论电子数据提取笔录的属性与适用

电子数据的获取程序是否规范直接影响电子数据真实性的认定。电子数据提取笔录由于能够客观反映电子数据获取的过程而成为对电子数据进行鉴真的重要依据,它既能够连接电子数据与案件事实,又反映了取证过程的合法性和保管链条的完整性。从属性上看,电子数据提取笔录具有独立的证据属性,它不仅有别于物证、书证和证人证言,而且有别于其他笔录类证据。对电子数据提取笔录的证据资格和证明力的判断也具有特殊性。当前,可通过同步录音录像、引入外部监督、明确制作人员义务等方式规范电子数据提取笔录的适用。     

Fingerprint comparison evidence has been under sustained attack in the United States of America for the last number of years: Is the critique with regard to reliability sufficiently penetrating to warrant the exclusion of this valuable evidence?

The decision in Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals 509 US 579 (1993) brought about renewed attention to and scrutiny of fingerprint comparison evidence in the United States of America. In terms of the decision courts were to act as the gatekeepers with respect to the admissibility of scientific expert evidence. This article describes these events and investigates the grounds upon which challenges were made to fingerprint comparison evidence in the courts, as well as the position that was taken by the courts. The article also considers the fundamental test for the admission of expert evidence, and whether the critique pointed out by the defendants in the cases with regard to reliability are sufficiently penetrating to warrant the exclusion of fingerprint comparison evidence.     

科学技术发展对刑事证据的影响初探

随着科技的发展及其不断深入到人们生活的方方面面,对刑事证据制度的影响越来越大。科技影响了刑事证据制度的变迁;扩大了刑事证据的范围,使越来越多的非自然物进入证据之列;对于收集、固定和保全刑事证据,既提供了新的手段,也提出了新的挑战;同时对于刑事证据的采信规则也产生了影响。从科技的角度研究刑事证据,可以为我国建立完善刑事证据规则奠定理论基础。     

Swedish crime scene technicians: facilitations,epistemic frictions and professionalization from the outside

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the role of crime scene technicians in the Swedish criminal justice system, and particularly how Swedish crime scene technicians not only examine crime scenes but also facilitate the criminal justice system’s joint production of forensic evidence. It proposes thinking about the criminal justice system as a conglomeration of epistemic cultures, that is, of communities with different ways of producing and understanding forensic evidence. Such a perspective makes it possible to understand interprofessional frictions as epistemic frictions as well as to draw attention to the facilitations, mediations and translations that crime scene technicians perform. This perspective also makes it possible to illuminate how the crime scene technicians’ professionalization – a professionalization from the outside – affects both their future crime scene work and their facilitations.     

Medical examiner response to the drug overdose epidemic in King County Washington: “Real-time” surveillance,data science,and applied forensic epidemiology

As the overdose epidemic overwhelmed medicolegal death investigation offices and toxicology laboratories, the King County Medical Examiner's Office responded with “real-time” fatal overdose surveillance to expedite death certification and information dissemination through assembling a team including a dedicated medicolegal death investigator, an information coordinator, and student interns. In-house testing of blood, urine, and drug evidence from scenes was performed using equipment and supplies purchased for surveillance. Collaboration with state laboratories allowed validation. Applied forensic epidemiology accelerated data dissemination. From 2010 to 2022, the epidemic claimed 5815 lives in King County; the last 4 years accounted for 47% of those deaths. After initiating the surveillance project, in-house testing was performed on blood from 2836 decedents, urine from 2807, and 4238 drug evidence items from 1775 death scenes. Time to complete death certificates decreased from weeks to months to hours to days. Overdose-specific information was distributed weekly to a network of law enforcement and public health agencies. As the surveillance project tracked the epidemic, fentanyl and methamphetamine became dominant and were associated with other indicators of social deterioration. In 2022, fentanyl was involved in 68% of 1021 overdose deaths. Homeless deaths increased sixfold; in 2022, 67% of 311 homeless deaths were due to overdose; fentanyl was involved in 49% and methamphetamine in 44%. Homicides increased 250%; in 2021, methamphetamine was positive in 35% of 149 homicides. The results are relevant to the value of rapid surveillance, its impact on standard operations, selection of cases requiring autopsy, and collaboration with other agencies in overdose prevention.     

