Are the courts ready to learn something new, asks anguished forensic scientist

She's a long way from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional Sherlock Holmes, but she knows the facts of forensic science well enough to ask some leading questions of the courts - are you overburdened with legal learning? Are you familiar with science? Can you keep up with scientific advances and the new kinds of evidence being proffered, to sift it, to analyse it and then to accept it or reject it?

Going a step further, she states bluntly that there is no communication between the three vital wings, the judiciary, the investigators and the forensic scientists. They are feeding off each other, working in isolation, trying to fulfil the common goal of criminal justice.

Sadly, even when scientific evidence is brought to court, it is not questioned correctly, hence it never receives due recognition. But once it is accepted, forensic science will help reduce the burden on the police in-vestigators and also on the legal system.

Ms Riva Pocha, the guest speaker at the last meeting, a member of the faculty of St. Xavier's College, did her Masters in forensic science from the John J. College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York.

Speaking on "The role of forensics in criminal justice", Ms Pocha was passionate about the need for greater acceptance of forensics and regretted the lack of understanding about it. This had prompted her to put together a presentation to throw light on this important subject.

There had been a spurt of interest in forensics of late, thanks to the media reporting criminal cases extensively - but "without giving the full picture". It did not point out that what was being presented as forensics also had to be accepted by the judiciary.

Brain fingerprinting, narco-analysis and various other techniques were in regular use as investigative tools. But these would remain mere investigative tools not accepted in a court of law because they did not provide 100% proof and had a certain margin of error.

"All techniques used today in forensic science have to pass through court certification, they have to be proven as established scientific techniques acceptable in a court. This is where we are falling short. Nobody has the time or the money to do research on our techniques and courtcertify them. As a result, no matter how good our forensic science is, it remains unacceptable."

Old techniques were being used and proclaimed as achievements. The Bombay police was advertising the number of drunken drivers arrested and put behind bars. How was their drunkenness established? Did the police have a technology giving reliable results good enough to put people behind bars? Was this technology acceptable in courts?

The police talked about a .headspace gas chromatography. technique to establish alcohol levels in blood. But this methodology "has been around for donkey's years". It was reliable, but it had to be accepted by court.

Interestingly, Sherlock Holmes, whom she called "the father of forensics", used processes and techniques that were in use even today and some even accepted by courts.

Whether a case of unidentified bodies, driving while intoxicated, rape, e-mail threats, fake stamp paper, seizure of drugs, firearms, senior citizens being robbed, female infanticide or bomb blasts on local trains, all of these "fit into the forensic domain". For, forensic science was devoted to establishing the truth.

'SOCIETY WILL BENEFIT IF SCIENCE AND THE LAW SIT TOGETHER AND TALK'

Answering questions. Ms Riva Pocha, the guest speaker at the last meeting

Ms Pocha then elaborated a few of the techniques employed in the above cases and explained the intricacies of processes like forensic anthropology; dentitions (used in identification); forensic serology, including semen analysis (in cases of rape); DNA, specially in paternity testing; toxicology (useful in establishing the presence of alcohol in blood in cases of drunken driving);

Cyber-forensics, a comparatively new field of research for determining the authenticity of e-mails; document examination (to check the authenticity of a range of items, from works of art to stamp paper, currency and so on); tool mark analysis (to investigate break-ins); and explosives analysis (useful while investigating bomb blasts).

"What we do is essentially (to undertake) a fact-finding mission to contribute to the overall criminal justice system. But, in our experience while dealing with students, with the public and so on, we have realised that a lot of people are not even aware of how the entire interplay between the judiciary, the police and the scientists actually works."

Once a criminal act occurred, the police reached the place, assessed the scene, talked with witnesses, arrested suspects if necessary, made a "panchnama" (statement of witnesses at the scene of the crime), seized the dead body and sent it for post-mortem and, finally, collected and packed the evidence at the spot and sent it for analysis.

The post-mortem report, as also the laboratory report on the analysis of the evidence, enabled the police to .reconstruct. the crime and all that happened just prior to its occurrence. It was this "reconstruction" that the judiciary relied and worked upon in court to get either a conviction or an exoneration of the accused.

Ms Pocha said the physical evidence collected varied from crime scene to crime scene and there was no formal list of evidence to be collected.

