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Guest blog: Barry Fisher on The Future of Forensic Science in the U.S.

 In February, 2009, the National Academy of Sciences released a report entitled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The report is available on the web at:

 http://tinyurl.com/ck34en

 Many in the forensic science community considered it to be a watershed event which would press the federal government into action on at least some of the NAS recommendations. Indeed, Congress has looked into the matter and the White House convened a task force to offer proposals.  But to date, nothing substantive has emerged from these efforts.

More recently, the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have agreed to establish a National Forensic Science Commission (NFSC). The Federal Register posted a notice inviting interested individuals to apply for the 30 commission positions on NFSC.

http://tinyurl.com/coy9tv5

While the government moves at glacial-like speeds, it is moving. In the meanwhile, focus has shifted to the legal community where the defense bar, Innocence Project and legal scholars regularly press for change. Those changes  may well be de jure and come out of appellate and Supreme Court decisions. 

In the words of the famous singer, Bob Dylan, “the times they are a-changin’.” How the future of forensic science will turn out is anyone’s guess. But one thing is for certain: there will be changes and likely for the betterment of the nation’s criminal justice system.

_______________________

An early supporter of the Crime Lab Project, Barry A. J. Fisher served as the Crime Laboratory Director for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a position he held from 1987 until his retirement in 2009. A Distinguished Fellow and former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, he received its highest honor, the Gradwohl Medallion.  He served as a member of the American Bar Association, Criminal Justice Section’s Ad Hoc Committee to Ensure the Integrity of the Criminal Process and served as a member of the American Judicature Society’s Commission of Forensic Science and Public Policy.  He has also authored several forensic science books.  Follow him on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BarryAJFisher

10 Facts/10 Days: Lupita Cantu

Lupita Cantu.  Photo is from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Web page re: Cold Case Investigations

Let me tell you a true story.

Twenty-three years ago today, on April 26, 1990, Lupita Cantu, mother of four, disappeared from her home in San Antonio, Texas. She was last seen in the family van — a man no one had seen before was driving it. It was later found not far away, abandoned in a grocery store parking lot.

Some authorities and others concluded that she had voluntarily abandoned her family, but family and friends knew she was a devoted mother and did not believe this. They made many efforts to find her. Her twin sister, Mary Guzman, put a large banner on a shed facing I-90, asking for help, offering a reward.  There were stories in the newspaper and on local television news.

Thirteen days after Lupita Cantu disappeared, her body was found by a Texas Ranger. It was discovered at the side of a rural road in nearby Frio County. Unfortunately, although there was a lot of attention being given to Lupita’s case in San Antonio, no connection was made between this “Jane Doe” homicide victim and Lupita Cantu. Even after the remains were sent to San Antonio’s Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.

Twenty-one years later, officials announced that DNA from hair samples taken from the Frio remains had been matched to Lupita Cantu via a sample from her twin sister. Mary had been one of the most tireless of those who sought answers about Lupita’s fate. The family had to deal with the shock of knowing that Lupita had been killed and for 21 years had been in a pauper’s grave in a nearby county.

You may think the worse thing was that the family unnecessarily endured aspersions being cast on her character, the thought that her probable murderer had been cast in the role of a secret lover she ran away from her family to be with.  You may think it was the tragedy is that she was murdered and her murderer has not been identified or brought to justice for his crime.  You may think that a family not knowing what became of her for 21 years when her remains had been found within two weeks is the worst aspect.  But the family’s ordeal continues.

You see, after being told that she had been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Pearsall for twenty-one years, the family waited for her remains to be exhumed and returned.  Except she wasn’t in the grave thought to be hers.  An unidentified male was in that grave.

Twenty-three years have gone by since April 26, 1990, and Lupita Cantu is still missing, only this time, at the hands of those who were asked to care for those remains.  Whatever efforts are necessary to find her remains should be made.

Give your support to making every effort to help this family.  If this is a mystery that cannot be solved, so be it, but say that only after a sincere, active, and open effort is made.  Officials must be open with the family about what may have happened.  Bring forensic anthropologists to Pearsall, go through every record from the 1990s in Bexar’s Medical Examiner’s Office. Look through records of UID bodies sent to medical schools during the time after her remains were autopsied.  It is not a fate some may like to think of, but the family needs answers.

If you know anything at all about this cold case, help this family find some measure of justice.

