VCU magazine (1991-09)

              A PUBLICATION FOR ALUMNI OF THE ACADEMIC AND MEDICAL COLLEGE OF VIRGINIA CAMPUSES OF VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
Th~.""'"" < Division of Forensic
Richmond, the "crime lab ,"
provides a fascinating peek into a
world of science,
medicine,
physics, and law
e nforceme nt. Of
the 350 forensic
labs around the
nation , only 77
are fully accred­ited
and Virginia 's
lab is o ne of
them. And it is .
also the scene of
a highly success­ful
cooperative
program for grad­uate
students
seeking a
maste r's degree
[The Return of
day objects used in extmordinarily
unusual situations.
How do you match up small slivers
of metal taken from a body with a
knife found in a dumpster? Or how
do you determine who was driving
the car in a crash? Was his foot on the
gas or the brake? How fast was he
going and were the lights o n' Just ask
Jo nes.
YCU's master program, she ex­plains,
is modeled after one at the
University of Pittsburgh. (The ir
program is no longer active.) The
program is highly lab o riented, offer­ing
stude nts an
intensive hands­on
experience.
According to
Jo nes, th e o nly
way to learn
forensic science
is to do it.
in forensic
science. YCU
offers one of only
Most forensic
labs a re con­nected
with city
or county law
enforcement
agencies, or sher­iffs
departments.
But Virginia's
serves all law
enforcement
branches in the
state, yet is not
Ann D. Jones' '90 lab is a museum of broken
automobile headlights. photos of entry wounds. and
handguns of all descriptions.
part of anyone
agency. Because the program is
unique , Jo nes would like to see the
University recruit more aggressively
from science programs up and down
the East Coast.
five such post-gradua te programs in
the United States.
Courses are taught at the fa cility by
the lab's 15 forensic scie ntists who
serve as adj unct pro fessors at the
Unive rsity. The program is mo re fasci­nating
than any novel, and a stude nt's
course of study includes the seven
divisions of forensic science.
Ann D. Jones '90 is both a gradu­ate
of the program as well as o ne of
its adj unct professors. She is an
intense, olltgoing woman with a
sense of humor and a passion for her
work as an investigator in the
firearms/ tool ma rks division. This
broad-based section includes match­ing
the weapon or tool to the action.
In the adjo ining room is a water
tank for testing projectile/ firearm
match-ups. Her work is a marvel of
applying everyday physics to every-
It is a tough and demanding course
of study. Each year between 24 and
36 students take part in the program.
Since classes were first offered in
1984 only 75 stude nts have received
their degrees.
Even after attaining a master's in
fo rensic science, it takes another nine
mo nths to three years of o n-the-job
training to acqu ire the technical skills
needed to qualify as a forensic scien­tist.
Almost half of the instructo rs in
the Richmond o ffice and several per­sonne
l in the lab's Fairfax, Norfolk,
and Roanoke offices are graduates of
the VCU program, a credit to its
ca liber.
The workload is staggering. The
crime lab is stacked with hundreds o f
rensic Scientists
stapled and taped brown
labeled ''' E\nCIE J\ICE: ''--300,0'<S~i
of it a year, in fact, pass
branches, represe nting some
cases. Investigators at the lab do
do crime site analysis. Instead , they
train law enforcement agents in
collecting, preserving, and submitting
evidence.
In addition tofirearmsltoolmarks
there are six other divisions of
evidence testing. Drug analysis is the
lab's la rgest section. He re all
suspicious substances are submitted
for identification and analysis. Latent
prints is the divi­sion
which
includes finger­print
matching
and determining
information from
footprints. Ques­tioned
documents
deals with hand-interesting
extension of medi­cal
technology" and left the hospital
lab for the crime lab.
Each of the members of the
Div ision o f Forensic Science must be
more than the best scienti fic investiga­tor
in his or her fie ld. They must also
have the abil ity to explain and defend
their conclusions in understandable
terms and an objective manner to a
judge o r jury. So tra ining e ntails test­ing
at a "moot
court. "
"A good
defense attorney
can take you
apa rt," says the
division's direc­tor,
Dr. Paul B.
Ferrara. "You
w riting verifi ­must
maintain
cation and
forgeries of any­thing
from checks
and credit card
receipts to lo ttery
tickets. Trace evi­dence
includes
finding accelle r­ants
in suspected
arson cases, ana­lyzing
the source
Jean Hamilton '87/ 81 works in the serologv/ONA
division where one of the newest and most publicized
advances in crime fighting is taking place.
your composure
under stiff cross­examination.
"
Courts are more
dependent on
forensic evidence
now than in the
past, he explains.
"Today eyewit­nesses
are unde­pendable;
the
of paint, glass, o r any other
substance. And toxicology also
includes all blood sample testing fo r
DUI cases.
The serologylDNA division's work
involves the identification of body fl u­ids
and applies some of the most cur­rent
innovations in medica l tech­no
logy to the field of law enforce­ment.
In recent years Vi rginia has
made nationwide headli nes by being
the first state to provide DNA
(deoxyribonucleic acid) identification
capability and establishing the first
operatio nal data bank. Some of its
work will be on display when the
CBS program "48 Hours" features the
.crime lab i~ an upcoming segment
about Richmond mystery writer
Patricia Cornwell, author of
Postmoltem.
Jean Murdock Hamilton '871'81 is a
serologist and o ne of the program's
burden on the prose.cution to
establish guilt is greater. They want
scie ntific fact- beyond a reasonable
doubt." The re is no acceptable error
rate. Despite the fascinating challenge
of their work they cannot lose sight of
the fact that their findi ngs could ulti­mately
determine a person's guilt or
innocence.
Electron microscopes have
replaced the ivory handled
magnifying glass. Chemical analysis
by computer does in hours what it
used to take a person days o f testing
to determine. Sherlock Holmes might.
not recognize the methods used in
today's fo rensic lab, but he certain ly
would approve.
JudIth C