In case work examinations what is the habit and custom in your lab concerning review by other examiners? For example, if you have a case and you draw conclusions about what you have seen in the course of your comparisons, does someone else review that as well? Do they just review your paperwork or do they review the actual items that you compared?
Well, with regard to all hair--hair associations, that is when an individual, an examiner says that this hair exhibits the same microscopic characteristics as a known sample from an individual and that is what is being reported, another examiner will take a look at that same hair association and determine whether or not it is valid. If that person signs off on it, then the report will be reported out and it will come to my desk. I review all the documentation that is done in the case, not only just the hair--hair association, but any other work that has been done, such as if all the fiber tests have been conducted properly, if all the requested examinations have been answered, if all the items are correct, and so forth, so I'm kind of like the last stop in the laboratory for the report before it goes out.
Well, we have two examiners that have approximately six or seven years of experience, case working experience.
And yet you have indicated to us that you have your case work confirmed by someone in your unit as well, correct?
Well, I don't have any doubts in the abilities of any of our examiners, our qualified examiners, and their ability to properly associate hair evidence. They wouldn't be doing cases if I had any question about that. After a year of training, you get a pretty good idea as a training officer or as a unit chief as to the abilities of someone to make the proper call. Once they are qualified, they have an opportunity, as with any examiner who has had number of years of experience, to confirm or not to confirm hair associations that someone else has made. I would have them look at my work, just as they would have me look at their work.
Well, each case--each case that comes in, and a case being evidence submitted in a criminal violation, may contain a lot of items. I really don't know exactly how many the average is, but ten to twenty items of evidence submitted in a case is not unusual. That would be items from a suspect, items from the victim, items from the crime scene, so all of these items have to be processed for hairs and fibers, and you have to examine all of those. So there could be--there could be hundreds of examinations and comparisons conducted in each case, so if you multiply that out, that is a lot of hairs and fibers.
That is--I would say half a million would be reasonable. I think--I feel like I've examined a lot more than that, but half a million sounds all right.
Well, hair examinations are conducted with a microscope, either a research microscope, a stereo binocular microscope or a comparison microscope.
Well, the first thing you have to determine with regards to hairs is whether it is an animal hair or human hair, and if it is an animal hair, if it is important in the case, it can be identified through reference collections, confirmed through reference material. But also the first step is what is in your own head from your own knowledge. With human hairs, the race of the individual, the part of the body the hair came from, how it came out of the body, if it has been artificially treated, if it has been subject to some disease or some damage. And these are the first things that have to be determined on every hair that is examined with--under the microscope.
Those--with regard to those first things that you look for during your examination of a hair under the microscope, you indicated how the hair was removed?
How the hair was removed. Hairs can be naturally shed, they would have a root that looks like the head of a wooden match stick. Kind of rounded, looks like a club shape. If it is forcibly removed, as is the case sometimes with matters that I look at, the hair, which is firmly attached, will be pulled and it will stretch, it will look all stretched out, and it may even have some tissue from the follicle or from the area the skin where it is attached. That is forcible removal. If the hair has been pulled, it may also break at the skin line. It may tear. It may be cut with a dull or a sharp instrument. These are things that can be determined microscopically.
Now, there are then--you were referring to these microscopic characteristics. Are there specific ones, characteristics of hairs that you use to compare when do you your examination?
There are a number of microscopic characteristics that I look at and I consider and compare in every case.
Would it assist you in your explanation of those characteristics to the jury if you were to refer to a diagram?
Okay. We see before us People's 459, a diagram. Are you familiar with this diagram, sir?
All right. Since you prepared it, you can explain to us what you were trying to indicate on this chart with respect to the microscopic characteristics of hairs.
