Fingerprints and video evidence lead to the arrest

This just in from WANE.com: "Warsaw police said fingerprints and video evidence lead to the arrest in the June 2010 burglary of an AutoZone store on East Center Street.

According to the Warsaw Police Department, Keith J. Vuittonet, 35, was arrested for Burglary at a mobile home in the Whispering Pines Trailer Court, north of Warsaw Friday afternoon.

Police believe Vuittonet entered the business through the roof on June 10, 2010, based on fingerprint and video evidence at the scene.

Vuittonet is also charged with Residential Entry in the home burglary in the Pierceton area.

Police also said Vuittonet had traveled to Texas shortly after the incidents and recently returned to the area.

He was booked into the Kosciusko County Jail and held o a $20,000 bond."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Adobe Carousel

This just in from Adobe: "During the Photoshop World 2011 keynote, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced Adobe® Carousel™ for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch and Mac OS. Adobe Carousel is designed for anyone who loves photographs, takes a lot of them, and needs a simple way to view, browse, adjust and share them without worrying about manual syncing or storage. Adobe Carousel uses the powerful photo-processing technology that is used in Adobe Photoshop® Lightroom®, so customers get the finest photo-editing results delivered consistently no matter what the device. Photos look great and are easy to share directly with family and friends.

Adobe Carousel is comprised of a set of client apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Mac OS desktops (versions for Windows and other devices are expected in the first half of 2012). When customers import their photo library into Adobe Carousel, or take new photos using Adobe Carousel on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, those photos are automatically accessible on any supported device through the cloud-based smart mesh technology incorporated in Adobe Carousel. Once imported, any edits, deletions or additions to the library made on one device are automatically updated across all devices linked with the account. With Adobe Carousel, manual syncing and device storage limitations are a thing of the past.

Setting up Adobe Carousel is easy. Customers will just download the apps, set up a subscription plan on their iPhone and iPad, and they are ready to go. Subscribers can import a virtually unlimited number of JPEG files, and install Adobe Carousel apps on as many of their compatible devices as they want.

“With Adobe Carousel we are extending the power of Adobe’s imaging expertise beyond the desktop and onto tablets and smartphones, delivering instant access to your complete photo library and the freedom to edit and share photos anywhere, any time,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of Digital Imaging Products, Adobe. “Thanks to Adobe Carousel, users never need to worry about wasting time syncing, remembering if a photo was saved to a particular device, or worrying about maxing out storage on their iPhone or iPad.”

Familiar multi-touch gestures provide a fun and interactive experience to explore tens of thousands of photos quickly and easily, and Adobe’s powerful photo-processing engine lets users adjust exposure, shadows, highlights, white balance, vibrance, clarity and contrast. There are also over a dozen “Looks” that allow customers to quickly experiment with the appearance of a photo. Adobe Carousel simplifies and enhances photo sharing by allowing subscribers to invite friends and family members to collaborate on a photo library free of charge – so anyone with a Carousel capable device can view existing photos and contribute new ones, apply adjustments and Looks to images, and easily grab and flag favorite photos. Users can also share photos by sending them directly to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr or via email.

Pricing and Availability
The Adobe Carousel apps will be available through the iTunes App Store and for Mac later this month. Through Jan. 31, 2012, Adobe plans to offer Adobe Carousel for a special introductory price of US$59.99/year or US$5.99/month. Anyone subscribing at that price will be able to renew at that same price for an additional two years. At the conclusion of the introductory offer, Adobe Carousel will be US$99.99/year or US$9.99/month. By subscribing, customers automatically receive any enhancements and updates to Adobe Carousel at no additional charge. Customers receive a complimentary subscription for up to 30 days and can purchase a monthly or yearly subscription at any time from their iPad or iPhone.

Customers can download and install the Adobe Carousel apps as many times and across as many devices as they want as a part of their subscription (no additional fees apply). For more information, including system requirements, visit www.photoshop.com/carousel

I'm thinking that this is more of a personal type app - and not necessarily for LE use ... at least that's how I'm planning on using it. On the other hand, it could help for court prep, depositions, and other cases where you might need instant access to your images.

Enjoy.

2011 HTCIA International Training Conference & Expo

I'll be at the HTCIA Conference next week in Indian Wells, Ca, talking about Cell Phones. My partner, Eric Wahlberg (scarry good at getting evidence out of cell phones), will be hosting a class on using FinalMobile to script evidence retrieval.

If you're planning on being there, stop by and say hello.

Enjoy.

Changes to Rule 26

From the BullsEye Blog: "On Dec. 1, 2010, a major change took effect in the federal rule governing expert witness reports, giving draft reports the protection of the work-product doctrine and exempting them from mandatory disclosure. At the time, attorneys and experts hailed the change as a long-overdue step that would reduce both the cost and contentiousness of litigation.

