Postmortem Computed Tomography in Firearm Homicides: A Retrospective Case Series,

Postmortem computed tomography (PMCT) is integrated into the evaluation of decedents in several American medical examiner offices and medicolegal death investigative centers in many other countries. We retrospectively investigated the value of PMCT in a series of firearm homicide cases from a statewide centralized medical examiner’s office that occurred during 2016. Autopsies were performed or supervised by board-certified forensic pathologists who reviewed the PMCT scans prior to autopsy. PMCT scans were re-evaluated by a forensic radiologist blinded to the autopsy findings and scored by body region (head–neck, thoracoabdominal, and extremities). Injury discrepancies were scored using a modified Goldman classification and analyzed with McNemar’s test. We included 60 males and 20 females (median age 31 years, range 3–73). Based on PMCT, 56 (79.1%) cases had injuries relevant to the cause of death in a single body region (24 head–neck region, 32 thoracoabdominal region). Out of these 56 cases, 9 had a missed major diagnosis by PMCT outside that region, including 6 extremity injuries visible during standard external examination. Yet all had evident lethal firearm injury. We showed that PMCT identifies major firearm injuries in homicide victims and excludes injuries related to the cause of death in other regions when a single body region is injured. Although PMCT has a known limited sensitivity for soft tissue and vascular pathology, it can be combined with external examination to potentially reduce or focus dissections in some of these cases depending on the circumstances and medicolegal needs.     

Ricochet Behavior on Glass—Critical Ricochet Angles,Ricochet Angles,and Deflection Angles

For shooting scene reconstruction purposes, knowledge about the ricochet behavior of bullets provides valuable information. In this study, the critical ricochet angles of four cartridge types were established on plain float glass. The estimates of the critical ricochet angles varied between cartridge types and were 21.0° for .32 Auto FMJ bullets, 15.8° for 9 mm Luger FMJ bullets, 17.6° for .45 Auto FMJ bullets, and 21.3° for 9 mm Luger, Action NP bullets. The corresponding ricochet and deflection angles per incidence angle varied depending on the state of the ricocheted bullets. The mean ricochet angles are always lower than the corresponding angles of incidence, and the mean ricochet angles for the FMJ bullets with undamaged jackets are lower than those of bullets where the jacket is either damaged or the bullet partially ricocheted and partially perforated. Mean ricochet angles are lower for undamaged FMJ bullets than for undamaged Action NP bullets.     

Correction to Tzidony and Ravreby (1992): A Statistical Approach to Drug Sampling: A Case Study

Abstract:  In 1992, Tzidony and Ravreby presented a confidence interval for the total weight of a seizure of illicit drugs present in a population. Their approach has subsequently been applied by several researchers in the field. The formula on which their approach is based does, however, not fully take into account the proportion of drug units found in the sample. In this paper, a modification is presented that consistently uses the correct sample size in all terms of the confidence interval, based on the proportion of drug units found in the sample. The effective sample size is smaller than the original sample size, and this should consequently be accounted for in the estimation of the standard error and in the corresponding t -distribution. The new confidence interval is again based on the assumption that the proportion of drug units in the population is known after sampling.     

Firearm examination: Examiner judgments and computer‐based comparisons

Forensic firearm examination provides the court of law with information about the source of fired cartridge cases. We assessed the validity of source decisions of a computer‐based method and of 73 firearm examiners who compared breechface and firing pin impressions of 48 comparison sets. We also compared the computer‐based method's comparison scores with the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments and assessed the validity of the latter. The true‐positive rate (sensitivity) and true‐negative rate (specificity) of the computer‐based method (for the comparison of both the breechface and firing pin impressions) were 94.4% and at least 91.7%, respectively. For the examiners, the true‐positive rate was at least 95.3% and the true‐negative rate was at least 86.2%. The validity of the source decisions improved when the evaluations of breechface and firing pin impressions were combined and for the examiners also when the perceived difficulty of the comparison decreased. The examiners were reluctant to provide source decisions for "difficult" comparisons even though their source decisions were mostly correct. The correlation between the computer‐based method's comparison scores and the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments was low for the same‐source comparisons to negligible for the different‐source comparisons. Combining the outcomes of computer‐based methods with the judgments of examiners could increase the validity of firearm examinations. The examiners' numerical degree‐of‐support judgments for their source decisions were not well‐calibrated and showed clear signs of overconfidence. We suggest studying the merits of performance feedback to calibrate these judgments.     