I will be glad to. The hair shaft is actually what you look at under a microscope. First of all, under low magnification it shows the root area. Also diagrams out the follicle or the area of the skin where the hair is growing, the hair shaft and the tip of the hair. Each of these areas all have characteristics and have a particular look about them that is useful when comparing hairs between a crime scene and from an individual. Now, the enlargement beneath it shows an area of that hair that is magnified. Always keep in mind that these diagrams are two-dimensional structures, two-dimensional pictures. You are not saying--they are in fact cylinders, hairs of cylindrical type objects, and this is only working at one particular plane. The examination involves what is called optical cross-sectioning. By focusing up and down with the microscope you actually look all at the characteristics from the bottom of the slide as it is laying on the slide to the top of the hair. Now, that diagram shows that the hair has an outer layer of scales called the cuticle. Now, these scales always overlap in the direction of the tip. Any abuse, damage, blow drying, being from a dry environment, all affect the way the scales will protrude away from the hair shaft. Some individuals, they lay very close. Other individuals, they are--they are separated to a great extent, so the degree of scale protrusion is a consideration. Now, this is colored for your--for your enjoyment, I guess. It is actually not brown. The--the color of the cuticle is something that would be considered, for instance, if a person treats their hair, they dye their hair or even if they alter the color in some way, it is possible to determine when that treatment may last have been applied by considering the length of growth of that--the length that the hair has grown since the application of the treatment, so about a half an inch a month, you get an idea how far back the treatment was applied and this may be important in a case, depending on the circumstances. Now, the cuticle can be very thick, it can be very thin. It may have a very distinct border underneath it. Other times it looks like it blends very evenly with the underlying structure, which is called the cortex. Now, most of the hair is called the cortex. It is kind of like a pencil. The paint on the outside of the pencil is the cuticle. All the wood, that is the cortex, and the lead portion of the pencil, that is the central structure called the medulla. Now, in the cortex there are pigment granules. They help to give the hair color. The pigment granules can be different sizes and shapes and they can be stripped in certain ways within the hair. Black people the pigment granules are tightly grouped and often very dense. In Asians, the hair--the cortex may be quite a bit larger, it may have a reddish coloration. In Caucasian individuals you have a pretty good range. The distribution of the pigment is a consideration. Red-haired people the pigment is always grouped down toward the middle, down toward the medulla, but most everybody else it is grouped outside toward the cuticle. Now, also in this cortex you will have air bubbles called cortical fusi, scientific term, but they are just little air bubbles, and these little air bubbles can appear in different sizes and shapes and different places of that hair.
It will be something to look at and consider when you are comparing a questioned hair with a known hair. Sometimes the pigment is found in large groups and it looks like a solid structure and it is called the ovoid body. Some people have a lot of these. They may be all black. Some people have amber colored ovoid bodies, they could look like little footballs inside the hair shaft. They may look like circular structures. It just depends on the individual. If they are there, how many of them, where they are at, it might be something that is the characteristics of that person's hair. In the center of the hair is call the medulla. It may or may not be present. In head hairs sometimes you see it; sometimes you don't. With a Asian individuals the medulla is often very thick and continuous. If it looks black under the microscope, and I believe in this diagram it looks black, that is because there is air surrounding that area of the hair and the light from the microscope won't get through it, so it may look black. Sometimes there is no air, it will look clear, it just looks like a clear river running down the middle of the hair.
Now, it may be continuous, it may be broken, it may be in large lengths or it may be in small groups and there would be just trace consideration of the appearance of that medullary structure. And that is about what hairs look like.
Well, based on what you are saying then, sir, these characteristics of the cuticle, the cortex and the medulla, vary between individuals?
Miss Clark, is it possible that we could do this here so that counsel can see what is being drawn at the same time?
I think we certainly can, but I think it might inhibit some of the juniors from seeing.
We talked about the diagram. I will just kind of redo this a little bit for you just so we can fill in the blanks. That is that magnified area of the hair shaft. The cuticle is the outer structure and again consider this to be a cylinder or three-dimensional structure. The scale protrusion may be great or it may lay very flat and you might not even be able to see where the edges of the scales lie. Again, the color, the thickness of the cuticle, the pigment granules, appear to be dots inside the cortex of the hair. Now, with gray-haired individuals you won't see them. If a person bleaches their hair, you will see them, but they will just be light. Pigment granules can be in groups. They help to define racial--the racial group. Clumping of pigment into groups within the hair shaft is characteristic of black individuals, but not all black individuals have heavy clumping of pigment. Some do; some don't. When I speak of microscopic characteristics, we go from models. Always go from a model. We have a model for the Caucasian, we have a model for black individuals and we have a model for Asians, but they don't always follow the model. However far they go away from the model, that makes it a little more difficult determine race.
Well, race is determined primarily for investigative purposes. That is first stage. You may have a hair that is recovered on an item of evidence in a case and they want to know who may have committed the crime. From an examination of the hair some direction may be given to the investigator by the lab examiner. It might help them in determining who they should be looking for perhaps. The bottom line in our work is comparison. You may be a little off in saying the exact racial group or maybe some of the other characteristics of the individual. You really can't go too far beyond what the hair looks like. But when we get the individual and you compare the hairs, that is the bottom line for us, if the hairs are the same microscopically.
Other than that, it is just a factor among other factors that you consider in determining what matches--excuse me--what can be associated and what cannot?