Now, having had six months to live with the new rule, the assessment of many attorneys and experts remains favorable but somewhat muted. While there is general agreement that the change was for the better and has simplified the process to a degree, most attorneys and experts report that the actual impact on their practices has been negligible.

“It has simplified the report process and removed some of the archaic hurdles in the process,” says David Donoghue, a partner at Holland & Knight in Chicago. “But I do not think it has simplified expert discovery overall because many are still testing and litigating the boundaries of the new rule, particularly what information is in fact discoverable.”

The Dec. 1 revision of Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure changed what had been the practice ever since the rule’s last major revision in 1993. No longer does the rule require full discovery of draft expert reports and broad disclosure of any communications between an expert and trial counsel.

Instead, those communications now come under the protection of the work-product doctrine, prohibiting discovery of draft expert reports and limiting discovery of attorney-expert communications. Still allowed is full discovery of the expert’s opinions and of the facts or data used to support them ..."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Budget Cuts Slash Expert Funds

This just in from the BullsEye Blog: "Despite seeing the first signs of an improving economy, both the legal industry and governmental agencies are still experiencing a budget crunch. Changing fee structures at law firms and debates over the federal budget have left both groups with limited funds to locate and retain experts.

In the last few months most government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, have been forced to defend their very expensive price tags. SEC Chairwoman, Mary Shapiro, told Senate Banking Committee members that budget cuts have caused reductions in personnel, technology and litigation expenses, including the amount spent on expert witnesses. Although funds may be limited, locating the best experts is still vital to a successful case. When equally qualified experts present opposing facts to the court, the most persuasive and best credentialed experts often carry the most weight with juries.

These experts not only look impressive on paper, but also have the intangible ability to communicate with judges and juries. Unfortunately, many of these experts appear at first to be unobtainable to those with lesser litigation budgets because of larger fee structures.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Adobe CreatePDF for iOS

Yesterday Adobe released Adobe CreatePDF as an app for iOS devices, such as iPhones and iPads. This app will enable you to open any Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Image, Text, or RTF files as a PDF on your iOS device. Just use the ‘Open in’ to send your files to the CreatePDF application.

Click here to read the whole article and watch the video. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Expert Reports: Should Lawyers Keep Hands Off?

From the BullsEye Newsletter: "Hands off or hands on? That is the question for litigators and experts alike as to the lawyer's role in writing the expert's report.

The answers lawyers give to that question are anything but black-and-white. Rather, many trial lawyers see their role in the report as a matter of nuance, finessed through experience. Whereas the expert is skilled in a subject, they say, the lawyer is skilled in storytelling. The lawyer's job is to ensure that the expert's report conveys both the subject and the story.

"It is an art, I want to stress," says Michael J. Abernathy, chair of the Intellectual Property Department at Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, Chicago. "You have to be involved in this without crossing the line in terms of improperly molding the expert's opinion."

Federal courts require a written expert report pursuant to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. State court rules vary in their requirements for a report. Rule 26 explicitly states that the report is to be "prepared and signed by the witness."

But does Rule 26 mean the lawyer must give the expert carte blanche in writing the report? Lawyers generally agree it does not, but they do not necessarily agree on the appropriate degree of their involvement. The danger of a lawyer's over-involvement is that it opens the report to impeachment.

"I would rather have a very objective report with minimal attorney input than a report which is overly managed by counsel," says Russell Boltwood, vice president of licensing and intellectual property at UTStarcom Inc. in Alameda, Calif. "Ultimately, a report which is heavily managed by attorneys for content will not likely withstand good impeachment by opposing counsel's experts."

At the same time, under-involvement is equally risky, exposing a lawyer to loss of control of the evidence needed to make the case. Andrew R. McGaan, a litigator with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, recalls his fear as a young lawyer of being too hands-on with an expert and how a mentor changed his view.

"A senior lawyer at my firm once said to me: Would you rather have it come out that you played a role in the opinion or would you rather have come out an opinion in which you played no role?"

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

When experts disagree

Another cautionary tale from IMS Expert Services: "t happens all the time between opposing experts in litigation. One side brings on an expert to look for holes in the work of the expert on the other side.

But what happens when one expert exposes another expert's work as flawed – and both experts are working for you?

What if your own expert comes to you and questions the methods or conclusions of another of your experts?

Perhaps you retained one expert as a consultant to conduct initial reviews and lay the groundwork for your case. Later, you retained a second expert in the same field to testify.

You present the consulting expert's work to the testifying expert as background to be used in formulating his own opinion. The testifying expert looks at the earlier work and proclaims, "I can't use this. The analysis is flawed because of X, Y and Z."

At this point, there is no option of sweeping the issue under the rug. Had the consulting expert's work remained just that, it would not have been discoverable under the federal rules. But once it was provided to the testifying expert, it became fair game.

