Crime Scene Investigation
We started the project by learning about exoneration. When someone is exonerated they are released from prison by means of evidence against the original sentence. We watched a movie about three kids who were exonerated called West of Memphis. This movie coved DNA analysis but mostly the justice system. We were able to see After this we started researching crime scenes. Me and my partner were assigned crime scene 1. Crime scene 1 was a case where the victim was shot. We did a series of tests to determine what happened to the victim. Through these tests we were able to conclude the victim was drugged by his stepson and shot by his mom.
The first thing we did in crime scene 1 was we analysed the blood spatter on the wall and determined that our victim was shot when he was laying head down under the influence. This was also confirmed after finding the angle of bullet trajectory. We then did a toxicology report and discovered that our victim had large amounts of alcohol and Oxycontin in his blood. We then Iodine fumed the pill bottle, firearm, and alcohol bottles found at the scene. From this we found that there were no fingerprints found on the firearm, but the victims prints were found on the bottles of alcohol. The victim's wife and step son's prints were found on the pill bottle. We received a permit to search the step son's house and found blood on his sink. After determining that both the victim and the stepson had the same blood type, we used nucleic DNA analysis . After analyzing the DNA we determined that it was in fact the blood of our victim.
The most interesting forensic science that I learned about was nucleic DNA extraction. I thought that this was the most interesting because the science is evolving so rapidly there is always room for improvement. It’s also cool because everyone has the exact same DNA, yet only 0.0000001 percent is different, this is a very interesting fact. I feel like during this project I did well with labs because they were engaging and interesting. Something that I struggled with was the writing because we were not given enough time to write long papers and I struggle with the technical writing.
The first thing we did in crime scene 1 was we analysed the blood spatter on the wall and determined that our victim was shot when he was laying head down under the influence. This was also confirmed after finding the angle of bullet trajectory. We then did a toxicology report and discovered that our victim had large amounts of alcohol and Oxycontin in his blood. We then Iodine fumed the pill bottle, firearm, and alcohol bottles found at the scene. From this we found that there were no fingerprints found on the firearm, but the victims prints were found on the bottles of alcohol. The victim's wife and step son's prints were found on the pill bottle. We received a permit to search the step son's house and found blood on his sink. After determining that both the victim and the stepson had the same blood type, we used nucleic DNA analysis . After analyzing the DNA we determined that it was in fact the blood of our victim.
The most interesting forensic science that I learned about was nucleic DNA extraction. I thought that this was the most interesting because the science is evolving so rapidly there is always room for improvement. It’s also cool because everyone has the exact same DNA, yet only 0.0000001 percent is different, this is a very interesting fact. I feel like during this project I did well with labs because they were engaging and interesting. Something that I struggled with was the writing because we were not given enough time to write long papers and I struggle with the technical writing.