Name_________________________________________________ Period_______________ Ms. Sameroff DO NOW VOCABULARY ACTIVITY #1 ACTIVITY #2 Date_______________ EXIT OBJECTIVE: SWBAT describe types of handwriting exemplars that can be analyzed by identifying characteristics of handwriting. DO NOW 1. How do you feel today? Why? ______________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 VOCABULARY (Use your worksheet to define the words below.) WORD DEFINTION Forgery Ransom Note ACTIVITY #1 2 3 Suspect # Observations of why this suspect is NOT the culprit Observations of why this suspect is POSSIBLY the culprit Suspect 1 Suspect 2 Suspect 3 Suspect 4 Suspect 5 4 ACTIVITY #2 Historical Crime Case Study: Forensic Document Analysis 5 6 EXIT TICKET Describe today’s lesson in 3-5 sentences. 7 Directions: Complete the steps for the activity listed in your textbook. Record your results in the tables and answer the questions below. Paternity Testing: Children inherit half their chromosomes from each parent and thus should possess a combination of parental fragments In other words, all fragments produced in the child should also be produced by either the mother or father Questions: 1. Can either man be excluded as the father? Explain. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 2. Which man may be the father of the child? Explain. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3. How many radioactive probes were used in this activity? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Is this DNA profile sufficient to establish paternity? Why or why not? ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 8 Use the Venn diagram below to compare spores and pollens ACTIVITY #2 EXIT TICKET Describe today’s lesson in 3-5 sentences. 9 Pollen helps war crime forensics By Peter Wood At the BA Science Festival Researchers have revealed how a team of forensic experts used pollen to help them to convict Bosnian war criminals. Professor Tony Brown of the University of Exeter used the method to link mass graves in Bosnia, which supported the case for genocide by the prosecution. Pollen provided a vital clue linking burial sites He says pollen and unchanging soil characteristics can "provide strong circumstantial evidence placing a vehicle or person at a crime scene". 10 The research was presented at the BA's annual Festival of Science in Exeter. "Forensic pollen analysis has made a significant contribution to the investigation of war crimes in Bosnia," Professor Brown explained. Bosnian war criminals tried disguising their acts of genocide by exhuming mass graves and reburying bodies in smaller graves, claiming they were the result of minor battles. Laborious search The prosecution at the UN war crimes tribunal needed to show that the many "secondary" burial sites could be linked to a few "primary" ones, to prove that mass graves had initially existed. Professor Brown was part of the North East Bosnian Mortuary Team which conducted forensic examinations of mass graves. The team, which worked under constant UN guard, examined 20 sites over a fouryear period from 1997. Soil samples were taken from skeletal cavities, inside the graves, and from around the suspected primary and secondary burial sites. Pollen from the soil samples was cleaned with powerful chemicals before being analysed, and the mineralogy of the soil itself was examined. Telltale clue Once complete, matches could be made between different samples ultimately leading to links between primary and secondary burial sites. Professor Brown said: "For example, one primary execution and burial site was in a field of wheat. When bodies were found in secondary burial sites they were linked to the primary location through the presence of distinctive wheat pollen in soil recovered from the victims." Independent ballistics work was in 100% agreement with the conclusions of the pollen and soil analysis, he added. Overall, the work formed a significant component of the generic body of evidence used against those involved in the Srebrenica atrocities. Professor Brown said a case in point was the conviction of Radislav Krstic, commander of a military unit which participated in the massacres in and around Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. After reading the news article, please answer the following questions: 1. What is this article about? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2. Summarize the article in 3-4 sentences. __________________________________________________________________________________ 11 __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3. What was the conclusion of the researchers? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 4. What evidences were used to come to this conclusion? ___________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ 5. As the result of this scientific findings (conclusion), ________________________ was convicted of participation in the massacred in and around Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. EXIT TICKET Describe today’s lesson in 3-5 sentences. 1. Forensic Geology- based on the case study completed in class and the 3 readings below: UNDERLINE the types of materials that would be examined by a forensic geologist AND circle where they would find these materials in a crime situation (ex. Tires, pant cuffs, pictures). You should be able to determine the overall significance of the materials or in other words why these pieces of evidence are crucial in solving the crime. Reading #1: The first real use of forensic geology to solve a crime does not appear to have occurred until 1904, when a German chemist named Georg Popp used geologic evidence to help identify a murder suspect from a handkerchief containing traces of snuff, coal dust, and the mineral hornblende. The prime suspect used snuff, and divided his labors between a coal gasification plant and a quarry in which the rocks were rich in the hornblende. (Coal gasification was then a common process in which coal was transformed into natural gas.) Soil in the suspect's pant cuffs also was matched to soil at the crime scene and outside of the victim's home. Taken together, the evidence convinced the suspect to confess. Four years later, Popp was able to show that one layer of soil on the shoes of a murder suspect matched the soil and distinctly green goose droppings around the suspect's home. A second layer contained red sandstone fragments identical to those in 12 the soil where the body was found. The third, and outermost, layer contained coal, brick, and cement dust identical to that found at the location where the murder weapon was found. The suspect claimed that he was walking in the fields near his home and therefore could not have committed the murder. Popp was able to show that, in addition to all of the geologic evidence that was preserved on the shoes, there was no sign of the distinctive milky white quartz particles that were characteristic of soil from those fields. Reading #2: During the second half of World War II, the Japanese military developed a plan to attack the United States with unmanned balloons carrying explosive and incendiary