你们应该会发现，在过去的十到十五年里， You've probably noticed that in the past ten or fifteen years,
法庭科学的热度 the popularity of forensic science,
特别是在书籍， especially as it's portrayed in books,
电视节目和电影里有了爆炸性的增长。 television shows and movies has exploded.
如果你是在荧屏上观摩侦查工作的数百万人中的一员， If you're one of the millions who watched these investigations on screen,
你是否曾经对有关节目所呈现的 have you ever wondered how accurate
法庭科学技术的真实性有疑问呢？ the portrayals of forensic science really are?
大众媒体总是会以 Popular media has always featured things
我们称之为是法庭科学的事物为噱头 that we would now call forensic science
从莎士比亚笔下的毒药 from Shakespeare's poisonings,
到夏洛克福尔摩斯的传奇经历， the great Sherlock Holmes
从《沉默的羔羊》， Silence of the Lambs
再到许许多多的各类鉴证人员，无不有法庭科学的出席。 and the many iterations of CSI.
但在这门课程里我们将从真实的取证工作 But in this course we'll examine some real forensic case work
及科学技术与调查方法入手，揭秘法庭科学。 and the technology, science and sleuthing used to unravel it.
我们也会看到好莱坞时不时地 We'll see that Hollywood sometimes gets it dead wrong,
犯错， unintentional,
特别是在一些取证期间要求或其他表现上。 especially in some things like timing and looks.
我会让你分辨小鲜肉小仙女们 I'm here to tell you that young starlets and high heels
是不是你们想象中的命案现场侦查人员 are not your typical death investigators
而且我们绝对不会在广告时间提取到你们的DNA个人信息。 and we definitely don't get our DNA results back after the commercial break.
我是贝丝·默里教授 I'm Dr. Beth Murray,
我从1996年起便开始从事法医实务工作 and I've been a practicing forensic scientist since 1996,
并在1999年起成为了一名大学教师， and a college professor since 1999,
出于我对法庭科学的喜爱。 Because of that I like to say I was forensic before forensic was cool.
My main involvement in the field of forensics
is as an anthropologist
and most of what I do involves bones.
But during my many years of experience
I've interacted with and learned from lots of fellow forensic experts.
I also teach a survey course about forensic science
that cover something about all the specialties you'll learn about in this series.
One of the things I've learned over the years
through my many many different interactions with others in the field
and from working lots of types of cases,
some suspicious and some clearly criminal
is that forensic science is very interdisciplinary.
I got my PhD
through the department of Interdisciplinary Studies,
and I've always been intrigued by how a single problem
is approached from multiple directions.
If you ask most of the general public,
what the term forensic means,
you get lots of different answers.
But I imagine the most common misconception
is that many people think forensic science
is mostly about criminal activity leading to death.
In fact,
because of the emphasis on death
in today's big and small screen Hollywood interpretations,
plenty of people probably believe that forensic equals death.
But those of you who are my age or older
might remember that when we were in high school,
the quotes "forensic team" was not a hip group of criminal investigators,
but rather the kids in the debate club.
That's because the word forensic actually comes from the Latin word.
for "public"
which is forum,
so to use the term "forensic"
actually means that something is open to public debate
or up for public interpretation.
Because the legal system is founded on debate and argument
what forensic science really means is to use science to inform legal matters,
and that includes both criminal and civil issues.
But it's important to remember,
when talking about forensic science,
that while legal systems may differ
in what is or is not considered criminal activity throughout the world,
what constitutes good science does not.
Good science is universal.
That's because science isn't really a thing, science as a process.
I like to tell my students.
Science is not truth.
If you want truth,
go down the hall to the philosophy Department.
Science is really a search,
a search for information that helps us explain our world.
Science is in a bunch of facts that are static.
It's really a way of learning about our universe.
Okay, those of you who had horrible science classes in school
probably remember something like this
The teacher comes into the room
and writes a list of twenty words on the board.
and your job in science class that day
is to write the definitions of those words on your paper.
Hello, that is not studying science, that studying vocabulary.
Sure, we need to have common terminology
so that we can understand each other,
But come on,
that's not the heart and soul of science.
Those of you who had incredible experiences in science class like I did,
and maybe that makes all the difference in the world.
Well, those of you who had a great time.
You probably remember doing some awesome lab experiment
and I have to stay say that understanding the inner workings
behind stuff you see every day is something that still amazes me.
