Feb. 10, 2003 – A man driving down the road hits two people walking in the dark before him. One dies, but the driver is found not guilty of the death. Why not?
The answer comes from the field of forensic science.
On Saturday, investigators in the Virgin Islands got some tips on the methods of finding out "why not" — or "why" — for themselves at a day-long seminar on forensics held at the Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort on St. Thomas.
The presentation was sponsored by the V.I. Association of Legal Assistants. Organizers explained that it is the legal assistant who helps prepare testimony and evidence for lawyers, and who often interprets notes from investigators.
"Even though forensics may not apply directly to our jobs, it definitely applies to defense attorneys, to prosecuting attorneys," association member Georgeann Peters said.
To discuss the fine points of checking out the scene of a crime or an accident, the seminar organizers brought to the territory Texas forensic scientist Alan Weckerling, whose work has been featured on cable television's The Discovery Channel.
Among the investigators taking notes on Saturday were members of the V.I. Fire Service, employees of the V.I. Justice and Planning and Natural Resources Departments, insurance claims investigators and reporters.
In an exercise called "Throw Momma off the Balcony," Weckerling reconstructed a case where he was called in to prove that an "accidental" death in which a woman supposedly fell off a balcony after losing her balance was actually a homicide. He showed how he used a microscope to find evidence that led to conviction of the victim's son.
But in the case of what truly is an accident, he pointed out, investigators must try to piece together what happened.
"A lot of things he talked about … can be used in arson investigations," Fire Marshal Glen Francis said. "We don't have the resources, but when you have the knowledge and the contacts, you can always get in contact, if it's necessary, with the right people with expertise."
In another exercise, Weckerling handed out photographs of a telephone truck, its front end sheared off by a train. In five years of working for the phone company, the driver had been in four other accidents with telephone trucks. But before the company could terminate him, they had to prove what happened at the time of the fifth accident.
In an airplane crash, investigators search for answers in the aircraft's "black box," the flight-data recorder. Weckerling told his audience that today, in some models, cars also come with the equivalent of black boxes.
"The air-bag module can record the last five seconds of your car's history — that includes the percent flung, did you have your foot on it hard, the engine RPM's, was the engine running, was it responding to whatever you were doing with the throttle, the application of the breaks … and the vehicle speed," he said.
In the truck-train collision, there was no black box, but there were clues to follow, including the direction of skid marks, witness accounts, the angle of the sun at the time and the length of time the train was in view before the crash.
No criminal charges were brought against the truck driver, but the phone company fired him — because of the evidence uncovered showing that he had violated numerous company rules, including drinking and smoking in the truck and carrying personal fishing tackle in the vehicle.
Skid marks also factored into the case where the driver struck the two pedestrians walking down the road in the dark.
Investigators determined that the pedestians were wearing dark clothing and had just walked from a pool of light from a streetlight into darkness; and that the driver, having just passed through that same pool of light, struck the two before his eyes had time to adjust to that darkness.
With these and other case studies, Weckerling brought home the importance of paying attention to details. The goal of forensics, he said, is to do such a thorough job that the investigators on the opposing side are left with no insights, interpretations or fudge factors that could make the scientific findings open to challenge in court.
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