Right. It is just the first stage on the microscopic examination of a hair, and I have already discussed this, is animal, human, body area and the internal characteristics just become part of your internal memory as you are doing the examination. Side-by-side comparison of the actual questioned and known hairs is the ultimate tool that is used for this comparison. Air spaces, they look like little air bubbles, they may be round and circular or they may be long streaks, and where they are in the hair shaft, if they are down near the base of the hair, down near the root here or if they are out near the tip or however they are distributed. I mentioned ovoid bodies you recall. They are called ovoid because many of them look oval-shaped and they may be black, but also can be round and large. I found that as a person gets older these tend to show up more. The air spaces tend to show up more. That is just a characteristic. The medulla in the central part of the hair, you saw the diagram, it was continuous, it was pretty broad. This can be real thin and can be much larger and it can be broken or just continuous. Again some hairs may not even have that. Now, this being an enlargement of the hair, if you go back to the original shape of the hair, from the root out to the tip there are characteristics in this area, the shape of the root, the length of the root, the presence of pigment in the root, if there is tissue around it indicating perhaps how much the hair came out of the body, the shaft shape. With black individuals the shaft of the hair is often very flat, often brittle. It will break quite easily and sometimes even split right down the middle of the hair.
With Asians, often very large, circular, and again I'm talking about the model here. The medulla, quite a bit larger, very thick cuticle, they lay very smooth and straight. Very characteristic of the hair shape. Caucasians may be somewhere in the middle. They can be round or they can be kind of even flat, depending on the person. This particular shaft may be curly, may be wavy and that has a lot to do with just the shape of the hair itself. But some hairs have what's called a shoulder, and it is just appearance of the hair, and again you think of this in terms of an entire hair and thinks your little shoulder area here, (Indicating). You can see that microscopically and that hair may be really kind of kinky and curly, but these are some of the characteristics. I look at the tip. If the tip has been cut with scissors, been cut with a razor, if it is a natural taper, if it is splintered, all of these things are considered; length, color, internal microscopic characteristics, the shape of the shaft, you look at everything that is there.
All right. You were referring earlier to a couple of terms. You referred to a known standard.
Excuse me, Miss Clark. Are we are going to need that, because we are shielding out juror no. 7?
You spoke of known standards, sir. Can you please tell us, define what you mean by that?
Well, with regards to hairs now, a known standard is a collection of hairs that are taken from a particular area of the body of a human being. Known hair standards can be collected from the pubic region, often helpful in sexual assault cases. Head hairs from the head region and some hairs may also be taken from other body areas, from the arms or legs, which are called limb hairs, axillary, underarm, chest hairs and other body areas.
Well, I was going to ask you about limb hairs. Let me ask you that later. Right now can you please tell us, sir, how you begin, how you conduct an examination of hairs?
Well, back again a little bit here, we--the first thing I do, once the hairs are prepared on glass microscope slides, is to examine the hair to determine animal, human, racial origin and part of the body it came from. I do that with all the questioned items. The questioned items may be from the clothing of the victim and it may be several items and they are all mounted on separate slides. The clothing of the suspect, again they are mounted on separate slides. I go through starting at Q1, questioned item no. 1, and I move through the case getting an idea as to what kind of hairs I'm seeing on the victim's clothes, what kind of hairs I'm seeing on the suspect's clothes. I then go to the known hairs. I examine the known, describe them in note form, but the notes are taken just for me to make sure that I look at everything and also to highlight some of the characteristics that are being seen. And ultimately take the questioned hairs using a comparison microscope and comparing them with that instrument.
All right. Would you please describe the process by which hairs and fibers are mounted on slides.
Sure. The hairs and fibers that are recovered from the clothing of an individual are often retained in either paper folds or in plastic pillboxes or however. That--let's say a pillbox is taken to a stereomicroscope and then examined carefully to see if there is anything in it. Are there hairs in it? Are there fibers in it? What else do I see? And then those hairs are removed individually. Now, before you start even working on this, that whole area is cleaned off and you make sure that there is nothing on it that is going to be added to your case. A clean glass microscope slide is placed down on some clean paper. The hairs are then removed individually and mounted on that slide. The first thing I do is I place a thin film of solvent called xylene and it allows the hairs to stick to it.
May I interrupt you, sir? We have photographs. Would you like to narrate the photographs so the jury can see the process?
Okay. Can I ask that this series of photographs be marked collectively as People's 461, your Honor.
Well, we see an examiner that used to have dark brown hair, but he has changed a little bit. Hairs do change a little bit. But what I'm doing here is looking through the stereomicroscope and looking at a pillbox that contains hairs and fibers that may have been collected from a particular item of evidence. The stereo binocular microscope allows me to look at the material from a three-dimensional look. The--the mechanics of it or the optics are set up in such a way that you are looking at it three-dimensionally so you can focus up and down and see what is underneath things.
KEY QUOTEHere you see the examiner removing a hair from the pillbox in preparation for placing it on the glass microscope slide.
Each hair would be measured. I mean, there is a ruler generally laid down for the purposes of determining the length of the hair before it is mounted on the slide.
Now, you are using a pillbox there to contain the hair and fiber that you recover from evidence. Have you ever heard of people using paper bindles to contain hair and fiber collected from evidence?