If you were like me,
or the sea monkeys out of the back of a comic book,
and you took your radio apart
and you poked around in the woods every chance you got
because, that my friends, is how a scientist grows up.
OK, for those of you who forgotten,
let's do a quick review of how you do science.
We call it the scientific method, right? Come on, wait
Don't turn the video off just yet.
I promises this will be as quick and painless as I can possibly make it.
Basically, the first step in the scientific method
is to make some type of observation about something
like a plant growing really well in a certain part of your garden.
Then the next step is to generate what's known as a hypothesis.
That's your initial attempt to explain your observation.
Hey, maybe this plants growing really well because it's getting plenty of sun,
or in my case,
maybe it's growing really well because that's the spot where I buried my cat.
Next, if you want to test your hypothesis,
you're going to have to do some experiments and collect some data
that might be simple or it could get pretty complex
depends on the nature of your issue at hand.
Then you have to analyze the results of your experiments
and compare them to your original hypothesis.
If the conclusions from your experiment match up to your hypothesis,
then you might have a handle on the best explanation
for the thing you're trying to understand.
But on the other hand,
if your experiments don't support your hypothesis,
you need to throw out your original hypothesis
and come up with another explanation for the thing you're trying to understand.
Now this might sound pretty sophisticated,
but think about how often you really do use
the scientific method in your everyday life,
whether you realize it or not.
You walk into your house,
you flip on a light switch and the light doesn't come on.
There's your observation.
Now you create a hypothesis as to why the light didn't come on.
and then you test it.
The ball might be burned out.
the lamp might be unplugged,
or there may be a blown fuse.
All those are testable hypotheses that we automatically come up with,
because in general,
we are all curious beings,
and when it comes down to it,
we're all pretty good problem solvers.
You can probably think of a dozen more examples of how we're all
natural born scientists.
You try to start your car and it doesn't work.
You follow a recipe by the book,
and it doesn't turn out right.
Your dog refuses to use his front paw.
Your grandchild is unhappy.
These are all typical observations
that we generate possible explanations about,
and those explanations could be called hypotheses
that we don't usually use that word.
Every day,
at home or at work,
in restaurants,
airports,
grocery stores,
we make observations and invent explanations for them.
Some of these hypotheses are testable
while others are much more than sheer speculation.
So what does all this have to do with forensic science?
Well, as I often tell students who think they're going to be crime scene analyst,
but don't want to take chemistry or physics
in order to be a forensic scientist.
you have to first be a scientist.
I like to say that forensic is the adjective,
but science is the noun.
Forensic scientists make observations,
but those observations are related to things
that are possibly of legal importance.
Those initial observations may end up
being parts of a crime scene or a criminal investigation.
Forensic scientists,
investigators and analysts
have to come up with logical and reasonable explanations
for the things they observe.
And if they hold true to science,
those hypotheses should be neutral statements,
not accusatory ones.
In order to show whether their hypotheses are good or not,
forensic scientists,
like all other scientists,
have to ask questions and collect data.
And if the results of their tests
disagree with their original hunches,
then regardless of what they would like to believe,
honest and competent forensic scientists
have to abandon their initial direction
and come up with another plausible explanation for what happened.
But that secondary hunch also has to be tested and analyzed.
If we're to trust in any form of science,
we have to believe that the people doing the observations,
the testing,
the analysis of results and the interpretations of data
or as objective as humanly possible.
I mean, we all know that human beings have our biases.
But good investigators and scientists need to do everything they can
to leave those biases behind
when they crossed the threshold of the crime scene,
the lab door,
or when they walk into the courtroom.
That doesn't mean we can't use our heads
and consider the most likely possibilities based on our experience.
But experience isn't the same thing as bias.
It also doesn't mean that
crime scene investigators can't act on a hunch or listen to their gut.
There's a big difference between theories and
expectations based on training in prior experience
as compared to developing hypotheses
that are based on
unfounded, preconceived or ill-conceived notions.
OK, I'll get off my soapbox now and try to get us back
more specifically to forensic science,
which by the way is not the same thing as criminology,
Criminology is more of a sociological study of crime, criminals and victims.
A person might enter criminology through the behavioral sciences
to study the sociology and psychology behind criminal behavior.
Forensic science is also not the same thing as criminal justice.
Graduates from criminal justice programs
typically work in law enforcement and law enforcement,
including in police,
work and corrections,
not in forensic labs.
In fact, I sometimes have a difficult time convincing students
that the best preparation for forensic science
is a broadbased background that combines
biology, chemistry and physics.
