The Relationship between Research and Casework in Forensic Entomology
Abstract
:Simple Summary
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Research and Casework—Similarities and Differences
- “The opinions you expressed in your statement went a considerable way to support our hypothesis, based on a number of other known facts. Your statement was accepted in evidence by the defence. I was very pleased with the accuracy of the opinions you expressed, which I am sure went someway to causing the defendant to change his account. Had he not changed his account at the eleventh hour we would have relied considerably upon your evidence to convince the jury (of our hypothesis). I am therefore satisfied that the evidence you provided was useful to the case and represented good value for money.”
- “…the investigation team were very happy to be told that death occurred on the day [the victim] went missing as this hugely reduced the amount of CCTV they had to view.” (NB: investigators still had to view >11,000 h of CCTV in this case.).
- “Your statement was crucial in securing guilty pleas. The two accused were pleading not guilty up until the moment of the trial beginning. The trial, had it run, would have lasted a week or so at great expense, so your statement led to those guilty pleas. So, value for money it was worth it.”
- Provision of just six larvae for analysis when many thousands are evident on scene photographs.
- Puparia (apparent on scene photographs) were overlooked in collections because they were not on the body and did not move, and so were just not considered part of the insect evidence, although they were most likely the oldest stages present.
- All larvae collected alive for rearing were dead on arrival at the laboratory as they were transported in sealed plastic pots inside air-tight evidence bags (Figure 1).
- Being asked to identify and determine the age of dried, flattened larvae 3.5 years post-collection, following their storage without preservative in a sealed glass jar kept in a fridge (remarkably, immersion in potassium hydroxide (KOH) [5] enabled them to be identified to species and assigned to a life stage) (Figure 2).
3. Research and Casework—A Mutually Beneficial Relationship
- Andrew Hart and I worked on two cases in quick succession in central and southern England in which the body of the victim was concealed inside a suitcase. In both cases there were fly larvae on the bodies and the question was, "can adult flies deposit their eggs on a suitcase in such a way that the larvae can develop on the body inside?" The subsequent research showed that not only can first instar larvae penetrate through suitcase zippers, but also that female flies can insert their ovipositors through the zippers and lay eggs inside the suitcase, enabling the hatching larvae to colonise the body [56].
- The oldest insect stages in a case in northern England in late Autumn were newly hatched first instar larvae from egg batches laid around a neck ligature and in the facial orifices. Most of the available information on blow fly egg stages gives a period from egg-laying to egg-hatching, therefore, aging of the specimens in this case was possible as they had just hatched: it was around six days due to the cool temperatures. However, if they had not hatched we would have struggled to age them and, at the low temperatures of this case or even lower, this embryonic period could be quite lengthy. Therefore, for use in similar future cases, we developed a simple method to estimate the age of Calliphora vicina (Diptera: Calliphoridae) eggs by morphological characters [57].
- An indoor case I attended in southern UK featured a large number of dead adult flies on the floor together with many dispersing larvae and puparia, but none of the latter in our collections were empty. Some adults were just emerging from puparia at the time of collection, so could we have overlooked empty puparia and was there any way of distinguishing if adults flies found at a scene had developed on the body or had, instead, flown in from outside? Developing the age-grading technique of wing fray, that was first used for tsetse flies (Diptera: Glossinidae) [58], we found that there were indeed major differences between the wing fray of populations of flies that emerged and died in a room, after developing as larvae on a body, compared with those that flew into the room from outdoors [59].
4. Challenges for the Future
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Areas of Difference | Research | Casework |
---|---|---|
Qualifications needed | PhD required | PhD and expert witness skills |
Nature of study | Experimental replication | One-off, unique scenario |
Proactive | Reactive | |
Planned schedule | Often highly disruptive | |
Self-managed deadlines | Imposed, strict deadlines | |
Productions from study | Research publications | Expert witness statements |
Rewards for production | Citation indices, academic credit | Often no academic credit but knowledge of the societal benefit |
In an Ideal World the Forensic Entomologist: | In Reality There Are Cases Where: |
---|---|
visits the scene; | the forensic entomologist does not visit the scene; |
collects a good range of insect evidence; | insect evidence collected is suboptimal in range; |
preserves the insects appropriately; | insect evidence is not preserved properly; |
retains some specimens alive for rearing; | specimens collected alive die before delivery; |
collects scene meteorological data to compare with the nearest weather station; | no meteorological data is collected at the scene; |
collects evidence at the start of the investigation; | evidence is only made available to the forensic entomologist months/years after the case; |
prepares a robust expert witness statement. | it is extremely difficult to prepare a robust expert witness statement. |
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Hall, M.J.R. The Relationship between Research and Casework in Forensic Entomology. Insects 2021, 12, 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12020174
Hall MJR. The Relationship between Research and Casework in Forensic Entomology. Insects. 2021; 12(2):174. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12020174
Chicago/Turabian StyleHall, Martin J. R. 2021. "The Relationship between Research and Casework in Forensic Entomology" Insects 12, no. 2: 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12020174
APA StyleHall, M. J. R. (2021). The Relationship between Research and Casework in Forensic Entomology. Insects, 12(2), 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12020174