That means that your opponent is likely both to learn about the consulting expert's work and also to learn of the testifying expert's condemnation of it.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Mouse scroll wheel behaviour in Premiere Pro

This just in from Adobe's Kevin Monahan: "The scroll wheel on the mouse can be useful to speeding up workflow in Premiere Pro, that is, if you know how to use it. This is especially true if you are switching to Premiere Pro from another application. For example, Final Cut Pro editors are used to using the scroll wheel to move the timeline vertically to see more tracks. In Premiere Pro, the scroll wheel moves the timeline horizontally. This may seem disorienting at first, but you should know that you can use the mouse to scroll vertically. To do this, hover the pointer over the scroll bars in the timeline, then use the scroll wheel on the mouse to move the timeline vertically.

The scroll wheel has an additional function, and that is zooming in and out of the timeline. Sure you can type the = and – keys to zoom into and out of the timeline, but if you hold down ALT (Windows) or Option (Mac OS), and scroll with your mouse you can zoom in and out that way. Scrolling down with the modifier key enabled zooms out of the timeline while scrolling up zooms in.

Just a couple of tips for your scroll wheel that should save you time as you manipulate the timeline in Premiere Pro."

Enjoy.

Free sample chapters and videos from An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro

From Adobe" Todd Kopriva: "Peachpit Press recently released An Editor’s Guide to Adobe Premiere Pro, by Robbie Carman, Jeff Greenberg, and Richard Harrington.

This book is an excellent resource for experienced editors to learn Adobe Premiere Pro. It begins from an assumption that you already know about video editing in general and only need to learn the details of the features and workflows specific to Adobe Premiere Pro and its companion applications.

You don’t need to take my word for it, though. The fine folks at Peachpit Press have made four chapters available as free samples: three as PDF documents and one as an HTML document ..."

Click here to read the whole article and access the sample material. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

LEVA Announces Activation of Forensic Video Analysis Response Team

In support of LEVA member agency the Vancouver Police Department and the Integrated Riot Investigation Team (IRIT), LEVA announces the activation of the Forensic Video Analysis Response Team.

IRIT investigators are innundated with over 1600 hours of video depicting criminal acts that took place immediately following this summer's Stanely Cup hockey finals, including arson, looting, and serious assaults.

Between September 26th and October 9th over 40 LEVA Forensic Video Analysts will converge on the National Digital Multimedia Evidence Processing Lab at the University of Indianapolis to undertake the mass processing of DME.

Enjoy.

Picture Package is dead? Long live Picture Package.

Many miss the old Picture Package feature from Photoshop CS3 and earlier. But did you know there are several ways to create packages in current Adobe apps?

Photoshop legend Michael Salinero provides several options, including a clever technique that uses Smart Objects to create flexible package layouts.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Need every nth frame of a video?

One of the questions that came up in yesterday's class was how to get every nth frame of a video. Why would you want to do that? Multiplexed video. If you only want one camera view and that view shows up in the video stream on a regular interval, you should be able to say to your software ... "give me every nth frame."

So, how do you do it? It turns out that Amped Five does it really well.

Once you load the range selector, just input the interval.

It's really that easy.

This handy feature is one of the reasons that I am liking Amped Five more and more.

Enjoy.

Expert’s Exclusion Upheld by 10th Circuit

From the BullsEye blog: "In what proved to be a dramatic turn of events for the plaintiff in a products liability suit against pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this month that a trial judge’s ruling to allow expert testimony is not final and may be reversed by a second trial judge who takes over the case.

The 10th Circuit refused to accept the plaintiff’s argument that the “law of the case” legal doctrine should preclude the second trial judge from revisiting the first judge’s ruling. The court said it would not apply the doctrine to rulings revisited prior to entry of final judgment, reasoning that judges generally remain free to reconsider their earlier interlocutory orders. This holds true even when a case is reassigned from one judge to another, the circuit panel said.

The underlying lawsuit arose out of truly tragic circumstances. Plaintiff Mark Rimbert alleged that Eli Lilly’s anti-depression medication Prozac caused his father to kill his wife and himself. Rimbert’s father committed the murder-suicide shortly after he was diagnosed with moderate depression and started taking the drug.

After the parties concluded discovery, Eli Lilly filed motions for summary judgment on various grounds and a motion to exclude the testimony of Rimbert’s expert witness on causation under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). After conducting a Daubert hearing, the judge denied the motion to exclude the expert.

Later, the judge made a disclosure “of a personal nature” to the parties in the case. Although he did not believe the circumstances required him to recuse himself, he offered to have the case reassigned if any party was uncomfortable with his continued participation. Eli Lilly took him up on that offer and the case was reassigned to a new judge.