bombs. Using meteorological observations and calculations, they were able to design balloons that could be launched from Japanese beaches and carried by the jet stream to the western United States. The balloons were designed to be self-regulating, releasing sandbags in order to gain elevation during cold nights and releasing hydrogen to loose elevation during warm days. It is believed that 9000 balloons were launched, of which an estimated 1000 reached North America. Two balloons drifted as far east as Michigan. Although they ignited a few small fires and killed only six people (five children and a minister's wife who came across an unexploded bomb while on a fishing trip in Oregon), their origin was of concern. It was not known whether the balloons were being launched from Japanese submarines, by shore parties that had landed on American beaches, from German prisoner of war camps, or from the internment camps to which many Japanese-American citizens had been forcibly relocated. Geologists in the military geology unit of the U.S. Geological Survey were asked to determine the launching point of the balloons from the provenance of sand that had been used for ballast and which had been recovered from many balloon crash sites. Because sand has a low economic value and is expensive to transport, it was likely that the source of the sand was at or near the launching areas. The geologists first eliminated North American sources for the sand, which contained an unusual combination of minerals, fossil and recent diatoms (single celled algae that secrete siliceous cell walls), foraminifera (single celled organisms with calcareous shells), mollusk shell fragments, and no coral. The absence of coral was important because coral grows only in warm water, meaning that the sand most likely came from a northern area. By comparing the sand to geologic maps and reports that had been published before the war, one as early as 1889, the geologists suggested two possible launching sites along the northern coast of Japan. In reality, balloons were being launched from three sites. One of them was a site identified by the geologists and the other two, separated by approximately 15 km, were close to the second site identified by the geologists. Reading #3: Geologic interpretation of photographs and videotapes can also shed light on the location in which a photograph or a recording was made. A notable example of this kind of forensic geology occurred shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. American geologists who had worked in Afghanistan were able to identify rocks in the background of a videotaped message from the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, and therefore the region of the country in which the message was taped. The use of geologic knowledge to infer location was widely publicized, however, and subsequent messages were recorded against a cloth background in order to prevent the location of the taping from being discerned. A. What are physical characteristics of soil? Chemical characteristics? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ B. What will forensic geologists look for to individualize a soil sample? List 3 things. 13 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ CASE STUDY 2: Madrid Bombings On 11 March 2004 a series of bombs devastated Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people and wounding 2050. The bombings were widely assumed to be inspired by Al Qaeda but there appears to have been the involvement of several disparate groups and individuals. The trial of 28 accused ran from February to July 200 7. At the end of October 2007, the Audiencia Nacional de España delivered its verdicts. Of the 28 defendants in the trial, 21 were found guilty on a range of charges from forgery to murder. In the early stages of the investigation a blue plastic bag conta ining detonators was found near the scene of the bombings at a railway station. A print was taken from the bag and the FBI in the USA was sent a digital copy of the print. An American lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who had converted to Islam, was identified by t he FBI as a match to the fingerprint. Mayfield was never charged with a crime but was arrested by the US authorities as a material witness with possible information about the Madrid bombing. 14 Court records reveal the process that led to Mayfield's arrest in May 2004 and his two-week detention in the Multnomah County Jail in Oregon, USA. According to the record, Mayfield's prints were among the best 15 matches found by the FBI fingerprint computer, which holds the prints of some 45 million persons. Those ma tches were then compared by FBI examiners to the digital image of the partial print sent by the Spanish authorities, who finding 15 matching characteristics concluded that the print was 'a 100 per cent identification' with Mayfield (Figure 3). Even as the FBI homed in on Mayfield, Spanish authorities were disputing the FBI's fingerprint analysis on the Madrid bag and the identification was not accepted in Spain. An independent fingerprint expert brought in by the FBI appeared, according to the court records, to confirm the FBI's attribution of the print to Mayfield. But Mayfield's lawyer said the expert's report had cautions that were not included in the FBI's affidavit (a sworn statement of evidence or fact that can be used in court without the author necessarily being present). Although not included in the FBI's affidavit the expert's report included concerns that the quality of the print copy that wa s received from Spain was poor and that the image possibly included an overlay of another print. The exp ert said that it was important to see the original image to make a definitive identification. It was soon recognized that an error had been made and Mayfield was released. The US attorney said the error was regrettable but that as soon as the misidentification came to light, federal authorities 'moved immediately' to have Mayfield released. The US Inspector General's Office (an office within the Department of Justice that can investigate waste, fraud and abuse within the US justice system) released a 273-page report in 2006 on the Mayfield affair. The report acknowledges that there was an 'unusual similarity' between the fingerprints, confusing three FBI examiners and a court-appointed expert. But the report also concluded that FBI examiners failed to adhe re to the bureau's own rules for identifying latent fingerprints and that the FBI's 'overconfidence' in its own skills prevented it from taking the Spanish police seriously. known print from Mayfield known print from prime suspect Case Study 2 Questions 1. From the Madrid Bombings, Case Study 2, what is the pattern of Mayfield’s print? ______________ What is the pattern of prime suspect’s print? ________________ 15 2. How are both prints similar? 3. On the pictures above find, circle and label with type of minutiae 4 similarities between Mayfield’s and the Prime Suspects Prints 4. How are they different? 5. Summarize what happened to Mayfield. 6. How does this case change your views on fingerprinting? 16
