itsme said:
You can`t get away with the DNA results [positive in this case]
Yep!
Ecxactly No DNA in those days!
No, but unfortunately DNA & Forensic evidence can be faulty (there is always a margin of error) or tampered with. Not to mention straight up human stupidity.
In the David Bain case much was made of the blood spatter pattern on the wall behind the father where he was found, dead & holding the murder weapon (a shotgun). It was claimed that the angle was not quite consistent with his having shot himself. The whole thing was rushed and only photographic evidence was used. There was no testing for non visible blood splatter although such testing was available at the time. Neither the prosecution or the defense picked up on the fact that the family dog had been allowed to roam free in the house for over an hour & a half.
I recieved a head injury once during a siezure. When i returned from the hospital I was appalled at the amount of blood. After all the war & horror movies I'd seen, I never would've believed a person could lose so much blood & survive.
My friend Lynda had saved my life when I had fallen, face down into the hearth, my shoulders fitting in the hearth suround & damming the flow of blood. She had held my head up by my hair (I was jammed in too tight & was to heavy for her to drag me out... although her trying to do so had made quite a mess) keeping my face above the blood level preventing me from drowning in my own blood.
She told me that actually it was only about 1/3 of the actual amount of blood because my dogs had drunk & licked up the rest.
Grossed out yet?
When I had started to come around, from the seizure & the concussion (just before the ambulance arrived) I had tried to stagger to my feet, of course I fell down again but I'm a subborn b*gga I tried again, falling against the door & leaving a perfect handprint there before falling down again. By the time the ambulance attendants had managed to talk/drag me onto a stretcher there was blood everywhere.
I wonder what the blood spatter patterns woul've made of the scene if I had died before the ambulance arrived?
Evidence of a struggle. Would the torn hairs on Lynda's hand & bruising on the back of my scalp have indicated that she had grabbed my hair & slammed my head against the Mantlepiece (The tonic spasm of a siezure throws every muscle in the body into spasm, I hit the Mantlepiece with great force... much more than from a simple fall, I still have a dint in my skull)? The evidence clearly showed I had obviously staggered around, trying to run, to escape, before finally collapsing in the hearth. More evidence showing that Lynda had tried to move the body but failed before thinking to call the ambulance, leaving bloody fingerprints on the phone, and to try to 'play the hero'. Who knows, the person I now owe my life to could've spent the next decade or so in prison for my murder.
I saw the mess in there. The blood evidence would certainly have fitted with that description VERY nicely. In general blood does not record what order events occured in. And with the Newspapers screaming for justice, in the murder of a single mother of two young children, would Lynda's 'improbable' story even been taken seriously? How could she prove that what she said was true against the weight of the evidence?
Real forensic experts laugh at programmes like CSI & what they imply forensic evidence is capable of & of how they infer the 'sterility' of the crime scene & the scientific precisenes of the analysis they carry out. There is no such thing as an uncontaminated crime scene. All scientific analysis carry a greater or lesser margin of error & in many cases there simply is no alternative but to base their calculations on the best ESTIMATE they can extrapolate. I expect most of the software experts on this forum laugh just as hard, as does my ex husband who teaches 3rd year computer programming at the university. He loves the program & finds it hilarious what they imply that they can do with the computer software on those & other detective style programes. Especially the graphics work. This being one of his personal specialities. He loves it & can't believe that people actually believe that stuff.
What real cso's & other forensic experts have to deal with is much much harder & much more imprecise than any hollywood studio can convey.
And forensic evidence can be wrong. Just the same as any evidence can. And detectives are as human as anyone else. They are as likely to be out there trying to 'prove a theory' as find out what actually happened.
And anyone who's studied statistics knows that you can make them say whatever you want. It's all in the way you word it & what you choose to see or ignore.
I love forensics, I've been studying it personally for over a decade, it fascinates me and I have a huge respect for the people who work in the field. The advances they have made in the last couple of decades are astounding. But don't ever make the mistake of thinking that you are dealing with a precise science. You can't even get 100% certainty in laboratory conditions. Out in the field....
