effort Thwarted by Lack of Cyber Warriors

 Peter Apps and Brenda Goh, Reuters  

For the governments and corporations facing increasing computer attacks, the biggest challenge is finding the right cyber warriors to fight back.

Hostile computer activity from spies, saboteurs, competitors and criminals has spawned a growing industry of corporate defenders who can attract the best talent from government cyber units. 

The U.S. military's Cyber Command is due to quadruple in size by 2015 with 4,000 new personnel while Britain announced a new Joint Cyber Reserve last month. From Brazil to Indonesia, similar forces have been set up. 

But demand for specialists has far outpaced the number of those qualified to do the job, leading to a staffing crunch as talent is poached by competitors offering big salaries. 

"As with anything, it really comes down to human capital and there simply isn't enough of it," says Chris Finan, White House director for cyber security from 2011-12, who is now a senior fellow at the Truman National Security Project and working for a start-up in Silicon Valley. 

"They will choose where they work based on salary, lifestyle and the lack of an interfering bureaucracy and that makes it particularly hard to get them into government." 

Cyber attacks can be expensive: one unidentified London-listed company incurred losses of 800 million pounds ($1.29 billion) in a cyber attack several years ago, according to the British security services. 

Global losses are in the range of $80 billion to $400 billion a year, according to research by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies that was sponsored by Intel Corp's McAfee anti-virus division. 

There is a whole range of attacks. Some involve simply transferring money, but more often clients' credit card details are stolen. There is also intellectual property theft or theft of commercially sensitive information for business advantage. 

Victims can also suffer a "hacktivist" attack, such as a directed denial of service to bring a website down, which can cost a lot of money to fix. 

Quantifying the exact damage is almost impossible, especially when secrets and money are not the only targets. 

While no government has taken responsibility for the Stuxnet computer virus that destroyed centrifuges at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility, it was widely reported to have been a U.S.-Israeli project. 

Britain says it blocked 400,000 advanced cyber threats to the government's secure intranet last year while a virus unleashed against Saudi Arabia's energy group Aramco, likely to be the world's most valuable company, destroyed data on thousands of computers and put an image of a burning American flag onto screens. 

GOING VIRAL? 

Most cyber expertise remains in the private sector where companies are seeing an steep increase in spending on security products and services. 

Depending on the cyber threat, a variety of firms are bidding for cyber talent. Google is currently advertising 129 IT security jobs, while defense companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp and BAE Systems are looking to hire in this area. 

Anti-virus maker Symantec Corp is also doing good business. "The threat environment is exploding," Chief Executive Steve Bennett told Reuters in an interview in July. 

The perception of an increased threat, has also led to explosive demand for the best talent. 

The U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics says the number of Information Technology security roles in the U.S. will increase by some 22 percent in the decade to 2020, creating 65,700 new jobs. Experts say it is a similar situation globally, with salaries often rising 5-7 percent a year. 

"Recruitment and retention in cyber is a challenge for everybody working in this area," says Mike Bradshaw, head of security and smart systems at Finmeccanica IT unit Selex. "It's an area where demand exceeds supply ... it's going to take a while for supply to catch up." 

A growing number of security firms - such as UK-based Protection Group International (PGI) - now also offer cyber services. PGI started out providing armed guards to protect merchant ships against pirates but has now hired former staff from Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency. 

COUNTRY OR CASH? 

A graduate with a good computer studies degree can walk into a $100,000 salary with a similar amount upfront as a golden handshake, several times what the U.S. National Security Agency would be likely to offer. 

Western universities turn out far too few graduates with the necessary computer skills while some students complain that many of the courses on offer are too theoretical for the challenges of cyber warfare. 

But applicants need not have a computer science degree to get lucrative jobs as long as they can do the hardest-to-fill jobs such as finding bugs in software, identifying elusive infections and reverse engineering computer viruses that are found on computers, said Alan Paller, founder of the non-profit SANS Institute in Washington. 

SANS has worked with officials in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey and other states to sponsor hacking contests that test skills in those and other areas. Educational background does not necessarily help in these contests. 

Those who have "very good" skills in the most-needed areas can earn $110,000 to $140,000, while the very top get paid as much as $200,000 in private sector jobs, according to Paller. 

While the private sector offers big cash, the government is still able to retain some talent by appealing to people's sense of public service and patriotism. 

"I want to serve my country. What I am doing is important," one hacker who conducts classified research for the U.S. military told Reuters at the Def Con hacking conference in July. He declined to provide his name because he was not authorized to speak to the press. 

There is also an expectation that government workers can move to more lucrative jobs in the private sector after several years in public service. 

But some senior officers in Western militaries still fear they may struggle to attract the requisite talent, citing both cultural and administrative problems. 

General Keith Alexander, head of both the NSA and Cyber Command, told Reuters earlier this year finding the right talent was a priority. He has attended events such as the Def Con hacker conference, trading his uniform for a black T-shirt. 

Hiring outsiders has long been thought to be a tactic employed by the United States as well as China and Russia. 

Western security officials believe Russia, China and other emerging cyber powers such as Iran and North Korea have cut deals with their own criminal hacker community to borrow their expertise to assist with attacks. 

Russia and China, which have been accused by the West of mounting repeated attacks on government and commercial interests, deny direct involvement in hacking. 

"We are at the very beginning of this process and we are building it brick by brick," says Colonel Gregory Conti, head of the cyber Security Department at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point. "It's going to be like the creation of the air force - a process of several decades getting the right people and structures." ($1 = 0.6209 British pounds) 

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