Legal Investigations

In the last century, the primary texts on forensic entomology were those by Smith (1986) for reference, and Catts & Haskell (1990) for teaching and training. Between their publication and that of the first edition of Forensic Entomology : The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations (Byrd & Castner 2000), about 16 research papers relevant to forensic entomology appeared each year; since then it has been over 40, and several more books (Greenberg & Kunish 2002; Wyss & Cherix 2006; Gennard 2007; Amendt et al. 2010) have appeared. With so much research accumulating, it was certainly time for an updated edition.

The authors present the medico-legal investigations and identification after the aircrash of the Airbus A320 upon the Mount Sainte-Odile (France). The identification team comprising investigators from the gendarmerie, forensic pathologists, odontologists, and scientists of the Institute from Legal Medecine rapidly retrieved and identified 85 of the 87 victims, with 17 being identified through DNA typing, three through fingerprints and the remaining through dental records and specific physical or X-ray findings. Full autopsies were performed on all fatalities to determine patterns of injury and cause of death. Results lead us to point out the importance of a multidisciplinary team of forensic practitioners especially trained for managing medico-legal investigation in mass disaster and the ability of DNA technology to solve complex identification problems.

Sensemaking occurs when people face the problem of forming an understanding of a situation. One scenario in which technology has a particularly significant impact on sensemaking and its success is in legal investigations. Legal investigations extend over time, are resource intensive, and require the sifting and re-representation of large collections of electronic evidence and close collaboration between multiple investigators. In this article, we present an account of sensemaking in three corporate legal investigations. We summarize information interaction processes in the form of a model which conceptualizes processes as resource transformations triggered and shaped by both bottom-up and top-down resources. The model both extends upon and validates aspects of a previous account of investigative sensemaking (Pirolli & Card, 2005) and brings to the fore two kinds of focusing. Data focusing involves identifying and structuring information to draw out facts relevant to a given set of investigation issues. Issue focusing involves revising the issues in the light of new insights. Both are essential in sensemaking. We draw this distinction through detailed accounts of two activities in the investigations: reviewing documents for relevance and the creation and use of external representations. This provides a basis for a number of requirements for sensemaking support systems, particularly in collaborative settings, including document annotation; dynamically associating documents of a given type; interacting with documents in fluid ways; linking external representation elements to evidence; filtering external representations in flexible ways; and viewing external representations at different levels of scale and fidelity. Finally, we use our data to analyze the conceptual elements within a “line of inquiry.” This provides a framework that can form the basis for partitioning information into hierarchically embedded inquiry ‘contexts’ within collaborative sensemaking systems.

Insects and related arthropods are the most abundant organisms on the planet Earth and found in almost all conceivable habitats, including those associated with human inhabitation. These animals are intimately involved as major players in sustaining ecological functions and ecosystem processes. Accordingly, these arthropods are often found associated with human activities, including homicide, as we encounter them in our daily lives. Forensic entomology is the application of entomological evidence to resolving litigation (civil cases) and solving crimes, most often those of violence and death (medicocriminal cases). This book, Forensic Entomology: The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations, focuses on the criminological application of entomology and provides a smorgasbord of medicocriminal entomology and associated practices prepared by leading practicing scientists in this and related disciplines. This is the first comprehensive treatise of medicolegal entomology to bring together archival and new information for forensic practitioners since publication of Smith's A Manual of Forensic Entomology (1986).

During legal investigations, analysts typically create external representations of an investigated domain as resource for cognitive offloading, reflection and collaboration. For investigations involving very large numbers of documents as evidence, creating such representations can be slow and costly, but essential. We believe that software tools, including interactive visualisation and machine learning, can be transformative in this arena, but that design must be predicated on an understanding of how such tools might support and enhance investigator cognition and team-based collaboration. In this paper, we propose an approach to this problem by: (a) allowing users to visually externalise their evolving mental models of an investigation domain in the form of thematically organized Anchored Narratives; and (b) using such narratives as a (more or less) tacit interface to cooperative, mixed initiative machine learning. We elaborate our approach through a discussion of representational forms significant to legal investigations and discuss the idea of linking such representations to machine learning.

Byrd J.H. & Tomberlin J.K. (eds) 2020: Forensic Entomology: The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations. 3rd Ed. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, xxxiv + 585 pp. ISBN 978-0-815-35016-3 (hardback), 978-0-815-35020-0 (paperback), 978-1351163767 (ebook). Price USD 120.00 (hardback), USD 74.99 (paperback), USD 67.49 (e-book).