As soon as the new judge took over the case, Eli Lilly renewed its previous motions. Relying on the transcript of the first judge’s Daubert hearing and the evidence presented there, the second judge reversed the first judge’s ruling and granted Eli Lilly’s motion to exclude the testimony of Rimbert’s causation expert. He also refused to give Rimbert more time to find a new expert. Leaving Rimbert with no evidence of causation, the second judge granted summary judgment in favor of Eli Lilly.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Comments Sought on Police Vehicle Camera Standards

The U.S. government is seeking comment on the latest version of its proposed standards for police vehicle audio and video equipment.

On Aug. 22, 2011, the Department of Justice (DoJ) posted a Federal Register notice, “Vehicular Digital Multimedia Evidence Recording System (VDMERS) Standard, Certification Program Requirements, and Selection and Application Guide,” announcing that the DoJ, the Office of Justice Programs, and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) have made available to the general public three draft documents related to VDMERS used by law enforcement agencies:

Draft VDMERS Standard for Law Enforcement
Draft Law Enforcement VDMERS Certification Program Requirements
Draft Law Enforcement VDMERS Selection and Application Guide

The notice says, “The opportunity to provide comments on these documents is open to industry technical representatives, law enforcement agencies and organizations, research, development and scientific communities, and all other stakeholders and interested parties.” The deadline for comments is Sept. 21, 2011.

Enjoy.

DSI-Vegas next week

I'm getting things ready to head to Las Vegas and the DSI-Vegas conference next week. For a refreshing change, I'm presenting a demo and workshop on Premiere Pro CS5.5. I'm sure that I'll sneak another product or two into the mix.

I'm going to break from the usual teaching routine and focus on specific cases and video files to demonstrate the power of the program. From weird sized video to hiding faces, we'll really kick the tyres next week.

See you there.

CCTV User Group looks at UK riots

"... the Met Police alone, have identified 3,296 criminal incidents related to the riots and have already made over 1,883 arrests and charged over 1,074 people, principally based on recordings from the Public Area CCTV cameras, but also their own 'body worn' cameras and owners systems, a remarkable achievement!

This is echoed the results from Birmingham (by the 13th 509 arrested and 141 charged), Manchester(256 arrested, 166 charged), Merseyside (by the 15th 216 arrested and 86 charged), Nottingham and other Town and Cities similarly affected. A fantastic result that couldn't have been achieved without the Local Authority Public Area CCTV systems, and the support of all the 'back office staff' within the Police Forces!

Now, hopefully the additional resources, proposed by the Police, have quietened things down, but be under no dis-illusion the work of the Police and Local Authorities behind the scenes is still at fever pitch ..."

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro

Last week, Al Mooney presented a seminar on easing the transition to Adobe Premiere Pro from another NLE, such as Final Cut Pro.

Here’s the recording.

(Note: If the Adobe Connect session loses audio/video synch, just click the playhead in Adobe Connect, and it will re-synchronize.)

Enjoy.

Why doesn't Photoshop support my camera?

From Adobe's Jeff Tranberry: "I just got a new camera and Photoshop won't recognize my files.

First, make sure you have the latest updates for Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop. (The process to update Lightroom is similar. Launch Lightroom and choose Help>Check for Updates…) It’s always a good idea to have the latest updates installed.

Second, if updating to the latest version doesn’t give you joy and let you open your camera raw files, verify your camera make and model is on the list of supported cameras.

Third, if your camera isn’t on the list of supported cameras check on Adobe Labs for a release candidates of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in or Adobe Lightroom. A release candidate is a very close to done version of the plug-in that Adobe shares with the community prior to full release for additional testing.

Finally, if your camera came out within the past 90 days, be patient, as you may need to wait for the new camera support. Adobe goes through a rigorous process of adding support for and testing of each new camera raw format. Adobe generally releases updates of the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in and Lightroom to provide new camera support about once a quarter, or about every 90 days. Feel free to drop us request or vote for specific camera support on our Feedback Site."

Enjoy.

Amateur Photographers Beware

This just in from the Long Beach (Ca) Post: "Police Chief Jim McDonnell has confirmed that detaining photographers for taking pictures "with no apparent esthetic value" is within Long Beach Police Department policy.

McDonnell spoke for a follow-up story on a June 30 incident in which Sander Roscoe Wolff, a Long Beach resident and regular contributor to Long Beach Post, was detained by Officer Asif Kahn for taking pictures of a North Long Beach refinery.

"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.

McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."

This policy apparently falls under the rubric of compiling Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) as outlined in the Los Angeles Police Department's Special Order No. 11, a March 2008 statement of the LAPD's "policy … to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism."

Among the non-criminal behaviors "which shall be reported on a SAR" are the usage of binoculars and cameras (presumably when observing a building, although this is not specified), asking about an establishment's hours of operation, taking pictures or video footage "with no apparent esthetic value," and taking notes ..."

Makes me think ... no esthetic value? One of my favourite photographers is Henk van Rensbergen of Abandoned Places fame. One man's disused factory is another's photo-op.

