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400
Who Determines Cause of Death
Germanic and Slavic societies made a law that medical experts must be the ones to determine the cause of death in crimes -
Period: 400 to
CSI Developments
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Jan 1, 600
Fingerprints First Used
Fingerprints first used to determine identity. Arabic merchants would take a debtor's fingerprint and attach it to the bill. -
Jan 1, 700
Chinese Using Fingerprints
Chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculpture, but without any formal classification system. -
Jan 1, 1000
Roman Court
An attorney in the Roman courts showed a bloody palm print to frame a blind man of his mother's murder. -
Jan 1, 1248
First Forensic Science Book
First forensic science manual published by the Chinese. It was called, Hsi DuanYu (the Washing Away of Wrongs). This was the first known record of medical knowledge being used to solve criminal cases. -
Physical Evidence Used in Criminal Case
First recorded instance of physical matching of evidence leading to a murder conviction (John Toms, England). Evidence was a torn edge of newspaper in a pistol that matched newspaper in his pocket. -
Ink Dye
The first recorded use of question document analysis occurred in Germany. A chemical test for a particular ink dye was applied to a document knows as the Konigin Hanschritt. -
First Presumptive Test for Blood
The German scientist, Schonbein first discovered the ability of hemoglobin to oxidize hydrogen peroxide making it foam. This resulted in the first presumptive test for blood. -
Fingerprint ID Used in Crime
Juan Vucetich, an Argentinean police officer, is the first to use fingerprints as evidence in a murder investigation. He created a system of fingerprint identification, which he named dactyloscopy. -
Blood Markers
Human blood grouping, ABO, discovered by Karl Landsteiner and adapted for use on bloodstains by Dieter Max Richter. Image of Karl Landsteiner. -
FBI
Theodore Roosevelt established Federal Bureau of Investigation. -
FBI Crime Laboratory
FBI establishes its own crime laboratory, now one of the foremost crime labs in the world. This same year, a chair of legal medicine at Harvard was established. -
Residue Detection
Technology developed at Aerospace Corporation in the US to detect gunshot residue, which can link a suspect to a crime scene, and can show how close that suspect was to the gun. -
DNA Advancement (1983-86)
First criminal caught with DNA evidence. DNA fingerprinting led to conviction of Colin Pitchfork in the murder of two teenage girls. This evidence cleared the main suspect in the case, who likely would have been convicted without it. -
Faster DNA IDs
Technology speeds up DNA profiling time, from 6-8 weeks to between 1-2 days -
Facial Sketches Matched to Photos
Michigan state university develops software that automatically matches hand-drawn facial sketches to mug shots stored in databases. -
Four Second Dental Match
Japanese researchers develop a dental x-ray matching system. This system can automatically match dental x-rays in a database, and makes a positive match in less than 4 seconds.