Records indicate that during the period of 24 years and 3 months (Jan 1963-Mar 1987) Department of Legal Medicine, Kurume University School of Medicine conducted medico-legal investigations on accidental death of 26 cases in total which occurred in process of medical practice, including 24 judicial autopsies and 2 cases by documentary investigations (clinical anamnesis, clinical diary and testimony records). The breakdown of judicial autopsy cases is following. 1) Age and sex of decedents by accident: One year and downward-2 cases (male 2), Teens-8 cases (male 3, female 5), Twenties-4 cases (male 1, female 3), Thirties-5 cases (male 1, female 4), Forties-3 cases (male 3, female 1), Fifties-3 cases (male 2, female 1), Sixties and Seventies-1 case (male) respectively. 2) Causes of accident: Making injection 17 cases (penicillin, procaine, isozol, vaccine etc., male 7, female 10), operation 3 cases (adenoidectomy, push back of the cleft palate, curettage of the nucleus, male 2, female 1), stomach biopsy 1 case (male), blood transfusion (air embolism, female), and erroneous diagnosis 2 cases (male 1, female 1). 3) Some remarks to be taken account in performance of medicolegal activities were stated for the adequate investigation.

In the present study, insect fauna were identified in the carcass of the free-ranging urban dog, Canis domesticus (L.) in tropical region, i.e., Takht Bhai, Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan during 15-25 May 2011. Decomposition of the carcass has been divided into 5 stages: fresh (1-12 h), bloat (13-36 h), active decay (37-84 h), advanced decay (85-166 h) and dry stage (167-286 h) that can be used as an important tool in legal investigations. The collected insects were identified into 11 species of 3 orders. First arrived species were the blow flies, Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart) and jummper ant, Myrmecia pilosula (Smith) to the carcass. The species dominating in the early (fresh and bloat) stages of decomposition was C. rufifacies with their adults, pupae and larvae. The species dominating in the later (active and advanced decays) stages of decomposition was the clown beetle, Hister sp. (Gullenhal) with their adults, pupae and larvae. The average temperature (min.: 28.3±1.8; max.: 40.4±1.7), humidity (38.8%), and rainfalls (3.8 mm) were found affecting insect larvae, pupae and adults, and rate of decomposition of C. domesticus. This research showed fast rate of decomposition of C. domesticus carcass in Mardan region and the ecological succession pattern of insects were indicator for post mortem interval time estimation of death.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE In 2018, 218,660 cases of cannabis-related legal investigations were registered by the German police. In the present study, predictors and effects of cannabis-related legal investigations are investigated. METHODS Retrospective cohort study with 10,432 subjects between 15 and 46 years of age (M=22.2 years, SD=4.8) of which 54.6% were male. The sample recruitment took place in 2018 over social media. The online questionnaire included potential predictors and as outcome measures mental health, social status, unemployment, income, and problematic cannabis and alcohol use. RESULTS A total of 9,246 subjects (88.6%) had consumed cannabis in their lifetime. A cannabis-related legal investigation had been initiated against 1,736 subjects (18.8%). These individuals were more likely to be male, older, less likely to achieve A-levels, scored higher on sensation seeking, were more likely to report ADHD, started cannabis use earlier, and had higher levels of all cannabis use variables. No significant associations were found between cannabis-related legal investigations and the level of income, unemployment, mental health or subjective social status. Of the never or former consumers, 63.4 and 44.8%, respectively, reported that fear to get into trouble with the law was a reason for non-use. CONCLUSION There was no evidence that cannabis-related legal investigations had any impact on the current life or health situation. Fears of getting into trouble with the law were particularly relevant for people who had never used, or were currently not using cannabis.

Death investigations generate the most comprehensive information for sudden and unexpected deaths, including fatalities that result from road trauma. However, these data have not been analysed in Victoria to understand cyclist fatality crash factors. This study examined the coroner’s records for all cyclist fatalities in Victoria from 1 January 2000 to December 2014 (n=137). The majority of crashes involved adult cyclists (86.1%) and 8 times as many males as female cyclists. The majority of crashes involved a motor vehicle (77.3%) or were a cyclist-only crash (14.5%). Crash factors were analysed in depth and priority areas for action were identified. Background Medico-legal investigations of road fatality crashes are routinely conducted in Australia in accordance with state and territory coronial legislation. However, these reports have been underutilised in Australia to identify the presence of risk factors for cyclist fatality crashes. Internationally, coronial data has been examined to understand factors in cyclist fatality crashes (Johnson et al. In Press). Previous studies have recommended helmet use (Oström et al. 1993, Sjöegren et al. 1993, Bajanowski et al. 1994), reported a relationship between substance impairment, particularly alcohol and fatalities (Olkkonen et al. 1993, Rowe et al. 1995) and an increased likelihood crash risk at night or low light conditions (Rowe et al. 1995, Bíl et al. 2010). Heavy vehicles were overrepresented (McCarthy and Gilbert 1996, Moore-Bridger 2009) and speed has been identified as a major contributing factor (Bíl et al. 2010). The aim of this study was to examine the coronial records for all cyclist fatality crashes, including onand off-road, in Victoria, Australia from 2000 to 2014 to identify the presence and pattern of contributing factors and to identify priority areas for action.