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Exporting from Lightroom and running Photoshop Droplets / Actions

This just in from Adobe's Julieanne Kost: "To Export files from Lightroom and automatically launch Photoshop in order to run Droplets (batch actions), place the droplet in the Export Actions folder:

• Mac (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Export Actions

• Win (user)/Application Data/Adobe/Lightroom/Export Actions

Then, in the Export dialog box under the Post Processing section, choose Post Processing > After Export > (name of droplet). For more information on using Photoshop Actions with Lightroom click here …"

Yes, I know that I've spoken and written against the use of LR for law enforcement. I've also written about the fact that I love LR for my personal and professional, non law enforcement use. :) Enjoy.

Searching for a Safe Expert

With the downturn in the economy, there are a few people finding their way into the expert pool with less than stellar qualifications. Some of these people have no education and little experience in their chosen field - and know little about how to present themselves and their evidence in court. Here's a cautionary tale from the BullsEye Blog: "Experts, unfortunately, are not always honest about their credentials, as numerous examples have recently proven.

A dramatic example in 2007 occurred when a New Orleans federal judge threw out a jury verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. after a cardiologist who testified for the defense in a Vioxx trial was found to have misrepresented his credentials.

In 2009, the expert witness for a suspended NASCAR driver was found to not have the medical degrees or certifications he claimed.

A year later, a Northampton County grand jury found fire investigator Edmund G. Knight III guilty of lying about his credentials. At the time, District Attorney John Morganelli said that Knight’s case was important because of the “integrity of our judicial system, particularly expert witnesses.”

As these cases prove, knowing how to verify the background of an expert – whether yours or your opponent’s – could prove critical to your case. What can you do to confirm the credentials of experts?

The internet has, in recent years, hosted a variety of resources and tools that contain potentially valuable information but that many attorneys overlook in researching an expert’s background. Of course, these tools are neither foolproof nor exhaustive.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Plug-in security fix for Photoshop CS5

As analysts, we get images from all sorts of sources. Lately, I've been processing a lot of images that were stored in cell phones. With this in mind, Adobe has announced the latest security update to Photoshop CS5: "Maliciously coded GIF files could cause Photoshop to crash, so the team has posted an update. If you open GIFs in Photoshop, please download the update for Mac, Win64, and/or Win32. They recommend making certain that you’re running the most recent version of Photoshop. To check/update, choose Help->Updates inside Photoshop CS5 and apply all of the updates listed under Adobe Photoshop CS5."

Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Expert's Gut Feeling Good Enough?

From the BullsEye Blog: "Although expert opinions must be based in fact, they are still individualized opinions and are occasionally, as the New Jersey Appellate Court stated on July 5, based on an expert’s “gut feeling”.

In a construction claim case involving real estate valuation, expert witness J. Anthony Dowling admitted to basing his opinion on a “feeling of costs”. The testimony in Nevins v. Toll Brothers, Inc. reveals that approximately 90 percent of Dowling’s cost estimations were “gut feelings” without any data tying them to the plaintiff’s specific location or project. You can read a portion of the exchange between defense counsel and Dowling in this blog post on the decision.

Because Dowling is a professional construction cost estimator and has sufficient credentials to serve as an expert witness, the appeals court found his opinion to be valid testimony. The other factor influencing the decision was the precedent of similar testimony admitted in a similar case.

Despite this ruling, other cases suggest there is a trend toward requiring a more factual basis for expert testimony. Numerous cases have addressed the issue of what is, and is not, admissible testimony according to the Federal Rules of Evidence, Daubert and other standards. The common theme is a demand for more detail and more specific analysis related to the facts of the case.

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

In an Expert, Passion Equals Credibility

Helpful advice from IMS Expert Services: "Credibility is a key attribute in an expert witness, every trial lawyer would agree. But how do you gauge a potential expert's credibility? What attributes provide the best predictors of how the expert will measure up in the eyes of a jury?

For Kirkland & Ellis partner Andrew R. McGaan, a lawyer who has tried and won jury and non-jury cases throughout the United States, experience has taught him to look for something other than what he was taught as a young lawyer.

Conventional wisdom teaches lawyers to look for well-credentialed experts with degrees from prestigious schools, honors in their field and experience testifying. That wisdom carries kernels of truth, the Chicago-based McGaan says, but credentials are not at the top of his list.

"Credibility comes first and foremost from having an expert with direct experience in exactly the same problem as you are dealing with in the courtroom – experience in the real world, not as a testifying expert," he explains.

But hands-on experience is only half the equation. The other trait McGaan looks for in an expert is passion about his or her work. "If they have an innate passion for what they do, that comes through in their ability to explain the field to everyday people on the jury who have no background in it and probably don't care about it."