Law enforcement officers are still heavily involved in crime scene investigations,
and in my opinion,
there are the real heroes in terms of solving crimes
because they're the ones that put the parts and pieces together.
But today, bulk of the analysis of physical crime scene evidence falls to scientists.
As technology has advanced the field.
A strong foundation in lad sciences is really the basis for today's forensic careers.
And the really cool thing about science as a process is that it's truly universal.
Once in Guatemala,
I got to work side by side with Guatemalan archaeologists
who were exhuming mass graves
from political conflicts that led to my and genocide.
And even though we didn't speak the same language,
we carried out the process in the exact same way.
There's a real beauty to the standard ways
of doing things that are recognized by everybody involved.
and the scientific method is just that.
Even little kids are scientists in the sense that
they use their version of the scientific method to explain what they see.
They examine things and test things and they test people.
How does it work?
Put it in your mouth,
even better, poke it with a stick.
You all know that poke it with a stick.
as the original scientific experiment, right?
Kids constantly ask why why why,
that is until parents or the educational system drums that out of them, right?
But keep in mind the explanations people come up with
for the things they observe do vary, depending not only on their age,
but also on things like their cultural and educational background
People once thought the earth was flat,
because the horizon looks like a straight line, right?
and people used to think that evil spirits caused disease.
Well, that may not seem very sophisticated to us.
It's still an attempt to explain an observation.
So science as a mechanism for understanding the world around us,
and it's not only international,
its universal and as old as human history itself.
So to put all this together,
a forensic scientist is supposed to use the scientific method
in an objective attempt to explain what's gone on
in some kind of issue that's opened a legal interpretation.
And while scientists science around the world,
what's seen as legal or illegal behavior is linked to a person's culture,
what one group considers the norm,
another group might consider terrible.
Legal systems and laws vary around the world.
that's because laws are political and cultural constructs,
laws and legal systems change over time,
as cultures evolve and exchange ideas.
The purpose of this series is not to debate legal issues
or to try to explain how or why cultures vary in what they consider moral or legal.
Our focus won't be to study.
crime, criminals or legal systems
We are here to talk about how science is applied in legal settings
and to try to address how evidence is gathered,
tested and considered,
regardless of what a given culture considers right or wrong.
So let's stop and have you think for a minute
about the first time you really remember hearing about forensic science.
If you're reasonably young,
you've probably grown up with that term as part of your standard vocabulary,
but if you are over the age of about, say, 35 years old
you probably did not grow up with the term forensic science as part of your vocabulary.
The forensic science craze in the United States is really not that old.
In my opinion,
and I'm not alone in this idea,
one pivotal event in the United States legal history
almost single handedly catapulted,
I mean rocketed forensic science
into the eyes, ears and minds of the general public.
Think you know what it is?
Have any guesses? Think about it for a minute.
Okay, I'll give you a hint.
The event occurred in 1995.
Still don't know？
How about this,
although it was a single event,
it lasted from late January through early October of that year.
Come on,
Still don't know what it is?
OK, I'll give you a couple more clues.
since forensic science is all about clues right?
The events around it,
a couple of high profile murders and the accused was a very well known American figure.
Got it yet?
Now, if I mentioned a low speed chase
in a white Ford bronco along a California freeway,
you will most likely know the answer if you haven't guessed it already.
The event I'm talking about is the infamous trial
of the infamous American Football Star in some time,
Hollywood actor OJ Simpson.
That highly publicized and televised nine month ordeal
was the beginning of the forensic science explosion that began in the United States
and has spread like wildfire throughout the popular media ever since.
During the many months of testimony,
a bunch of forensic scientists took the stand
and spoke not only to the judge the jury in a packed courtroom,
but also to a riveted, riveted public
who all of a sudden were fascinated with science and how it could be used
and some say abused in order to demonstrate guilt or innocence.
and how it could be used and some say abused
in order to demonstrate guilt or innocence.
An entire lecture series could be devoted to the Simpson trial alone,
And as of today,
nearly two hundred books,
and probably hundreds of thousands of articles have been written about it.
It's often been referred to as the trial of the century.
This case had all manner of forensics brought up as evidence.
There was the bloody glove that created the famous line.
"If it doesn't fit, you have quit"
There were bloody footprints said to be made with
extremely rare and expensive Bruno Molly shoes.
The evidence included hair analysis,
autopsy results,
bloody socks,
carpet fibers,
prior offenses and DNA profiling.
The trial was a showcase for some really dramatic testimony
and a handful of savvy and flamboyant attorneys.