Don’t think you can do anything?  You can.  You can do a lot to ensure this never happens to another family.  Lupita Cantu’s case illustrates many of the weaknesses in our current system of death investigation.  For starters, we need to ensure that every state has a set of protocols and systems in place that allow better links between missing persons cases and UID.  We need to ensure that they not only have the resources and capability to take advantage of NamUs, but that they do so by state law.  What’s the situation in your local jurisdiction?  What protocols are followed in the case of unidentified remains?  What records, potentially identifying information, and biological samples are kept?  How quickly is this information uploaded to NamUs?  What are the local procedures for missing persons cases?  Is there a statewide network for notifications?  Is there a requirement that families be told about NamUs?  Find out!  Let those who represent you know this is important to you.  Become a champion for families of the missing by working for improvement in how missing persons cases are handled and how deaths are investigated.

*****

If you follow us on Twitter or visit https://twitter.com/crimelabproject.com, you’ve seen a series of tweets we made between 4/16-4/26.  We dedicated the first of what we hope will be a series, “10 Facts/10 Days,” to the story of Lupita Cantu.  The tweets are collected below, with expanded information and additional links.

Day 1:  1st sign she was missing: Lupita Cantu of San Antonio, mother of 4,  failed to pick up her children at school on 4/26/1990.

Lupita Cantu was 41, a devoted mother, and not someone likely to disappear on her own.  A neighbor quoted in a San Antonio Express-News article described her as an “involved and concerned parent, active in her Woodlawn Hills neighborhood association, a presence at her children’s elementary school and ‘very protective of her children.’”  She was also active in her parish at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church.

Reports began to be received that she had been seen in her family van with a stranger — a stocky, bearded male was at the wheel.  The abandoned brown van was found the next day in a grocery store parking lot.

Day 2:   5/12/1990 a Texas Ranger found a woman’s body in rural in Frio County, TX.  DNA was not yet in use in the area…

DNA was not widely used in Texas until about 1995.

[We posted something about another body also found that year, then deleted the Tweet, although it may have a bearing on this case -- more about that under "Day 4."]

Day 3: As in most of Texas, in Frio the justice of the peace = the coroner. No forensic training required to hold this office.   

For more info on the Texas system of death investigation, see The Handbook of Texas Online: Forensic Medicine.

There is no actual office of coroner in Texas.  The county justice of the peace is given most of the powers and duties a coroner would have elsewhere.

Day 4:  In December 2010, the “Websleuths” site starts looking at the UID case from November 1990 …

The participants in the Websleuths thread initially believe there is a link between a Jane Doe case  from November 1990 and that of Lupita Cantu.  This looks promising for several reasons — the unidentified victim in the November 1990 case was female, found in the city from which Lupita Cantu disappeared, was of similar stature, had borne at least one child, and most intriguing of all, the name “Cantu” was written on the cuff of the right leg of her shorts.   The forensic artist’s drawing of the victim in some ways resembles Lupita Cantu.

While some of the comments on the thread are scurrilous and even cruel if one considers either of the victims’ family members, other comments are logical, and there are some good reasons for the connection being made.  One of the Websleuths contacts a member of the Texas Department of Public Safety to convey the idea of a possible link between the two cases.  The Websleuth is told that the cases have already been compared, and rejected.  The reasons for this rejection aren’t known, but the remains were not those of Lupita Cantu.  Possible reasons for the rejection being made were that the November victim was thought to be about twenty years younger than Lupita Cantu, was dressed differently, would have not been a dental match, and was thought to have been deceased for about one day when discovered.

Still, added attention of the public to missing persons cases can be helpful when other leads have failed.  This was not, of course, the first public attention the case had been given. At the time of her disappearance, Lupita Cantu’s family and friends searched the area in San Antonio where she lived and where the van had been found, and beyond.  They made repeated efforts, and there were stories in newspapers and on television news.  Her twin sister, Mary Guzman, placed a large banner saying “Find Lupita Cantu” and offering a $5000 reward on a shed in her yard.  The banner faced busy Interstate 90.  Over the years, the case haunted many in San Antonio.

Day 5: Remains of the unidentified homicide victim found in Frio were sent to the Bexar ME’s office in 1990.  Hair samples were taken.  (San Antonio is in Bexar County.) Although Lupita Cantu went missing at the end of April, 1990, and the remains were  found in May, 1990, no connection is made.

The remains found by a Texas Ranger on May 12, 1990  at the side of a rural road near Pearsall in Frio County had probably been in the open for about 13 days and were not readily identifiable.  Frio County sent the remains to Bexar County.  Unlike most jurisdictions in Texas, Bexar has a medical examiner’s office.

