Evidence analysis and processing

After the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (Farm Bill) was enacted in December 2018, many states rushed to make changes to their own laws to allow the hemp industry to grow and thrive in their jurisdictions. By removing hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, Cannabis sativa L. plant material with a concentration of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol less than 0.3% on a dry weight basis was no longer considered marijuana.

Molecular identification is advantageous for medicolegal death investigations involving entomological activity. This enables species-level identification of immature specimens necessary for estimating post-mortem interval and may be performed without specialized training or resources. The presenter describes a strategy effective for relevant species and demonstrates analysis of casework-type samples.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 2, 2021.

In this study, firearms examiners were asked to use traditional microscopic methods to identify unknown bullets to the appropriate barrels. Additionally, 3D scans of these bullets were used in a matching algorithm to find similarity scores between bullets. Error rates were determined and the potential for subclass carry-over among the barrels was evaluated. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 16, 2021.

This webinar will expand examiners' awareness of additional areas of interest for identification purposes. Two previously undocumented toolmarks were observed in Glock pistols and could potentially be used for other make/model pistols. These new toolmarks will expand an examiner’s ability to compare fired and unfired ammunition components to each other or to a suspect firearm.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 12, 2021.

This study assesses the production of subclass characteristics during the manufacturing of breech faces. Observations on how well subclass characteristics persist on manufactured breech faces with and without any finishing methods as well as the effect of the primer on the quality/quantity of the breech face impressions will be discussed.    

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on December 9, 2021.

The role of a death certificate has evolved from a legal record of death to a document used extensively by public and private entities to monitor the health of our nation. As the public health usage of death certificates continues to grow, it has become increasingly important to complete death certificates in a clear and consistent manner. This webinar will cover best practices for filling out death certificates in drug-related deaths.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on November 30, 2021.

With the increased prevalence of DART-MS in forensic laboratories comes an increased need for tools and resources. This webinar will highlight the new NIST/NIJ DART-MS Data Interpretation Tool (DIT), a freely available software tool that allows users to interpret DART-MS data resulting in improved presumptive screening of seized drug evidence. Other resources to assist with adoption and implementation of the DART-MS DIT will also be discussed.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 21, 2021.

The Association of State and Territorial Health Agencies (ASTHO) will provide an overview of the Project ECHO model and how the model has been adapted to create a supportive learning community of coroners and medical examiners dedicated to improving the investigation and certification of overdose deaths. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on October 7, 2021. 

This webinar will provide an opportunity to discuss some of the post-SWGTREAD considerations for articulating findings (interpretations, limitations, opinions, and results) as well as a platform to exchange thoughts, consider suggested conclusion structures, and observe examples related to articulating footwear evidence conclusions.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on September 30, 2021. 

Data availability is the cornerstone of progression of any scientific inquiry. For forensic anthropologists, the data sources are limited, as they must be contextually appropriate (temporal, geographical, etc.) for study and application in forensic research on human variation. In this webinar, the presenters will discuss The Forensic Anthropology Database for Assessing Methods Accuracy (FADAMA), a database that offers access to unique, innovative, and nuanced data. The webinar will cover the database’s goals, ethical considerations, research potential, data accessibility, and more.

When processing a digital image for scientific analysis and comparison, there are proper procedures that must be followed.  This is to ensure the processed image’s admissibility in court and to provide the highest level of clarity and detail possible.  Adobe Photoshop provides many tools for processing digital images; however, there are some tools that should not be used in forensic digital image processing.

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 5, 2021.

Analyzing, comparing, and evaluating forensic digital images relies on understanding two essential elements: image quality and image clarity.  Resolution provides image quality, while bit depth provides clarity between the details in an image. It is important to understand how image quality and clarity can affect the probative value of a forensic digital image as well as an examiner’s ability to accurately analyze those images. 

This webinar was presented by the NIJ Forensic Technology Center of Excellence on August 3, 2021.
 

Over the last ten years, numerous novel psychoactive substances (NPS) have emerged in the recreational drug supply. Upon synthesis or discovery, each of these drugs has been given a name other than its IUPAC chemical name, primarily for ease of communication. This has resulted in various naming convention for NPS, sometimes multiple within a given subclass. This webinar is aimed at tackling the naming conventions for NPS and the associated challenges encountered along the way.

Microhaplotypes (microhaps) are biomarkers fewer than 300 nucleotides long that display multiple allelic combinations. The main advantages of microhaps over conventional short tandem repeats (STRs) include the 1) absence of stutter, 2) same-size alleles within each locus, 3) lower mutation rate, and 4) ancestry informative alleles. These forensically relevant loci can yield a power of discrimination similar to STRs while enhancing human identification (HID), mixture deconvolution, and biogeographic ancestry prediction.

LatentSleuth is a novel software tool set designed for (and with direct feedback from) latent print examiners. The toolset includes a small-scale automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) matcher that leverages a novel matching algorithm that calculates a warp between a latent print image and a given reference print image. This webinar will demonstrate a comprehensive quantification of a latent images entire structure and how that quantification is exploited in a commercially available workstation for latent print examination.