Today started out great and terribly at the same time. For one, it was raining. This is great because my room was cool, but terrible because the outside was wet and I have to walk forever to class. The shower was empty. This was great because I got to be clean and on time. This was terrible because I couldn’t go back to bead. Jackie and I stopped for coffee. This was great because French Meadow coffee is fantastic. This was terrible because 16 oz. is $3.50. We started class with a 90-minute movie. This was great because movies mean less work and it was informative. This was terrible because it was 8:30 AM, the room was dark, and I’d only had two glasses of coffee. It was great that it got up to 80 degrees in the afternoon, but it was terrible because I forgot to shut my bedroom window and Cashin has no air conditioning. You get the idea.
Today marked the second day of case study presentations, and this time we heard about time forensic anthropology helped solve crimes. One of the presentations was about a renowned child murderer and the other about identifying 200 bodies in a bomb explosion in Bali. And this was the best part of the day. See what my life has become? But actually. Interesting stuff. We also had two guest speakers today, both of who were useful and something I could easily stay awake for. The first was a practicing attorney who was telling us about our part in the chain of evidence. The other was a forensic anthropologist who used to work for the Smithsonian and was one of the team members who identified the bodies of the burnt children form Waco. And now you see why child murder and bomb explosions were the high point. Her presentation had pictures.
LUNCH WAS GREAT. This sandwich place has really changed my life. I now look forward to lunch as enjoyable as well as being a break from bones. Today I tried the turkey on ciabatta with cranberry mayo, roasted red peppers, and spinach. Although not quite as good as the Goat Cheese Miracle, it was still quite tasty. I also had Cheetos and sweet tea. And ice cream. I love eating. In fact, this whole experience (and a Nos Energy Drink) almost prepared me for the stress that was the afternoon quiz. Before today, I was unaware that the first metatarsal can look suspiciously like the distal end of the radius. Hmm. Also, the radius is the funniest looking bone ever because the proximal end is literally just a circle. I do believe I did better on the quiz today than the one yesterday, but that remains to be seen. Regardless, I have come to realize that all nine quizzes combined are only ten percent of our final grade. And also my final grade doesn’t matter because it doesn’t transfer. So. There’s that.
The rest of the day was spent in the lab taking cranial and postcranial measurements with a slide and spreading caliper and several other tools I thought only existed on T.v. Also I didn’t know that so many things could be measured and in so many ways. Also, for the duration of the course, every student is assigned one day to write a blog posting about for the class blog about what we did that day, what we learned, and why it pertains to forensic anthropology as a whole so that other people who are possibly interested in taking this field school or are just interested in it can read about it. I had today, so here’s my post on the chain of evidence lecture and my thoughts on that.
…Where Did the Murder Weapon Go?
Today in Anthropology 598, we had the honor of welcoming another great guest speaker, Dr. Kathleen Brown-Perez. Dr. Brown-Perez is a practicing attorney, and she talked to our class about the chain of evidence, and specifically, how the chain of evidence cannot be broken. Personally, this seemed a bit obvious. However, I was very surprised by the extent to which the chain of evidence must be proven. We learned that to hold the maximum weight in court possible, a piece of evidence must be accounted for, or in the documented possession of an individual at all times. If the defense of a case can find a time where the evidence is unaccounted for, they could possibly cast a shadow of a doubt on the prosecution’s case, giving the jury a reason to believe that piece of evidence may not be as credible as it seems.
This is especially important to know as a forensic anthropologist because, often times, we are heavily involved in the collection of evidence in the first place. So, I gathering the evidence, we have the responsibility to store it correctly, preserve it, and, ultimately, give the chain of evidence a strong beginning. Dr. Brown-Perez also stressed that since the goal behind collecting evidence is to ultimately put someone behind bars, we would only be hurting our own case if we were to contaminate the evidence, which for some people, may be the absolute truth. This is something I personally disagree with, however. As someone who is looking to go into forensic anthropology, my goal is not to prosecute a killer but to find a reason for the death, to find why someone’s life was snatched away. As Voltaire so elegantly put it, “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only truth.”
Plus, she told me how to get out of jury duty, so she also benefited me as a human being.
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