There were accusations of racial bias on the part of a key detective in the case.
And of course,
the allegations of evidence tampering
that probably ultimately led to Simpson's acquittal.
I mean this case had at all.
Regardless of how you feel about the outcome of that trial,
no one can question the impact it had on the public perception
in general awareness of the field of forensic science.
And one thing that the public learned from the evidence presented
was that there are many different specialties
in many different experts involved in forensics,
and that the legal system has rules
that govern the presentation of both facts and opinions at trial.
Now let's set the stage for this course,
with one of my own cases from back in the nineties.
Now this case happened a long time ago,
and I may not have one hundred percent accuracy on all the specifics,
but this is essentially the story.
One morning in a nature preserve just outside of a town in southwest Ohio,
a man was walking his dog and discovered a human skull
almost hidden in some tall grass.
The skull was taken to the Montgomery County coroner's office in Dayton, Ohio
and I was called in.
After examining the skull and taking my measurements,
I said that I thought the skull was most likely from a white female
who was roughly what I'd call young to middle age
The skull didn't have any flesh on it,
but I knew it was recent because there were still a lot of odor of decomposition to it.
Police searched the area,
but they didn't find anything else.
and at the morgue they took a tooth from the skull and used it in DNA analysis.
In the meantime,
based on the physical description that I had given,
they began to go through local missing person's report
and found out that several months earlier,
a woman had reported her daughter Shannon
missing in that same general area.
A little while later,
when the DNA results came back from the skull,
they were compared to a reference sample the mother provided,
and the skull was identified as Shannon.
Now we have to fast forward several months.
One night, a park ranger was driving his rounds
in a nature area and southwest Ohio,
As he turned to bend in the road,
a completely naked woman came running out of the woods screaming,
"He's trying to kill me"
The police surrounded the area, they brought in the dogs,
and closed in on a guy who was trying to make his way through the woods.
The terrified woman told police that
she had willingly gone with this guy to provide sex for money.
She said he took her into the park and said he wanted to play Tarzan and Jane with her, if you can believe that
he wanted to play Tarzan and Jane with her, if you can believe that
so she took her clothes off and folded them neatly at the fringe of a tree,
and she said after that he blindfolded her and told her that
he wanted to run through the jungle with her in his arms,
so he picked her up and started to carry her,
and suddenly she felt a noose around her neck,
And as the noose was tightening around her neck,
and she was struggling to get free,
somehow the rope came down from the tree and she got away,
and that's when she ran out into the roadway
and was discovered by the Park Ranger.
So after police captured the guy,
they searched his car and found what appeared to be blood in the trunk.
Investigators developed a DNA profile from that dried blood,
and it matched Shannon's profile.
At that point,
it was apparent that the nude woman from the park
wasn't the only girl this guy had attacked.
So not only was he charged with the attempted murder of the lady in the park;
he was also charged with Shannon's murder.
And if all this wasn't already strange enough,
when news of this attempted murder came out in public,
a handful of other women started to come forward
to tell their own horrendous stories.
Several ladies came to the police and told investigators
that this guy offered the money to go with him,
and then he would attempt to strangle them until they lost consciousness and get this.
And get this, then he would try to revive them.
He would literally use CPR to try to bring them back to life.
They said, the guy said things like,
"What did it feel like to have your life in my hands?"
and "What did it feel like to be dead?"
Well, apparently Shan and didn't survive his sick little game.
But when it came time for the trial,
one of the problems was that many of these women were drug addicted.
they were all known prostitutes,
and every time they would come in for some kind of a pretrial conference,
they would either be high or agitated.
And pretty soon the prosecutor's office began to realize that
these ladies would probably not not make very good witnesses.
So the county prosecutor decided to offer the bad guy a plea bargain
if he would lead us to the rest of Shannon's remains.
And by this time it's over eighteen months
after Shannon's skull was found.
Now, in my opinion, allowing him to
plead for the rest of Shannon's remains really didn't advance the case at all.
I mean we knew Shannon was dead and we knew he probably killed her.
But this was an election year and I won't even go into the politics here.
But they decided to bring this guy out of jail
to lead us to the location where the rest of her body was,
which unbelievably was the backyard of the house,
where he lived with his wife and two children.
How sick is that?
So we assemble at his house,
mercifully, they had his wife and children leave for the day
and there I was slumped down in the back of a police cruiser peeking out
because I know this man likes to do evil things to women.
