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The first recorded autopsy occurs when Antistius examines Julius Caesar's body after his assassination, determining which of the 23 stab wounds proved fatal. It was one wound to the chest that ruptured Caesar's aorta. -
Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill. -
Published by the Chinese, first record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases -
torn edge of newspaper in pistol that matched newspaper in John Tom's pocket, leading to his conviction of murder. -
In 1832 police arrested John Bodle for lacing his grandfather's coffee with poison. Chemist James Marsh tested the drink in his laboratory, and confirmed the presence of arsenic by producing a yellow precipitate of arsenic sulfide. -
In the mid 1850s, Rudolph Virchow (1821–1902) developed the concept of cellular pathology: a diagnosis of disease could be made by examining cells (2). Advances in scientific knowledge impacted both medical practice and medical education in Europe and America. -
First uses of photos in identification (1854-59 ) San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so. -
Henry Faulds and William James Herschel published a paper on the uniqueness of fingerprints. Francis Galton identified the different patterns of fingerprints in Galton's system. -
Sherlock Holmes and the corner - corner's act established that corners were to determine the causes of sudden, violent and unnatural deaths. Arthur Conan Doyle also publish the first Sherlock Holmes story. -
This system consisted of five initial measurements — head length, head breadth, length of middle finger, length of the left foot, and length of the cubit. Along with these measurements, Bertillon used photography, now known as a mugshot, to complete this system of record. -
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinian police officer, was the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. He created Dactyloscopy, a system of fingerprint identification. -
Karl Landsteiner discovered Human Blood Grouping (ABO), which was adapted for use on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter. -
he was the founder of the first academic forensic science programme and of the "Institut de police scientifique" (Institute of forensic science) at the University of Lausanne. -
Victor Balthazard and Marcelle Lambert published first study on hair. First legal case ever involving hair took place following this study. -
Victor Balthazard developed several methods of matching bullets to guns via photography -
Using Locard's principles, Los Angeles, California, police chief August Vollmer (1875–1955) established one of the first modern crime laboratories in the United States in 1923. Vollmer recognized the need to establish a reliable way of analyzing clues from a crime scene. -
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. -
1932 Crime experts build lab FBI establishes its own crime laboratory, now one of the foremost crime labs in the world. This same year, a chair of legal medicine at Harvard was established. 1960 Voice recording, used as evidence (1960s) A sound spectrograph discovered to be able to record voices. -
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. -
Launched on January 27, 1967, the NCIC database, according to Assistant Director Stephen Morris of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, is “a cornerstone of the CJIS Division’s information-sharing efforts, providing a lifeline to our local, state, federal, and tribal partners 24 hours a day.” -
In 1971 John Boehm presented some micrographs of gunshot residue particles found during the examination of bullet entrance holes using a scanning electron microscope. -
This overview of automated fingerprint systems in Canada addresses the evidential impact of fingerprints, the configuration and operations of the current system, its deficiencies, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) future plans for computerization. -
DNA fingerprinting was invented in 1984 by Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys after he realised you could detect variations in human DNA, in the form of these minisatellites. DNA fingerprinting is a technique that simultaneously detects lots of minisatellites in the genome to produce a pattern unique to an individual.Jul 21, 2021 -
In 1987, Tommie Lee Andrews became the first American ever convicted in a case that utilized DNA evidence. On February 21, 1987, a stranger broke into a Florida woman's home in the middle of the night and burglarized and raped the woman at knife-point. ... At that time, no state had a DNA databank. -
As of January 2020, the Innocence Project has documented over 365 DNA exonerations in the United States. Twenty-one of these exonerees had previously been sentenced to deathThe Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law, exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. -
WASHINGTON -- While confirming that the science behind DNA forensics is valid, a new report from a committee of the National Research Council recommends new ways of interpreting DNA evidence to help answer a key question for jurors -- how likely it is that two matching samples came from different people. -
In July 1999, the fingerprint identification function was automated in the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). This national, computerized system for storing, comparing, and exchanging fingerprint data in a digital format permits comparisons of fingerprints in a faster and more accurate manner. -
Faster DNA IDs: Technology speeds up DNA profiling time, from 6-8 weeks to between 1-2 days. (2001) -
Footwear Detection System: Britain's Forensic Science Service develops online footwear coding and detection system. This helps police to identify footwear marks quickly. (2007) -
Detection after cleaning: A way for scientists to visualize fingerprints even after the print has been removed is developed, relating to how fingerprints can corrode metal surfaces. -
A team led by MSU University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Anil Jain and doctoral student Brendan Klare has developed a set of algorithms and created software that will automatically match hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots that are stored in law enforcement databases. -
Dental Match: Japanese researchers develop a dental x-ray matching system. This system can automatically match dental x-rays in a database, and makes a positive match in less than 4 seconds. (2011) -
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV introduces Forensic Science and Standards Act of 2014 in the U.S. Senate -
The FBI reports that, in 268 cases where FBI analysts linked defendants to crimes through microscopic hair analysis, 96 percent (257 cases) involved statistically invalid testimony. 27 of 29 analysts either gave faulty testimony – claiming, for example, that evidence was a match to a particular source without statistical support for the claim – or submitted erroneous reports. -
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 -
(PCAST) releases the report Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods. “The study that led to the report was a response to the President’s question to his PCAST in 2015, as to whether there are additional steps on the scientific side, , that could help ensure the validity of forensic evidence used in the Nation’s legal system.” -
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