An expert McGaan found with the help of IMS ExpertServices provides a case in point, he says. He was defending a pipe manufacturer in a products liability claim brought by an oil refinery after a large fire forced it to shut down. His defense called for close scrutiny of how the refinery maintained its pipes, responded to the fire and rebuilt in its aftermath.

The expert he sought would have to be thoroughly familiar with the design, maintenance, and construction of an oil refinery. IMS helped him find someone with precisely that experience. He was a petroleum engineer who had spent years running and maintaining refineries and budgeting and overseeing their rebuilding after fires. He had even been president of an oil company that owned a refinery.

There was one problem. He had never testified in court. That worried McGaan, but the veteran trial lawyer weighed the expert's lack of testimonial experience against his track record and passion for his work and made the decision to retain him. He was glad he did.

"While telling the story, whether on direct or cross-exam, it was obvious to everyone that he loved what he did – that he had a natural interest and passion for worrying about refinery problems and repairs," McGaan said.

With an untested expert, his ability to stand up to cross-examination is McGaan's biggest worry, he says. "Experts can get eaten alive on cross, if they don't understand what an artificial dialogue it is."

But in the case of the oil-refinery expert, he proved to be particularly effective when being cross-examined, McGaan recalled. "Every time he was asked any question along the lines of, 'How do you know that?' his answer was, 'Because I've done exactly that.' Even though he was on the witness stand, his physical demeanor remained that of a petroleum engineer who felt most comfortable standing around pipes."

In fact, too much testimonial experience can sometimes be a detriment during cross-examination, McGaan believes, because what comes through to the jury is the expert's courtroom experience, not his passion for the topic.

McGaan draws an analogy to hiring a plumber for your home. "When a plumber comes to your home for the first time, you can quickly tell if he's done this work before and if he has a passion for getting it right."

Jurors look for similar qualities in a trial witness. "The jurors know that the spotlight is on them," McGaan explains. "They look at every witness with the same question, 'Are you someone who is going to help me sort through this problem or not?'"

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Hiring Experts You Don't Plan to Use

Here's a cautionary tale for expert witnesses from IMS Expert Services: "Do lawyers ever retain experts just to lock them out from being hired by the other side? If so, is the tactic fair play in the hardball game of litigation? Or are lawyers who would do this, as one court suggested, short on scruples?

Ask either lawyers or experts whether they see this done and their answers range from "often" to "never." Ask them whether they approve of the practice and their answers vary just as widely. But ask lawyers whether they do it themselves and no one's hand goes up.

"Lawyers do occasionally contact or 'retain' experts solely to disqualify them from working for the other side," says Erik Anderson, senior attorney in the corporate legal department of Safeco Insurance Company of America. He should know: he faced this situation in a case not long ago in which one party sought to disqualify the other's expert.

Another lawyer who has seen it done is David W. White, a trial attorney in Boston who is also president of the Massachusetts Bar Association. Although he would never do it himself, he once found himself the victim of this tactic.

"It was an antiques case, where fraud was alleged," White says. "There wasn’t an available independent expert on the east coast of the U.S. because the plaintiff had consulted them all."

This tactic of "locking out" experts occurs most commonly in either of two scenarios, lawyers and experts agree. Either the field is highly specialized and there is a limited pool of qualified experts or the expert is so uniquely distinguished that he or she is highly sought after.

Consider Werner Engelmaier, for example. He is one of only a handful of experts who specialize in the design, manufacturing and reliability of electronic packaging. When he first became an expert witness, colleagues warned him of the practice. And then something similar happened to him.

"The law firm contacted me and made disclosures to me about the case before ever retaining me," he says. "They never did retain me, but they had disclosed so much that I had to recuse myself from working with anyone else in the case."

Ever since, Engelmaier has structured his retainer agreement in a manner designed to insulate himself from similar taints. He requires a steep retainer, $10,000, and blocks potential clients from disclosing anything about the case to him until the retainer is paid.

If the client retains him, then once his billing exceeds $10,000, he returns the retainer. Of course, if the client does not retain him, he refunds the retainer. "This serves to discourage preemptive disclosures that would disqualify me from the case," he says.

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Denver crime lab wins prestigious seal of approval

"The closest the real world comes to the fictitious sleuths of television's "CSI" is now in Denver.

Every unit of the Denver Police Department's crime lab has now won seals of approval based on the most rigorous international standards — one of just a handful of labs in the nation to achieve the standard across all the disciplines it utilizes.

Lab director Greggory LaBerge has even grander plans for his department, which he hopes can become a regional forensics hub after a move into a new $39 million building next summer.

LaBerge touts the economic benefits of low crime rates and the police resources saved by reliable forensics work. But more important, he said, is peace of mind for crime victims.

"It's all about trust. The first thing you want to know is if people are going to catch the person who did this to me," LaBerge said. Evidence "could get thrown out of court if you don't meet certain standards. . . . We are meeting and surpassing those standards."