And I see him in an orange jumpsuit with his ankles and risk shackled,
being walked into his yard into his yard
with a couple of high powered rifles pointed at his head.
Now this is a rural area,
and the guy lives in a house that literally has cornfields in the back.
So they ask him where he buried Shannon,
and he said, I'm not exactly sure,
but it's a stretch somewhere along this stretch of fencing
between those two tree stumps.
The area he indicated was probably around 75 feet of fence row,
He wasn't confident of the exact spot.
So after they took him away,
I got out of the police cruiser
because it was now my job to locate and exude the unmarked grave
where allegedly we'd find the rest of Shannon's remains.
Now this was in early March and southwest Ohio,
and there had been a little bit of snow coming down all day long, so it's cold.
And the first thing the guys from the prosecutor's office wanted to do
was have the police dog or the police bring in a backhoe so we could all go home.
But I said, let me try to
figure out a way to narrow down the area where she might be buried.
I think I have an idea.
And I got down on my hands and knees
right next to the first tree stump the bad guy had pointed out,
and I started to crawl slowly along the fence row.
Now I'm pretty sure the other investigators and the guys from the prosecutor's office thought I was nuts,
and the guys from the prosecutor's office thought I was nuts,
but I had a hypothesis and I was going to test it.
I knew that when the corn was planted,
the plough couldn't come within a couple of feet of the fence.
I also knew that if Shannon's body had been buried there,
there was no way that guy could have put the soil above her
back the way it was before before we started digging the hole.
That's Locard's principle,
and we'll talk about that in the next lecture anyway.
As I crawled along the ground,
it was as smooth as glass for a while, and then
all of a sudden I hit about a six foot stretch along the fence that was all bumpy.
And I said, let's start here.
so we pulled up the grass with our hands,
and then started to take down the top dirt with shovels.
All of a sudden we hit something,
and I said, Stop!
Let me get a better look.
What we had hit was this little exposed edge of bone
that was about the size of my baby finger,
and I said it's her,
and the prosecutor said,
That's not her, that's just a root or a stick or something.
And I said, no, it's her.
This is human bone.
And he tried to keep arguing with me,
and I turned to him and said,
Actually, if you want to get specific,
it's her left iliac crest,
which is the front edge of what we call the hipbone
and within a couple of minutes,
he watched me with a hand trial,
expose her entire pelvis.
and I went from being some crazy woman crawling around on the ground
to Dr. Murray real fast.
In the next hour or two,
I took Shannon's remains out of this man's back yard.
And after almost two years we were able to
reunite shaven skull with the rest of her bones,
and her family was able to give her a proper burial.
Now, that case, that story,
as bizarre an unique as it is,
has all the makings of a typical forensic case.
Though no two of them were the same,
there are different types of evidence.
There are witnesses.
There's the requisite bad guy.
There are representatives of the legal system
and a whole bunch of different forensic scientists.
In any forensic case,
to get us back to the scientific method,
an observation begins the investigation,
whether it's the discovery of human bones,
a burglary,
a hit and run accident,
the identification of some piece of evidence or some event
signals a possible crime.
And that starts a chain of analysis.
The initial observation causes investigators
to develop hypotheses to explain what they see.
Lots of different types of evidence and expertise come into play,
as forensic invasive investigations involve unfold in a real interdisciplinary effort.
And when enough scientific evidence points to a particular suspect,
that allegation can lead to a trial.
So how will this course unfold?
Well, first, we'll take a look at different types of physical evidence
that might be indicative of criminal activity.
Things like fingerprints,
firearms,
hair,
body fluids,
DNA, drugs,
questioned documents.
Then we'll see how complicated events unfold
through analyzing things like blood stains,
particular accidents and explosions.
Then we'll turn our attention to the science of death and decomposition
and see how experts conduct death investigations and look at bodily evidence.
Then we'll change gears a little bit and talk about investigation process
as criminal profiling and using behavioral sciences to get motive,
and will take all of this evidence to the courtroom
and see how forensic science is used to trial.
Although my focus will be on the science behind forensics
If time allows, we'll look at specific cases,
in fact, will wrap things up with a couple of segments that showcase the ways
in which forensic science has been used to solve specific crimes
and to assist in mass disaster investigations
and identify unknown persons.
Along the way. I hope you'll learn a lot about the many ways
that science is used in the pursuit of justice,
so you can bust the Hollywood myths yourself when you see them on TV.
So let's do another introductory lecture now,
one on crime scene analysis
as we make our way toward a better understanding of forensic science.