Multimedia Listing

These presentations highlight specific case studies from a pathologist’s perspective. Jamie Downs, M.D., discussed several topics, including best practices for identifying child abuse and the difference between manner of death and cause of death.

Entomology has a multitude of uses when it comes to forensic investigation. Whether investigators are estimating post-mortem interval or trying to understand damage dealt to a corpse after death, insects and their behaviors may provide clues or missing information. In this presentation, Neal Haskell, Ph.D., discussed specific case studies and how forensic entomology aided these investigations.

Identifying victims of human trafficking has a unique set of obstacles, often compounded by language barriers or the victim’s unwillingness to work with law enforcement. Uncovering even the most basic information about victims, both alive and dead, can be a challenge. John P. Kenney, D.D.S., discussed a method for using teeth to determine the ages of unknown victims in this presentation.

Over the twenty years following the tragic abuse of her child, Bonnie Armstrong has worked tirelessly to pursue justice, support victim’s families, and prevent child abuse in its many forms. Through case consultation, legislative lobbying, and the development of forensic training programs, Armstrong and The Shaken Baby Alliance seek to end child abuse. In her introduction, Armstrong shared the story of her child’s abuse at the hands of the baby’s father and the impact that The Shaken Baby Alliance makes in the fight against abuse.

Former Major League Baseball player Mel Hall is known for many things, but his athletic career is shadowed by a severe crime: preying on underage girls. In 2009, Hall was convicted of three counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child. In this presentation, survivor Chaz discussed her personal story and the methods Hall used to manipulate her family into trusting him.

This webinar will provide details and guidance for potential applicants to the National Institute of Justice's Research and Evaluation of Drugs and Crime FY 2017 solicitation. The presenters will discuss the purpose and goals of this funding opportunity and address frequently asked questions. A Q&A session will conclude this webinar.

Learn about the NIJ National Sexual Assault Policy Symposium held in September 2016 from its audience members and organizers. The Symposium focused on how the nation is moving forward and finding solutions to the complex issues that arise in sexual assault cases and in testing sexual assault evidence.

This webinar will inform the audience of the changes to three programs available for publicly funded forensic laboratories and introduce a new program for FY 2017. Changes to existing programs will be highlighted and presenters will discuss the background and goals of the solicitations, recommendations for successful applications, application expectations and requirements, the review process, and the application checklist. There will also be time for questions and answers at the end of the webinar.

Solicitations discussed include:

This webinar will present the results of the evaluation of Direct Sample Analysis Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry to provide rapid identification of eighteen fentanyl analogues and related synthetic opiates.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence in 2017.

Principles, methods and applications of DNA-based prediction of human appearance traits for forensic and anthropological use with specific insights into eye, hair, and skin colour prediction from DNA.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on January 1, 2017.

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His latest book is Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), which will be discussed in this webinar.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence in January 2017.

This webinar provided details and guidance for potential applicants to NIJ’s solicitation, “Research and Evaluation for the Testing and Interpretation of Physical Evidence in Publicly Funded Forensic Laboratories.”

NIJ Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences Director Gerald LaPorte and Deputy Director Heather Waltke, along with Heather LaSalle, Forensic Examiner, DNA Casework Unit, and Tina Delgado, Chief, Biometrics Division from the FBI Laboratory discuss how scientific advances can help jurisdictions process a large number of previously unsubmitted sexual assault kits.

Brian Cerchiai discusses a NIJ-supported a study conducted by the Miami-Dade Police Department on the accuracy of fingerprint examiners. The study found that fingerprint examiners make extremely few errors. Even when examiners did not get an independent second opinion about their decisions, they were remarkably accurate. But when decisions were verified by an independent reviewers, examiners had a 0% false positive, or incorrect identification, rate and a 3% false negative, or missed identification, rate.

Bill King discusses the operations of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), a program through which firearms examiners at state and local crime laboratories compare tool marks on fired bullets or cartridges found at a crime scene to digitized images of ballistic evidence in a nationwide database.

Interview with Dr. Bill Wells, Ph.D., Sam Houston State University

Watch Bill Wells discuss the problem of unsubmitted sexual assault kits in Houston, including some lessons learned to-date. Dr. Wells also talks about the crucial role of victim cooperation in solving sexual assault cases and the Houston Police Department's hiring of a justice advocate to improve investigations.

Watch Rebecca Campbell discuss the five primary reasons that Detroit developed a large number of sexual assault kits that were not submitted to the crime lab for DNA-testing. Dr. Campbell also talks about how these risk factors" could apply to other jurisdictions.

Watch Caitlin Sulley discuss how action-research team in Houston went about making the action-research project investigating unsubmitted sexual assault kits in Houston as victim-oriented as possible. Ms. Sulley talks about the creation of a hotline for sexual assault victims to call and the police department's hiring of a justice advocate.

Interview with Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

Watch Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz discuss what Houston is learning about the role of notifying sexual assault victims when their rape kits are DNA-tested. In talking about the nationwide implications of the Houston action-research project, Dr. Busch-Armendariz says that the nation is ready to move beyond a focus solely on kit-testing to the larger discussion of how to tackle the complicated issue of sexual assault.