Usually, it was the skill of the investigator and the forensic scientist that came into play; "unless you know what you are looking for, you to another and we follow a logical linkage pattern that consistently takes us to the same end point, which is when we have a reconstruction that we can take to court."

Ms Pocha said statistics played a major role in the criminal justice system. No one was interested in an 89% probability . a 99.9% statistical probability had a far greater value.

She also touched on fingerprints; the use of serology to determine how a particular blood pattern was created and the force employed in order to create it; glass-fracture patterns; fibres transferred from victim to accused and vice versa; the absence of certain key persons from the scene of a crime; and so on.

Turning to explosions and arson analysis, she said this branch of we contribute towards 'reconstruction' and trying to establish linkages."

The new areas emerging in the field of forensics . and with even greater reliability . were anthropology, forensic odontology and entomology.

In anthropology, the scientist looked at human remains to establish identity and possibly to establish the cause of death; in odontology teeth marks were used to establish identity (useful in mass disasters or even in cases of physical abuse where bite marks were observed); and entomology (what happened after two or three days of death and decomposition) which helped in determining the post-mortem interval.

Another new field was biometrics, which fit both the domains, forensics as well as general ID security; biometric systems were used to establish identity and the markers could be iris scans, retinal scans, fingerprint scans and so on.

DNA tests also provided a unique ID. However, the legality of taking a person.s DNA had still to be worked out. The law would have to keep pace with technology.

"In order to ensure our own safety through an effective criminal justice system, we must be aware of and fight for a better crime scene investigation. Therefore, the way forward is private forensic laboratories, research and development facilities, providing thorough, timely, economical and unbiased evidence analysis to a weary, overburdened criminal justice system.

"If we can establish communication methods between the two, science and the law, the overall criminal investigating system will pull up, it will be more successful and we will have better conviction rates," Ms Pocha concluded.

Answering questions, she told Jimmy Pochkhanawalla that if somebody had indeed "contaminated" a scene of crime at the behest of highlyplaced people, then it would first be necessary to establish that such an act had indeed taken place. But those "planting" the evidence were not as well trained as forensic scientists in detecting the same.

Even in such cases, a "reconstruction" was necessary to establish the "contamination".

Burjor Poonawala asked what happened in sting operations where the politicians who were "caught" demanded forensic investigation of tapes.

The 'gap' between law and forensics

Ms Pocha said the tapes were normally sent to the government laboratory in Chandigarh which assessed them from a digital point of view to establish whether there was continuity in the tapes or whether there was editing and/or tampering.

As for the widely-reported liedetector and truth-serum tests, these had an accuracy level of 80%; but at 20% the error limit was indeed quite high. Similarly, detecting forged stamp papers and counterfeit currency was a tough job.

PP Haresh Jagtiani then took the mike and said that the so-called .gap. between forensic science and its acceptability in a court of law was not unbridgeable, because a fact was said to be proved when a court accepted its existence as so probable that a reasonable man would act on the supposition that it existed.

The standard of proof required depended on the seriousness of the fact one had set out to prove. For example, while proving a simple transaction in civil law, the court would look at which side the evidence preponderated. But when establishing a murder case, where the consequences were serious, the proof that was demanded was far greater and beyond reasonable doubt.

"But, there is no fact which cannot be proved with absolute meticulousness and there is no bar for a court to accept its existence. Therefore, if forensic science and all the experiments that you conduct are absolutely infallible, the court will act on the supposition. The 'gap' is in how effectively the investigation is rendered in court.

"And this is where I agree with you, although you have not put it so bluntly, so I am saying it - most of the cases are killed at the investigation stage. You do not have proper forensic experts investigating the case. Or there is tampering and they make sure that the best evidence is not brought to the court. But in theory and in law, if you bring the best evidence to the court, then there is no bar in the court accepting it," Haresh added.

It was at this stage that Ms Pocha wondered whether the courts were familiar with science and whether the judiciary was overburdened with legal learning as to be able to keep up with new techniques and advances. She added: "I think there is a need for all three communities to sit together, to talk and to understand each other, to understand that we are all just feeding off each other, so let's (re)start the cycle from the investigation point of view."

Jimmy Pochkhanawalla introduced the guest speaker; the vote of thanks was proposed by Soli Cooper.

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