Bexar County had established the first medical examiner’s office in Texas, passing a law to do so in late 1955 and appointing Dr. Robert Hausman to the office in April, 1956.  Today the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office is one of fewer than 100 medical examiners offices in the U.S. accredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners.  It is one of only about 30 institutions in the U.S. and Canada accredited by the American Board of Forensic Toxicology.  In 1990, Dr. Vincent DiMaio was the Chief Medical Examiner for Bexar County.  He is a highly regarded forensic pathologist who has worked for the improvement of death investigation in the United States.  (It should also be noted that while the remains were taken to the Bexar office, I do not know who in that office handled the case.  Dr. DiMaio was the Chief Medical Examiner then, but that does not necessarily mean he was the person who worked on this case.)

In 1990, Fred Zain also worked for the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office.  He was in charge of physical evidence.

Day 6:  In March 2011, DNA tests on hair samples from the remains found in Frio are matched to Lupita Cantu. 

Although her remains were discovered 13 days after she was missing, the remains were not identified for almost 21 years.  Her twin sister, Mary Guzman, provided DNA which allowed the hair samples taken in 1990 to be matched to Lupita Cantu.  Click here to read a San Antonio Express-News story on the discovery.

Day 7:  After nearly 21 years, it seems the family of Lupita Cantu has answers to some questions, will be able to bury her, but this turns out not to be the case. Told she was buried in a pauper’s grave in Frio County, Texas, an exhumation of those remains show they are not Lupita Cantu‘s.

We know this much:  In 1990, Frio County sent remains that were not yet identified to the office of the Bexar County medical examiner.  We know hair samples were taken there, and in 2011, almost 21 years later, were identified as belonging to Lupita Cantu, missing since that same year.  Her family had received terrible news, and the idea that Lupita’s remains were found not long after her disappearance was painful, but they believed they at least know her fate and that they could reclaim her remains.  They believed they would be able to hold a funeral, would be able to take their loved one from an unmarked pauper’s grave in another county and lay her to rest in a cemetery near her family.  But the family received another blow.

When the remains in the pauper’s grave in Pearsall were exhumed, they were those of an unknown male.

Day 8: Finger-pointing between Bexar ME, Frio, funeral home, transport co., cemetery. Family waits.

Officials may be embarrassed, but for the family, this was a nearly unbearable blow.  Already suffering a whirlwind of emotions over the news of Lupita Cantu’s fate, they have looked forward to some measure of resolution in having her remains returned them.

Not only were her remains not where they were expected to be, officials soon realized that they could not confirm that they were ever interred.  Frio County Judge Carlos A. Garcia, as a justice of the peace, had ordered the autopsy.  Records from that point are incomplete, lost, concealed, or destroyed.  The ME’s office show that the body of an unidentified woman was brought to their office and autopsied, but will “not confirm if the office had released the remains afterward, nor comment on any aspect of the case.” (See “Missing Body Impedes Probe,” San Antonio Express-News, 4/17/2011)

The funeral home which was thought to have buried her claims the body never returned from Bexar, and that records for the cemetery are the county’s responsibility.  The owner of the company which transported the body to Bexar and would have brought it back is deceased and the company out of business.  Frio County records for the cemetery are apparently unclear or missing.

Day 9: Although required by law, it seems no death cert was issued. 2 yrs post DNA ID, Lupita Cantu is still missing.

One of the most mystifying facts in this case is that apparently, no death certificate was issued in 1990, when Lupita Cantu’s (then unidentified) remains were brought to the Bexar ME’s office.  Death certificates are required by law.  The death certificate might also help to determine the disposition of the remains.

Day 10:  23 years after her murder, we must again ask Texas to #FindLupitaCantu. 

This post authored by Jan Burke.

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Taking it to your streets

While efforts are made to grab the attention of U.S. federal lawmakers — and we all know how easy that is – regarding the problems in our current system of delivering forensic science services,  we thought you might want to act locally.

One of the many problems with forensic science in the U.S. is that it is fragmented, as the National Academy of Sciences declared in a major study published in 2009.  One aspect of the fragmentation is that within the U.S. there are thousands of entities and jurisdictions delivering those forensic science services.  Depending on where you live in the U.S., your local police department, your sheriff’s department, your county coroner or medical examiner, your state police, your local health department, your district attorney’s office, a state lab, a state medical examiner, the FBI, the ATF, the State Department, the Border Patrol, FEMA, the Office of Homeland Security, or military labs may all provide one or more aspects of forensic science services.  Your coroner may be elected, appointed, a justice of the peace, or a district attorney; may be a medical doctor, a dentist, an undertaker, or a gas station attendant — to name a few of the variations.  Your state may require as little as one 40-hour course for any individual to hold that office — or may not require any training at all.

