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The first autopsy in the history was performed in Greece. Later, in 1662, the first autopsy in the US was performed. -
Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill. -
The first manual was established by the Chinese. This was the earliest known record of knowledge to solve criminal cases.
Note: some resources state it was written in 1247, some state that it was written in 1248. -
This was when the first pathology reports were published, they held information of physical evidence used in a crime scene. -
The first recorded physical evidence used to prove a guilty criminal, was a piece of torn newspaper in 1784. The newspaper was attached to the crime's weapon, a pistol, and the murderer, John Toms, had the same newspaper in his pocket. -
James Marsh used chemical processes to determine arsenic. The Marsh test is a highly sensitive method in the detection of arsenic, especially useful in the field of forensic toxicology when arsenic was used as a poison -
San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so. -
Henry Faulds and William James Herschel publish a paper describing the uniqueness of fingerprints -
In 1883, the Parisian police adopted his anthropometric system, called signaletics or bertillonage. Bertillon identified individuals by measurements of the head and body, shape formations of the ear, eyebrow, mouth, eye, etc., individual markings such as tattoos and scars, and personality characteristics. -
Corner's act established that coroners were to determine the causes of sudden, violent and unnatural deaths. Arthur Conan Doyle also published the first Sherlock Holmes story. -
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinean police officer, is the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. -
Human blood grouping, ABO, discovered by Karl Landsteiner -
In 1909, Archibald Reiss founded the Institut de police scientifique of the University of Lausanne (UNIL), the first school of forensic science in the world. -
Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert published their first study on hair, including the microscopic studies from most animals. -
Victor Balthazard used tools to make gun barrels never the same. -
John Augustus Larson, a medical student and officer at the Berkeley Police Department in California, invented the cardio-pneumo psychogram in 1921, a device that monitored systolic blood pressure and breathing depth, and recorded it on smoke-blackened paper. -
First police crime lab established in Los Angeles. -
FbI established its own crime laboratory and a chair of legal medicine at Harvard was established. -
A sound spectrograph discovered to be able to record voices. Voiceprints began to be used in investigations and as court evidence from recordings of phones, answering machines, or tape recorders -
FBI established the National Crime Information Center (computerized national filing system - a system with high technology containing wanted criminals, weapons and stolen things). -
Technology developed at Aerospace Corporation in the US to detect gunshot residue, which can link a suspect to a crime scene. -
DNA fingerprinting techniques developed by Sir Alec Jeffreys. -
Tommy Lee Andrews was convicted of a series of sexual assault was found guilty in 1987. He was the first person convicted with DNA evidence in the U.S. -
National Academy of Sciences announces DNA evidence is reliable -
Automated fingerprint identification is the process of using a computer to match fingerprints against a database of known and unknown prints in the fingerprint identification system. -
FBI establishes the integrated automated fingerprint identification system which took two weeks to two hours. -
More advanced technology leads to faster DNA profiling time. It used to be 6-8 weeks but was changed to 1-2 days! -
The computerized device scans images of victims' teeth and aligns them with pictures from unidentified people's dental records, looking for a fit, according to Eiko Kosuge, a dentist and radiologist at Kanagawa Dental College in Japan who led the study.
Note: some resources state that it happened in 2011. This is the article from 2007 that describes it https://www.smh.com.au/national/japanese-dentists-unveil-high-speed-dental-id-system-20071128-gdrp8f.html -
Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police to identify footwear marks quickly. -
Researchers in the University Department of Chemistry and the Police's scientific support unit have developed the method that enables scientists to 'visualise fingerprints' even after the print itself has been removed. They conducted a study into the way fingerprints can corrode metal surfaces. -
Michigan state university designs new software that automatically matches facial sketches with mugshots from databases. -
In 2013, the Department of Justice established the National Commission on Forensic Science in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to enhance the practice and improve the reliability of forensic science. -
The Innocence Project, The Innocence Network, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and pro bono partner Winston and Strawn, LLP announce a partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice to review approximately 3,000 cases in which microscopic hair analysis conducted by the FBI was used to inculpate the defendants. -
NIST establishes a 5-year, $20 million initiative for a Forensic Science Center of Excellence and awards funding to a consortium led by Iowa State University -
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) releases the report "Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods" -
President Obama publishes commentary in Harvard Law Review, "The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform". -
The charter of the National Commission on Forensic Science expires and the Commission is disbanded by the Department of Justice -
The committee that authored the Academies’ report receives the Champion of Justice Award from the Innocence Network -
On the night of March 22, 1992, 57-year-old James Essel was found stabbed to death behind the counter of his store, the Sugarloaf Mountain Market, located in Montgomery County, Maryland. In early 2020, investigators obtained a search warrant for Huitz’s DNA. The sample, which was taken from a swab on the inside of Huitz’s cheek, made a direct match to the DNA left at the 1992 crime scene. -
Mary London, 17, was a 10th grade student at Sacramento High School when she went missing on January 14, 1981.The following day, London’s body was found on a rural stretch of San Juan Road. In 2020 genetic testing linked a man named Vernon Parker to the crime. Parker was murdered in 1982, the year after he allegedly killed London.