Carly’s Reviews > Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime > Status Update

‘Capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment.’
--Clive Stafford-Smith

"There is deep reluctance for governments to explore what juries do. It is probably too terrifying"
--Fiona Raitt

‘The golden rule of defence is that the less evidence there is, the better – unless it is evidence that contradicts what the prosecution witnesses are claiming under oath.’
--Alex McBride

"Angus is unhappy with the snooping activities of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States; in particular, he is unhappy with the notion of providing public security through imperilling individual privacy. ‘We used to think Eastern Europe was bad. Our allies are getting even worse.’"

‘Murder is not a replicable experiment. Every one is unique.’
--Val Tomlinson

"If forensic science were a family, fingerprinting would be the greedy grandfather, hanging on to the best armchair, trying to exercise the sole right to pass judgement, unaware that the times they are a-changin’. Only when the rest of the family understands that he sometimes gets people and places and anecdotes mixed up can his wisdom be treated with appropriate circumspection."

I remember going to one scene where a man was sitting dead with a knife in him and the SIO said, “Oh, so you will be doing metal analysis on the edges of the cut so that you can show it was that knife?” And I said, “Maybe that’s not our priority given the knife is sticking out of him.”’

"In the UK, it’s possible to get a DNA profile in just nine hours on a straightforward bloodstain, and the cost goes down depending on the turnaround time required.
In the US, it varies depending on the jurisdiction, but even top-priority jobs can take a few days and some can take months."