Well, I never heard the word "Bindle" until I got to this case, but we've always heard them as druggist folds or paper folds, so if you want me to call them a bindle, I will call them a bindle.
You don't have to call them. You can call them paper folds. You have seen that before?
Is there anything wrong with collecting the hair and fiber that is recovered from evidence into a paper fold instead of a pillbox?
No. I think it is just easier to work with a pillbox from an examiner's standpoint because you can actually see what is in it, but paper folds are fine.
Okay. I have already mentioned that once you take the hair out of the pillbox, you place it on the slide with some forceps.
You can use your hands, sure. You may have to--you may have to hang onto the end of the hair when you are measuring it. Hold one end and hold another with the forceps or you can use two forceps. You always have to be careful with forceps because you can pinch the hair, you can break the hair, but it is kind of a little delicate operation. But, yeah, you can use your hands. As long as your hands are clean, that is not a problem.
Okay. Once the hair has been positioned on the glass slide and this glass slide is like one inch by three inches and on one end there is an area that you can write on it as to what you are putting on this slide, you place the hair on it, you blot out the excess solvent with some blotter paper and you place a few drops of permount which is a mounting media like glue, a yellowish substance. You don't really see the color microscopically, but you place three or four drops on the slide and you lay the coverslip down on top of that.
Okay. Now, the xylene that you mentioned before, a solvent--is that the process being shown in this photograph, 461-E?
For one thing, it blends with permount, it mixes with it. You couldn't use water. You would have do use something that would mix with the glue type substance you are using, so actually just to hold the material in place. You are working with fibers. You can't put a fiber down on a clean--just dry glass because the slightest air movement could move that fiber off the slide, so you just use it to stick things on the slide while you are moving--you are taking material out of your paper fold or your plastic pillbox or from a hatchet or whatever you are taking it off of just so you don't lose it.
Does either the solvent xylene or permount affect the hair or fiber in any way in terms of its appearance? Does it alter or damage it?
How--let me ask you about that: When you--if you were to examine a hair or fiber mounted on a slide with water instead of permount, would that be a good or bad thing?
I wouldn't recommend it either, because there is too much contrast. If the hair or the fiber--these other materials have properties that do not--are not very clearly visible when you use water and you can use some other materials, too, but if the properties of that liquid are such that it is quite a bit different than what the--the item you are looking at is, you will have a large amount of contrast and you won't be able to see actually inside the characteristics of that material.
Okay. Might the use of a water mount also inhibit or affect your ability to determine how many hairs you have on a slide?
Well, very easily, especially when you are using coverslips and that--that material could--could move very quickly over to the edge and you would be near the edge of the coverslip. You wouldn't even know it was there, because there would be so much contrast, but if a hair might be laying right next to another hair or on top of it, it may even look like an extension of the hair. You really couldn't even see that, whether there was one hair or two hairs or however many.
Prior to beginning your mounting process, sir, do you make any effort to determine how long or how short the hairs are that you are going to mount?
Yes. I have that ruler down there and I measure the hair and put it on a slide and make a notation. Most of the slides that are prepared I--I make a note of the longest hair that I place on the slide. Sometimes at a later date this is not--may not work out so well because the hair that you find that looks like the individual known standard may be shorter than that measurement. You might say under six inches or so on the slide and the hair that you are looking at is two inches and you have to go back with some thread and try to figure it out and it works out pretty well. And you can take the slide apart anytime--well, maybe not anytime, but at least during the time you are still working with it because it is still workable, it doesn't set like through real hard, real fast, but you may have trouble ten years from now.
So the slide that you create will create the initial examination and re-examination for hairs and fibers mounted for quite a long period of time?
Sure. And quite often examination material may have to be removed from that slide so I may make a crack in the coverslip. A coverslip is just a very, very thin sheet of glass that fits on top of the slide just to hold it in place and a little tap with the scribe allows a crack to form and then you can remove carefully the material that you want without disturbing the rest of the slide.
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to take our break for the noon hour. Please remember all of my admonitions to you. Don't discuss the case among yourselves, form any opinions about the case, conduct any deliberations until the matter has been submitted to you or allow anybody to communicate with you with regard to the case. We will stand in recess until 1:00 p.m. All right. Mr. Deedrick, you are ordered to come back at 1:00 p.m.
Half a million would be reasonable. I think--I feel like I've examined a lot more than that, but half a million sounds all right.
I never heard the word 'Bindle' until I got to this case, but we've always heard them as druggist folds or paper folds, so if you want me to call them a bindle, I will call them a bindle.
Side-by-side comparison of the actual questioned and known hairs is the ultimate tool that is used for this comparison.
Well, we see an examiner that used to have dark brown hair, but he has changed a little bit. Hairs do change a little bit.