Study on the standard components of digital forensics laboratory

Recently, digital forensics has become increasingly important as it is used by investigation agencies, corporate, and private sector. To supplement the limitations of evidence capacity and be recognized in court, it is essential to establish an environment that ensures the integrity of the entire process ranging from collecting and analyzing to submitting digital evidence to court. In this study, common elements were extracted by comparing and analyzing ISO/IEC 17025, 27001 standards and Interpol and Council of Europe (CoE) guidelines to derive the necessary components for building a digital forensic laboratory. Subsequently, based on 21 digital forensic experts in the field, Delphi survey and verifications were conducted in three rounds. As a result, 40 components from seven areas were derived. The research results are based on the establishment, operation, management, and authentication of a digital forensics laboratory suitable for the domestic environment, with added credibility through collection of the opinions of 21 experts in the field of digital forensics in Korea. This study can be referred to in establishing digital forensic laboratories in national, public, and private digital forensic organizations as well as for employing as competency measurement criteria in courts to evaluate the reliability of the analysis results.     

The role of alternative hypotheses in reducing bias in forensic medical experts’ decision making

Medical opinions are often essential evidence in criminal cases but relatively little is known about the factors that impact forensic doctors’ decision making. This research examines the role and impact of having an alternative hypothesis while forming a medical opinion. A scenario-based experiment with forensic doctors (n = 20) was conducted. In two out of three scenarios, the existence of alternative hypotheses impacted the actual opinions reached, the confidence in the judgments and the perceived consistency with the plaintiff hypothesis. Investigative and legal actors should be aware of the possibility of biases and importance of having alternative hypotheses when requesting and evaluating medical opinions.     

Weight of authorship evidence with multiple categories of stylometric features: A multinomial-based discrete model

This study empirically demonstrates the efficacy of a two-level Dirichlet-multinomial statistical model (the Multinomial system) for computing likelihood ratios (LR) for linguistic, textual evidence with multiple stylometric feature types with discrete values. The LRs are calculated separately for each feature type, namely, word, character and part of speech N-grams (N = 1,2,3), which are combined as overall LRs through logistic regression fusion. The Multinomial system’s performance is compared with that of a previously proposed system with the cosine distance (the Cosine system) using the same data (i.e., documents collated from 2160 authors). The experimental results show that: (1) the Multinomial system outperforms the Cosine system with the fused feature types by a log-LR cost of ca. 0.01 ～ 0.05 bits; and (2) the Multinomial system is more advantageous in performance with longer documents than the Cosine system. Although the Cosine system is more robust overall against the sampling variability arising from the number of authors included in the reference and calibration databases, the Multinomial system can achieve reasonable stability in performance; for example, the standard deviation value of the log-LR cost becomes lower than 0.01 (10 random samplings of authors for the reference and calibration databases) with 60 or more authors in each database.     

Digital evidence strategies for digital forensic science examinations

Given the size and complexity of many digital forensic science device examinations, there is a need for practitioners to formally and strategically determine a course of conduct which allows them to undertake the most robust and efficient examination possible. This work outlines both the need for practitioners to have a digital evidence strategy (DES) when tackling any given examination scenario, how to construct one and the concerns which exist when no formal DES is in place. Approaches to DES development are examined and the context to which they should be deployed are analysed, with focus being on the use of DESs at the examination/processing stage of the investigative workflow. Finally, a ‘DES skeleton’ is offered to guide practitioners as they seek to create their own DES.     

Forensic botany: who?, how?, where?, when?

Plants are a good source of biological forensic evidence; this is due to their ubiquity, their ability to collect reference material, and their sensitivity to environmental changes. However, in many countries, botanical evidence is recognised as being scientifically. Botanical evidence is not mostly used for perpertration, instead it tends to serve as circumstantial evidence. Plant materials constitute the basis, among others, for linking a suspect or object to a crime scene or a victim, confirming or not confirming an alibi, determining the post-mortem interval, and determining the origin of food/object. Forensic botany entails field work, knowledge of plants, understanding ecosystem processes, and a basis understaning of geoscience. In this study, experiments with mammal cadavers were conducted to determine the occurence of an event. The simplest criterion characterising botanical evidence is its size. Therefore, macroremains include whole plants or their larger fragments (e.g. tree bark, leaves, seeds, prickles, and thorns), whereas microscopic evidence includes palynomorphs (spores and pollen grains), diatoms, and tissues. Botanical methods allow for an analysis to be repeated multiple times and the test material is easy to collect in the field. Forensic botany can be supplemented with molecular analyses, which, although specific and sensitive, still require validation.