The 42 employees and 20 volunteers at the Police Department's lab pitch in on up to 15,000 investigations a year. Nearly every day, one of them presents their findings in criminal court cases, LaBerge said.

The International Organization of Standards in Switzerland sets guidelines for any type of profession that requires scientific precision, among them forensics work in police labs.

Denver's chemistry, DNA, fingerprinting, trace evidence and ballistics units met those ISO standards in 2005. In late July, the lab's final two units — those that handle crime scenes and video evidence — met those standards too.

Denver's is the second crime lab in the country to win approval of its forensic imaging unit, which scrubs audio, video and photos for clues. They produce the Crime Stopper images that generate tips from the public and isolate license plate numbers from grainy surveillance video, among other jobs.

Continue reading this story by clicking here.

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Scripting an Expert Witness?

Here's a cautionary tale for Expert Witnesses from IMS Expert Services: "How do you fit a square expert witness into a round case? You don't, of course, but many lawyers make the mistake of trying. Rather than tailor their theory of the case to fit the expert's opinion, they try to shape the expert's opinion to fit their theory.

It is a mismatch that can weaken a case and undermine an expert, says veteran trial lawyer Albert L. Jacobs Jr., National Chair – Intellectual Property with Greenberg Traurig in New York.

"I want to build the case based on the expert's view of the issues," explains Jacobs, a patent lawyer for more than 30 years. "I have my own ideas about the case, but I'm not hiring an expert to read from a script."

Far too often, Jacobs says, it is obvious to him that the opposing party has hired its expert for the specific purpose of propounding a point of view. But when an expert is testifying from a script, it is much easier for the other side to trip him up.

For this reason, Jacobs says, he advocates bringing the expert on board at the earliest possible opportunity.

"If I'm the plaintiff, I want the expert on board before we file suit. I want to work together with the expert and formulate the strongest possible position."

The same holds true when he represents the defendant. "I want the expert on board as quickly as I can. I want to discuss with the expert his or her views on infringement or noninfringement and validity or invalidity."

Click here to read the whole article. Expert services for imaging, video, audio, and cell phone analysis can be found here.

Enjoy.

Choosing the right settings in Premiere Pro CS5.5

One reader asks about choosing settings when setting up Premiere Pro. The reader has a clip with unknown properties. In older, consumer versions of Sony Vegas, you used to be able to tell the program to create a project based on the properties of a clip, the reader said. She wants to be able to do that in Premiere Pro.

... well .... you can.

Here's how. In Premiere Pro CS5.5, you can create a new sequence from a selected clip by one of the following methods:

Drag and drop a clip onto the New Item button.
Choose File>New>Sequence from Clip.
It's actually pretty easy, once you get the hang of it.

Enjoy.

What's the Sharpen Tool?

The Sharpen tool increases contrast along edges to increase apparent sharpness. The more you paint over an area with the tool, the more sharpening increases.

Select the Sharpen tool.
Do the following in the options bar:
Choose a brush tip and set options for the blending mode and strength.
Select Sample All Layers to sharpen using data from all visible layers. If this is deselected, the tool uses data from only the active layer.
Select Protect Detail to enhance details and minimize pixelated artifacts. Deselect this option if you want to produce more exaggerated sharpening effects.
Drag over the part of the image you want to sharpen.

Enjoy.

What's new and changed in Photoshop CS5.1?

I keep getting e-mails asking about upgrading and what's new in Photoshop CS5. In these budget conscious times, folks are looking to justify their upgrade requests. Here's some of the cool things that you'll find in the latest version:

Create layers by dragging files from Windows or Mac OS.
Straighten images with the Ruler tool.
Protect detail with the Sharpen tool.
Apply a graduated neutral density filter.
Reverse the direction of a clone source.
Customize defaults for layer styles.
Paste in the same relative location, or into or outside selections.
Store image-specific print settings.

Click here to find out more.

Enjoy.

A view of the Anthony verdict

Ex Forensis blogger, Larry E Daniel, was part of the Anthony trial and blogs about his perspective on the case and the verdict. Click here to read his side of the story.

Enjoy.

Switch from Avid to Adobe and save 50%

Step up to the toolset the pros use, Adobe® Premiere® Pro, part of Adobe Creative Suite® 5.5 Production Premium software. Get seamless integration with Adobe Photoshop® and After Effects®, and edit almost anything thanks to broad native tapeless and DSLR camera support.

Find out why you should switch by clicking here.

For a limited time, Adobe is offering 50% off Premiere Pro or Production Premium if you switch from Media Composer. Click here to find out how to take advantage of this special offer. (Hint - promo code is SWITCH)

Enjoy.

Error rates?

