Forensics has been a growing industry for a while now. College graduates competing to get a job with the FBI, CIA, and state crime investigation departments. However, you need experience to get into those departments, and no one is willing to hire someone to give them experience.
If you’re like me, who went to school to pursue a career in crime scene investigation only to get denied for even an unpaid volunteer program and told to wait 10 years until someone retired, then hopefully this blog is what you need to scratch the itch.
Science and law go hand in hand. Scientific experts are hired, usually on each side of the courtroom to tell the truth and provide unbiased testimony to a case. Unfortunately, some experts can become manipulated and even lie on trial to give one side a level-up against the other. This can make or break a case. One of my favorite cases is the Casey Anthony case where Dr. G testified saying that Caylee Anthony died of homicide, yet there was not a homicide conviction, even to this day. Casey was only convicted of lying to police. Child abuse/neglect was on the table at one point, and then neglect dropped. The defense team could have lost the case on that since they claimed Caylee drowned in the family pool; Casey and her father allegedly tried to cover up Caylee’s death. Casey was ultimately found not guilty to murder, aggravated child abuse, and aggravated manslaughter of a child. Links to part of Dr. G’s testimony and press conference after the autopsy below if you are not familiar with it.
-Count 1: First-Degree Murder – Not Guilty
-Count 2: Aggravated Child Abuse – Not Guilty
-Count 3: Aggravated Manslaughter of a Child – Not Guilty
-Counts 4, 5, 6 and 7: Providing False Information to Law Enforcement – Guilty
But before I get into any specific case, let’s talk about some of the basics in forensics. There are multiple aspects of the forensics world that you need to know about:
Fingerprint analysis
Impressions/tool marks
Blood spatter (think of Dexter-one of the only fictional crime shows I watched because it is damn good and Michael C. Hall is drop dead gorgeous killing criminals)
DNA analysis
Toxicology
Trace evidence
Ballistics
When we get into different criminalists in cases, they have specific job titles like crime scene investigator, latent print examiner, firearms examiner, tool mark examiner, document examiner, and the trace evidence examiner. The specialists are:
Pathologist (disease)
Anthropologist (skeletal)
Odontologist (dental)
Entomologist (insects)
Psychiatrist (mental)
Serologist (blood)
Toxicologist (drugs/poison)
Botanist (plants)
Of course the medical examiner is the big guy on campus, and usually is an expert in pathology and is always licensed to practice medicine. They determine the identity of the victim, cause of death, time window of death, collect evidence from the body, and sign the death certificate.
Now that I have dumbed the basics down for all of you newcomers, let’s get into why this blog is called Mortis. My favorite part of class was learning about my three friends from the same family, Mortis: Rigor, Pallor, and Livor.
Rigor Mortis is the most well-known aspect of decomposition. It is the stiffening/contraction of muscles caused by chemical reactions (ATP) that take place post-mortem. It is the ‘rigid state’ of a body.
Pallor Mortis is the paleness of a body, that sets in almost immediately after death. After going into my grandfather’s hospice room once he passed, it was amazing how much paler he became. About an hour or two later (I cannot really remember the time), rigor mortis set in as my mom was trying to shut his eyes and could only get them half closed. He was as white as a ghost (pun intended) yet looked like a calm after the storm.
Finally, my favorite mortis to solve a crime, is Livor Mortis! It is also known as the postmortem hypostasis or lividity. It helps determine the time of death and indicate whether the body was moved after death. The stagnation of the blood vessels helps with this, because gravity pools the blood to the lowest part of the body, closest to the ground. If a body is laying on their back, then the blood will be along the spine, buttocks, and back of the legs. If they are laying on their right side at the time of death, the blood pools only to that person’s right side; it can be nowhere else. This is a big deal in the case of Hae Min Lee. A case I have been following closely about Adnan Syed’s conviction (wrongful in my opinion). The lividity of her body was not concise with how Lee’s body was found in Leakin Park. We may talk more about this later on, but I think between Serial season 1 and Undisclosed, they have it covered.
This blog will be a little bit of learning, a little investigating. It could be old or new cases. But it will be everything that deals with a criminal investigation, from law, forensics, psychology, etc.
Parts of information will be my own thoughts and knowledge, as well as some expert and textbook knowledge, like from Forensics for Dummies, written by D. P. Lyle, MD. You can purchase the book on Amazon, link below, if you want to follow along.
We may also be able to hear from people directly involved in the cases we talk about, but no promises. That will be the future of this blog, fingers crossed.
In the meantime, let me know what you want to hear, or if you have any questions.
mortiscrime.com 