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'Tzu's The Washing Away of Wrongs (Hsi yüan chi lu), printed in 1247, -
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. -
The Department of Legal Medicine had its origins as a lectureship at the Harvard Medical School in 1815. It was combined with obstetrics. In 1818 the combined lectureship was promoted to a professorship. The first Professor of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence was Walter Channing, M.D. -
Examining hair under an optical or an electronic microscope can help identify the nature of a crime, and its condition reveals information on the circumstances of a crime. Thus, the identification of a person might eventually be possible through particular characteristics such as hair dyes or hair diseases. The first forensic hair studies are recorded by the German physician Rudolph Virchow. -
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. It was developed by the chemist James Marsh and first published in 1836. -
Pathological Anatomy, first published in 1839, has been considered by some as the first textbook of pathology in America -
1854 First uses of photos in identification (1854-59 ) San Francisco uses photography for criminal identification, the first city in the US to do so. -
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. -
In 1883 Alphonse Bertillon used anthropometry to catch a repeated criminal. Anthropometry - the measurement of the sizes and proportions of the human body. -
His first Sherlock Holmes story, “A Study in Scarlet,” was published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine, and Conan Doyle was able to give up his medical practice and devote himself to writing. -
In 1891 Vucetich began the first filing of fingerprints based on ideas of Francis Galton which he expanded significantly. He became the director of the Center for Dactyloscopy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the time, he included the Bertillon system alongside the fingerprint files. -
In 1892 Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officer, created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file. In that same year, Francisca Rojas was found in a house with neck injuries, whilst her two sons were found dead with their throats cut. -
Karl Landsteiner discovered why: when different people\'s blood was mixed, the blood cells sometimes clotted. He explained in 1901 that people have different types of blood cells, that is, there are different blood groups. The discovery led to blood transfusions between people with compatible blood groups. -
The University of Lausanne
In 1909, 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. -
In 1912 Balthazard asserted that machine tools used to make gun barrels never leave exactly the same markings. ... It took Balthazard another decade to advance ballistics , i.e. the study of the functioning of firearms, the flight of the bullet, and the effects of different types of ammunition. -
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. -
On July 1, 1923, Officer Rex Welsh of the Los Angeles Police Department was assigned to be the department's first criminalist and tasked with setting up a scientific laboratory to support criminal investigations. -
Launched on January 27, 1967, the NCIC database, according to Assistant Director Stephen Morris of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) -
In 1971 John Boehm presented some micrographs of gunshot residue particles found during the examination of bullet entrance holes using a scanning electron microscope. If the scanning electron microscope is equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy detector, the chemical elements present in such particles, mainly lead, antimony and barium, can be identified. -
Rigorous scientific studies have shown that when the evidence contains DNA from only one or two people, DNA profiles are extremely reliable. ... In addition, DNA methods have gotten so sensitive that investigators no longer need a blood or semen stain to generate a DNA profile -
Based on both fingerprint analysis and DNA typing, Tommie Lee Andrews was convicted of rape in November of 1987 and sentenced to prison for 22 years, making him the first person in the U.S. to be convicted as a result of DNA evidence. -
The first STR markers used in forensic casework were selected in 1994 by the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in the United Kingdom for a quadruplex amplification system consisting of four tetranucleotide STRs—TH01, vWA, FES/FPS, and F13A1 (Kimpton et al., 1994) -
The Innocence Project and NACDL have collaborated on this important matter with its pro bono partners, David Koropp, a partner at Winston & Strawn LLP and his colleagues; along with Michael R. Bromwich, Managing Principal of The Bromwich Group and Partner at Goodwin Procter LLP, who served as the Inspector General of DOJ from 1994-1999. -
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. It is located in, and operated by, the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division of the FBI in Clarksburg, West Virginia -
Britain's Forensic science service develops online footwear coding and detection systems. -
The Toronto Police Service was the first agency in Canada to go to real-time fingerprint identification in 2005. The accompanying palm database was also the first established in Canada, allowing palms to be searched, and was proved very successful. -
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. The technique can enhance -- after firing-- a fingerprint that has been deposited on a small calibre metal cartridge case before it is fired. -
In 2011 Michigin State University developed a software that matches police sketches to mugshots.This helps to identify potential suspects with help from a witness.