Improving the point of origin determination in bloodstain pattern analysis

In bloodstain pattern analysis, it is important to know the point of origin (PO) of an impact pattern. This point can be estimated by means of the stringing method, the tangent method, or by commercially available computer programs. In this study, the accuracy of two computer programs was investigated under different conditions. Impact patterns were created by means of a modified mouse trap, and subsequently the PO was calculated. By examining the characteristics of single bloodstains, the influence on the deviation could be determined. To improve the estimation of the PO, it is important to select bloodstains that lie close to the presumable location of the blood source, that are large (width >1.5 mm) and that show an elliptical form. If possible, bloodstains from different walls should be taken into account. Our recommendations may improve the PO determination of impact patterns.     

Outsourcing state violence: The National Defence Force, ‘stateness’ and regime resilience in the Syrian war

This article engages with and contributes to a nascent debate on state-sponsored militias by way of an analysis of the formation and deployment of the Syrian regime’s National Defence Force (NDF). This militia emerged from the regime’s rich repertoire in outsourcing violence and allowing ‘heterarchical orders’ to serve regime maintenance purposes at home and abroad. During the Syrian war (2011–…), the key rationale for using such militias is primarily to address manpower shortages. For an important but limited period, the NDF served this goal well as it contributed to the regime’s military advances. The regime’s devolution of its violence to militias including the NDF brought about a sharp contraction of its ‘stateness’ but this did not constitute ‘state failure’ or its collapse. In this context, the regime’s elaborate measures to manage or counter the risks and downsides of deploying non-state militias such as the NDF underscore its general adaptability in its authoritarian governance.     

Iraqi Refugees in Syria: causing a spillover of the Iraqi conflict?

This article explores the implications of the Iraqi refugee crisis for Syria, which is believed to host up to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees. Many policy makers, activists and analysts, sometimes inspired by the conflict repercussions of refugee crises witnessed elsewhere, have warned against the regional security impact of the Iraqi exodus and consequently speculated about a possible spillover of the armed conflicts in Iraq to its neighbours. The article presents an analysis of the characteristics and composition of the Iraqi refugee population and provides an assessment of responses to the refugee crisis in Syria. Its main finding is that fears for a spillover of Iraq's violence cannot be corroborated. The relative absence of refugee violence can be explained in reference to Iraqi refugees themselves. Given their specific demographic and social traits (including age composition, educational levels and professions, and to some extent religious affiliation), in addition to refugees' sectarian segregation, an overwhelming majority of Iraqi refugees are and remain victims of the violence in Iraq; they are unlikely to become its perpetrators abroad. In this sense the Iraqi refugee crisis constitutes a strong reminder that, in order to assess the propensity of violence among refugees and their purportedly contagious impact on their places of refuge, an understanding of the causes of their flight and their roles in the conflict they are fleeing is essential. It is finally argued that security challenges are likely to come from a different source. Socioeconomic destitution among refugees and the failure to provide adequate humanitarian assistance and protection are and will be causing tensions between them and the host state and host communities.     

Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, ‘terrorism’ and the politics of perception

The labelling career of the Lebanese armed group and political party Hizbullah is an interesting case with which to investigate the epistemological consequences of the politics of naming. Having found itself since its inception in the mid-1980s on the receiving end of mainly US and Israeli policy makers' and analysts' scorn for being an archetypical terrorist organisation, Hizbullah has been surprisingly successful in achieving its stated aims and in enduring the verbal and military onslaught against it. Although it is not the intention here to reduce explanations for Hizbullah's durability to discursive politics, this article suggests that both the labelling of Hizbullah as terrorist and, conversely, its identification as a ‘lebanonised’ political force that is about to make its conversion into an unarmed political party are misleading and incapable of grasping this organisation's complexities. In fact, both ‘terrorist’ and ‘lebanonised’ labels produce a quality of knowledge inferior to that produced by Hizbullah's own conceptualisation of its enemies. But most importantly, the debate on Hizbullah's alleged terrorist nature has obscured several of its traits that many should register before passing judgement on it. Our analysis shows that the variety of institutions Hizbullah has been carefully elaborating and readapting over the past two decades in Lebanon operate today as a holistic and integrated network which produce sets of values and meanings embedded in an interrelated religious and political framework—that of the wilayat al-faqih. These meanings are disseminated on a daily basis among Shi'a constituencies through the party's institutionalised networks and serve to mobilise them into ‘the society of the Resistance’ (mujtamaa’ al-muqawama), which is the foundation of the hala al-islamiyya (Islamic sphere) in Lebanon. Accordingly, any prospect of Hizbullah's transformation away from armed ‘resistance’ should be firmly placed in an analysis of its hegemony among the Shi'a of Lebanon and of the tools it uses to acquire and sustain this status.