The conditions these forensic science providers will work in also varies, depending on local and state requirements, in the degree of funding they receive, the degree of access to leadership they will have within their agency, and the support they will have from that leadership.  The facilities they are housed in may be a modern purpose-built lab, or they may be in a small surplus room at the back of the police station.  They may be collecting fingerprints in much the same way it was done fifty years ago, or they may be using the newest high tech scanners and other devices available.  The staff may be highly trained civilian scientists with advanced degrees, police officers with training and certification in some specialities, or people who just sort of fell into the work and have no training other than what can be provided on the job.  There may be facilities that have the ability to process DNA, or there may be a coroner’s office without a refrigerator for holding remains pending an autopsy.

Forensic science and those who provide forensic science services have the potential to do so much good for us — a functioning system of justice is only one of the many ways we benefit from it.  By the same token, in the hands of those who are not properly trained or who work in conditions that are bound to lead to errors or worse, it can do great harm. It can leave victims without justice and their families without answers, it can allow criminals to remain at large and able to harm others, it can cause the innocent to be unjustly punished or put to death.

Imagine, just for a moment, that you are the victim of a violent crime, or an innocent person unjustly accused, or someone whose loved one died under suspicious circumstances.  How well do you want forensic science to work?

So here are three steps to take:

1) Find out who provides forensic science services in your community and learn about local conditions.

What forensic science services does your local police department provide?  What are their capabilities?  What are their facilities like?  What training is required to hold each job?  If they have a lab, are they accredited?  If they are doing fingerprints, what equipment do they use, and how are their examiners trained?  What testing do they send out to another agency?  How long do they wait for results?  What is the local death investigator’s policy about unidentified bodies — is the office taking and keeping biological samples?  Are they reporting to the NamUS database?  There are more questions listed on our post, “What Can I Do to Help Public Forensic Science?“

2) Become educated about possible problems.

Follow the CLP Twitter feed (crimelabproject).  Read the NAS report – it’s free online.  Take our Backlog Quiz and the Death Quiz.  Check out the links we’ve provided in the on the sidebar to the right.

3) Find others who care about these issues and form a local forensic science support group.

Form a local organization that will raise awareness in your community, bring problems before your government representatives and the press, and ensure that your community does not suffer the consequences of inadequate support for quality forensic science.

Let us know how things are going!  We’ll do what we can to help.  Leave contact info in a comment here (we won’t publish it) or send an email to us at crimelabproject at gmail.

Pardon the Wait

While we undergo some changes.  We’ll be actively posting again soon — thanks for your patience!

As We Remember the Dead, Let’s Get Out of the 18th Century

Reaper, from Morguefile.com

Whether as part of the Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, All Souls Day or for other reasons, as we remember those we’ve loved and lost, let’s honor their memories by committing to a better system of investigating death in the United States.  A system that acknowledges that we’ve learned a few things since the 18th century, from which time some of our jurisdictions’ modes of death investigation are all but unchanged.

What would that system include?

To begin to get to the ideal, jurisdictions throughout the U.S. would adopt the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shockingly, millions of Americans live in jurisdictions that:

1) Require no forensic, legal, or any other kind of training for an individual to be a coroner.

2) Do not provide office space for coroners.

3) Do not provide computers for coroners.  Death records are on a paper system, likely not stored carefully or in one place.

4) Do not provide coroners refrigeration equipment for the storage of bodies.

5) Do not provide coroners or medical examiners with Xray and other basic examination equipment.

So the beginning steps include items would seem like “no brainers” — basic training requirements, facilities, equipment — but apparently our elected officials need to hear that current conditions must not continue. None of us, no matter how excellent things may be in our own jurisdictions, can afford what is bound to happen when so many others live in jurisdictions where death investigation is in a horribly crude and out-dated condition.  Missing persons cases, disease outbreak, product safety, and criminal justice are just a few of the areas that suffer nationally when death investigation is inadequate.  You think crime and cause of death statistics are accurate?  How can they be, if death investigators don’t know how to do their job or are lacking the basic tools they need to do it well?

For those jurisdictions without the resources to do more, perhaps it’s time we looked at creative solutions, such as regional death investigation centers.

Nationally, we face a dire shortage of forensic pathologists, so perhaps we should consider programs that would pay for schooling and training in exchange for a commitment of a number of years of service in medical examiners offices.

What are your ideas on ways we can change death investigation for the better?

Posted by: Jan Burke