Crime Scene
This principle states that whenever two objects come into contact, material may be exchanged between them.
What is Locard's Exchange Principle?
This type of evidence requires an inference to connect it to a fact at issue.
What is circumstantial evidence?
This fingerprint pattern has ridges that enter and exit on the same side and normally has one delta.
What is a loop?
This formula is used to calculate density.
What is mass divided by volume?
A soil sample from a crime scene appears darker than a reference sample collected from a suspect's shoe. You discover that the crime-scene sample is wet while the reference sample is dry. What should you do before comparing their colors?
Thoroughly dry the soil samples before making the color comparison.
This documentation method creates a permanent visual record of the crime scene before evidence is moved.
What is crime-scene photography?
This legal standard asks whether a scientific principle or technique is generally accepted within the relevant scientific community.
What is the Frye standard?
This fingerprint pattern normally has no delta.
What is an arch?
These are the finest of the three major soil particle categories.
What is clay?
An AFIS search produces a possible fingerprint candidate. Why should the investigator not automatically report that candidate as the person who left the print?
Because AFIS generates potential candidates; it does not make the final identification. The fingerprint must undergo appropriate examiner analysis and comparison, including the ACE-V process and verification.
This record documents personnel entering and leaving a crime scene and helps control access.
What is the scene personnel/access log?
This modern admissibility framework considers factors such as testability, peer review, standards, and potential error rate.
What is the Daubert standard?
A ridge ending or bifurcation is an example of this type of fingerprint characteristic.
What is a minutia?
This soil horizon is generally associated with humus-rich topsoil and biological activity.
What is the A horizon?
A shoe recovered from a suspect has a tread pattern that matches the general design of a shoe print found at a crime scene. Why would this generally be considered class evidence rather than an individual identification?
Because the same tread design may be present on many shoes of the same model or type. The pattern may associate the shoe with a class of shoes but does not necessarily establish that one particular shoe made the impression.
This crime-scene search method divides an area into smaller sectors or zones.
What is a zone search?
This principle explains why physical evidence such as fibers, soil, glass, or other trace materials may transfer between people, objects, and locations.
What is Locard's Exchange Principle?
This four-step fingerprint examination process stands for Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, and Verification.
What is ACE-V?
This standardized system describes soil color using hue, value, and chroma.
What is the Munsell Soil Color Notation system?
A forensic laboratory reports that a soil sample from a suspect's shoe is "consistent with" soil from the crime scene. What does this conclusion NOT automatically establish?
It does not automatically establish that the suspect's shoe definitely came into contact with that specific crime scene or that the suspect committed the crime.
This constitutional amendment protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures and is particularly important when evaluating government searches.
What is the Fourth Amendment?
This Supreme Court case addressed the government's acquisition of historical cell-site location information and Fourth Amendment privacy concerns.
What is Carpenter v. United States?
This well-known case involved an erroneous fingerprint identification of Brandon Mayfield and demonstrated the dangers associated with examiner error and contextual information.
What is the Brandon Mayfield fingerprint case?
This technique separates soil particles according to size and can be used to develop a particle-size distribution profile.
What is mechanical sieving?
What is the difference between the scientific significance of evidence and its legal admissibility?
Scientific significance concerns what the evidence actually tells us and how strongly it supports a conclusion. Legal admissibility concerns whether the evidence is allowed to be considered by the court under applicable legal rules.