{"id":61524,"date":"2013-10-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/rhode-island-state-crime-laboratory-chief-recounts-30-years-of-scientific-crime-fighting\/"},"modified":"2013-10-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T00:00:00","slug":"rhode-island-state-crime-laboratory-chief-recounts-30-years-of-scientific-crime-fighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/10\/rhode-island-state-crime-laboratory-chief-recounts-30-years-of-scientific-crime-fighting\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory chief recounts 30 years of scientific crime fighting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 28, 2013 \u2013 Sorry, CSI fans but what you see on television does not depict what really goes on inside a forensic crime laboratory. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIn my crime lab the women do not wear high heels and leather skirts; and the men do not have six pack abs. Forensic analysts hardly ever go out into the field to collect evidence. I don\u2019t see those guys drawing a gun. We rely on law enforcement officers to bring us good evidence to analyze. Our results don\u2019t come back in one day; scanning and comparing fingerprints do not work like that,\u201d said Dennis Hilliard, director of the Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory at the 溏心vlog免费B站. <\/p>\n


\nThe Wakefield resident has more than 30 years of experience in the lab and as an administrator. He specializes in providing analysis of evidence and court testimony about fire debris analysis, hair and fiber analysis, DNA analysis, and breath and blood alcohol analysis. <\/p>\n


\nIn 1992, Hilliard stepped in as the interim director of the crime lab and adjunct assistant professor. Three years later he was appointed director. Hilliard\u2019s role as director enables him to prepare, organize, implement and lecture in educational programs for the law enforcement community and the undergraduate and graduate students at 溏心vlog免费B站. Since 1980, Hilliard has testified more than 100 times in the state and federal courts of Rhode Island and provided deposition testimony in several civil cases as an expert witness. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cMost of the time the evidence is brought to us by the police or fire investigators,\u201d said Hilliard, who earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in biochemistry from the University of New Hampshire and master\u2019s degree in pharmacology and toxicology from 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cOn occasion we will respond to a scene. One case that I worked on was very similar to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. A mother and father had reported that their baby was kidnapped from their apartment. The parents pleaded for the kidnapper to bring their child home. As the investigation went on there was no sign of a break-in or a ransom note.\u201d

\nThe baby was eventually found in an alleyway near the apartment. The baby had died and was wrapped in a blanket.<\/p>\n


\nHilliard said the police detectives collected 50 to 60 pieces of evidence like clothes, blankets, and diapers that were sent to the Crime Lab. Some items that appeared in black and white photographs of the scene that may have been stained with blood were not collected. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe had evidence but we couldn\u2019t connect it all together to a suspect. The baby may have died by accidental means and the parents could have been scared and covered it up. It was never determined who killed the child, but the parents became the prime suspects. This is still an unsolved case.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nThe Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory has the authority to investigate any and all evidence relating to state or local crimes when requested by the appropriate agencies. The state crime laboratory trains students and law enforcement officers throughout the state on how to conduct criminal investigations. The laboratory provides analysis in three different areas of forensic science: firearms, latent fingerprints, and trace evidence. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt is important to try not to get involved emotionally with any case, especially when it has to do with children and the elderly. You don\u2019t want to be biased over a certain case,\u201d the director said. \u201cHowever, when you are able to testify on a case, say what you wanted to say, present your findings, and overcome any barriers from lawyers, it is the most rewarding part of the job. It is not my job to determine guilt or innocence. It is not the police or firefighter\u2019s job to determine guilt or innocence. It is up to the judge and the jury to determine that. My job is to present my work in a scientific way.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHaving recently been awarded a new, five-year contract, Hilliard talked about expanding and improving the lab.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen I was the interim director of the crime lab, we started with three analysts, and various labs set up in three buildings. The problem was that we needed more analysts, and enough space to accommodate our people and equipment. If we had a single location to house everyone it would be a lot easier. <\/p>\n


\nIn 2003, the Crime Lab was awarded a federal grant that allowed it to purchase several state-of-the-art instruments. At the same time it expanded into additional space in the basement of Fogarty Hall. Some of the grant funds were used to renovate the space for expanding the trace and latent print sections of the laboratory. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cOver the past ten years we used a combination of state funding and small grants to hire additional analysts and purchase new lab equipment. There are now nine full-time analysts working in the Laboratory today, all located in one building, Fogarty Hall.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nHilliard is always finding new ways to train students, and law enforcement officers. For the past two years, the state laboratory staged a program at the Union Fire District training center in South Kingstown that involved eight different crime scenes. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe training is extremely beneficial to the criminal justice system,\u201d said Hilliard, who umpires local softball games in his spare time. \u201cThis is a rare opportunity for students and law enforcement officers to conduct investigations at realistic crime scenes. We get to construct crime scenes the way we want them to be, while providing a learning experience that not a lot of people can get.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nA major recent event in the operation of forensic laboratories occurred during the infamous O.J. Simpson case in 1995. \u201cThe O.J. Simpson case greatly affected the field, and for the first time we saw DNA, a relatively new form of evidence in trials at that time, come into play. The case introduced doubt in the investigation process used by law enforcement and the way in which evidence is handled in the laboratory. This has led to many forensic laboratories seeking to become accredited by an outside agency for the work they do.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIn 2007, Rhode Island\u2019s Laboratory was granted accreditation under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 17025 standard for latent prints, firearms, and trace analysis.<\/p>\n


\nBut for Hilliard, the job isn\u2019t always serious. In the summer of 2000, Hilliard and his colleagues from the textiles, chemistry, and engineering programs involved with the Forensic Science Partnership at 溏心vlog免费B站 analyzed five Major League baseballs from 1963, 1970, 1989, 1995, and 2000. Hilliard was asked by a former Rhode Island sports radio station to test major league baseballs and study the relationship between changing materials and increasing home run production. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cWe only tested five baseballs, so there may be more work to do, but we had a lot of fun working on that project. The 1963 and 1970 balls were most likely made by Spalding, which manufactured MLB baseballs for 100 years, while the 1989, 1995, and 2000 balls were made by Rawlings. The more recent balls are livelier, for sure, and it will go a lot further when hit,\u201d said Hilliard. <\/p>\n


\nHilliard tells students who are interested in studying forensic science at the undergraduate level to pursue a bachelor\u2019s degree in a natural science first. \u201cI caution students who want to major in forensic science during their undergraduate years because many programs do not focus on the science portion. What you have to decide is what you want to do in forensics: do you want to investigate scenes, do you want to work on evidence at the bench, or do you want to work on criminal profiling. If you want to work your way up in the field you need to have an understanding of science. Whether it\u2019s chemistry, or biology, it is important to concentrate on the science section before pursuing a degree in forensic science. If you want to continue your studies, then go for your master\u2019s degree in forensic science. For the students who really want to challenge themselves then they should seek a doctorate in molecular biology to work in the forensic DNA field.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nThis press release was written by Caitlin Musselman, a 溏心vlog免费B站 Marketing and Communications intern and a public relations and political science major.<\/p>\n


\nCommunications & Marketing photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 28, 2013 \u2013 Sorry, CSI fans but what you see on television does not depict what really goes on inside a forensic crime laboratory. \u201cIn my crime lab the women do not wear high heels and leather skirts; and the men do not have six pack abs. Forensic analysts hardly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}