guilty... but free?

I decided to change the feel of this blog alittle so i would be able to continue writing more things that would be interesting to more people.  I want the feel to be something more of less that more people will want to read.  I decided to have this geared more towards crime and criminal actions than posed to just the science aspect.  Today i decided to rant about criminals being exonerated.  In many cases coming from the eyes of a scientist the person is innocent until proven guilty.  Having taken many classes in science and math taking a course in law this semester is especially frustrating.  With law, it is not necessarily black and white.  There is always some gray area and in that gray area the person who actually is guilty may in fact be set free. In our line of work it is often stated that it is better to set a guilty man free than to imprison an innocent man. In this article i found, a man is now being exonerated after many years from DNA evidence. http://forensicnews.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-dna-evidence-may-exonerate.html
While i do agree that if he is infact innocent i feel that people rely on intricate details and loopholes in order to get out of trouble.  Although there is no way of fixing this problem it is something that is a big problem.  For example a very well renowned case like the OJ Simpson case was thrown out and he was exonerated just because of a technicality. I believe with increasing scientific inventions there will be less room for error but I can confidently say I don't think this problem will ever go away.

Critique of the CSI website

There always has to be a line between what is a real life situation and those that can only occur in movies or tv.  With the new reality series that are out the line  between fictional stories and what is real seems to be blurred.  In this blog i am going to critique the validity and correctness of many of the CSI shows and websites.  Although good tv would mean pumping up the truth to make it more desirable to watch, in many cases it is a lot of exaggeration.  The premise of the show for those non-watchers is simple, a team of investigators is set to solve crimes in what seems like record time with impressive skills.  The team is made up of characters all with their own quirks and as they work together to collect and analyze evidence and solve the crime.  Many of the techniques stated that they are using are correct but they rarely show how the analysis takes place or what is involved in the process.  Secondly, they obtain their results in what seems like record time and with great precision.  There are also many things that occur that are not possible.  Having taken a class and lab on strictly forensics i have a pretty good feel for what should take part in doing the analysis.  Often times they seem to find a fingerprint out of nowhere and have it be a full print and very clear.  From experience, when examining fingerprints it is very difficult to get a full print let alone be able to very clearly examine it and match it to another persons fingerprint.  The point of this critique is the show the reader that shows like CSI is very inexact and before considering going into this field because it looks so glamorous and fun, you should watch a real crime show on tv to get a feel for what really would be involved with that type of job. So my ending message for CSI... more science, less drama!

Review of forensics talk

When many people hear about a blog relating to science especially chemistry, they seem to run the other direction.  As someone who is going to be involved in the field later in life and writes a blog about this topic,  even I would like to run the other direction before finding some of these new blogs.  One of the most interesting ones that I have found is called Forensics Talk. In this blog it not only talks about issues that would be important to someone in the field but other interesting facts that would relate to someones life.  For example, the latest post on the page relates to social networking.  In a wide array of cases judges have requested to add people as friends on facebook in order to view their profile.  While it may seem harmless there are many lawsuits reguarding the fairness of a judge seeing someone in a light other than that which may be portrayed in the courtroom.  The biggest controversy is that someone can write whatever they want on your wall and you will have  no control over it.  The judge then sees what other people are posting on your wall not what you yourself are saying so can it be used as a valid source of character check?
Other postings are interesting as they relate to real life occurances yet tie in the science aspect so it is very informative yet still very interesting.
Overall i would reccommend this blog for readers not only in the science field!