From the Lansing State Journal: "Michigan’s 79th District Court Judge Peter Wadel refused to admit blood-alcohol results in a drunken-driving case because the state crime lab does not report an error rate, or margin of error, along with blood-alcohol results.

East Lansing attorney Mike Nichols, who is handling the case in Mason County said there are no absolutes in science. Not including a range of possible results, Nichols said, ignores the uncertainties in the collection, handling, analysis, and reporting process.

Currently Washington and Michigan are the only states in which judges have made rulings challenging blood-alcohol tests, but this ruling is sure to have impacts across Michigan and the country..."

All of this begs the question, what's your error rate? How do you go about calculating an error rate for your discipline? Is this necessarily part of the validation process? More in future posts.

Enjoy.

The evolution of Photoshop

The graphical look at Photoshop's rise to power. Check it out by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Caretaking search ruling

Here's an interesting write up on a recent ruling regarding the warrantless search of cell phones.

Re: People v. Schutter, Supreme Court of Colorado, 2011
From PATCtech.com's Chuck Washburn:

One of the exceptions to the search warrant requirement is commonly called the “community caretaking” search. This search, as the name implies, is not conducted to collect evidence of a crime, but rather to assist members of the community. For example, an officer can search a lost purse to discover the name of the owner so that the purse can be returned. Of course, if evidence of a crime is discovered during a typical “community caretaking” type search, the evidence is normally admissible in court.

On March 28, 2011, the Supreme Court of Colorado decided the People v. Schutter which illustrates the first requirement of a “community caretaking” search of a cellular phone, particularly that the cell phone actually be lost, mislaid or abandoned. In Schutter, the defendant accidentally locked his iPhone in the restroom at a convenience store. Schutter asked the clerk for assistance retrieving his phone, and the clerk told him that he was currently too busy. The clerk told Schutter that he would have to come back later. Schutter then left the convenience store and did not return for over an hour. Meanwhile, the clerk retrieved the cell phone and gave it to a police officer that came into the store. The officer looked at the text messages in order to try and determine the owner. The officer also answered several phone calls made to the phone and also called the dispatch center with the phone in order to obtain the caller ID information on the phone. During this initial “community caretaking” warrantless search of the phone, the officer discovered information that provided probable cause that evidence of illegal drug sales would be contained on the phone. Later that evening, Schutter came to the police station to pick up his phone. The police would not release the phone. Instead, an officer obtained a search warrant for the phone and discovered information that provided probable cause to support a search warrant of Shutter’s residence. A search warrant was obtained for Schutter’s residence and during the search, the evidence to charge Schutter with various felony drug offenses was located. Schutter was arrested.

Schutter then filed a motion to suppress and argued that the initial warrantless search of his iPhone was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The district court granted the motion to suppress and the government appealed.

The government argued that “an otherwise reasonable expectation of privacy in personal property is diminished when that property is lost or mislaid because it is only reasonable to expect that an officer coming into possession of the property will examine it to learn how it can be returned to its owner.” In support of their argument the government cites numerous cases where these “community caretaking” types of searches have been upheld in other jurisdictions. For example, the court noted

A handful of courts from other jurisdictions have apparently assumed, for widely-differing purposes and according to widely-differing theories, that officers would be justified in conducting at least some limited inspection of lost property to discover the owner's identity.

However, the Supreme Court of Colorado stated that they will not be able to decide the parameters of the “community caretaking” search with this case. Instead, they identified the issue as whether Schutter had in fact “abandoned, lost, or mislaid” his cell phone such that the police would have any valid reason to attempt to ascertain the owner.

The court noted that the following facts were relevant to the issue above. First, the officer that took the phone knew (1) that Schutter inadvertently left it in the store's locked restroom and knew precisely where it was; (2) that his immediate demand for its return had been refused by the store clerk, who had been too busy to access the restroom; (3) that he left the area only when he was told by the clerk that he would have to come back later to retrieve his phone; and (4) that it was approximately 4:20a.m., and Schutter had only been gone for about an hour. Based on these facts, the court then held

Under the undisputed facts of this case, the defendant's iPhone was neither abandoned, lost, nor mislaid such that the Aspen police would have had any cause to identify the owner to return it.

Thus, the Supreme Court of Colorado upheld the motion to suppress."

Click here for the printable version of this article.

Enjoy.

CSI Effect theory

This just in from the NIJ:

The National Institute of Justice has launched an interactive website dedicated to exploring the CSI Effect theory and the myths and facts surrounding forensic evidence presentation in the courtroom. The website is targeted to officers of the court and provides the latest research on the CSI Effect theory as well as observations from trusted experts throughout the justice community. It can be accessed by clicking here.

The CSI Effect theory asserts that popular TV crime dramas that focus on forensic science, may affect the behavior and expectations of jurors in real-life cases. The theory also suggests that jurors’ perceptions of the need for specific forensic evidence may impact their decisions in the courtroom. Through videos and interviews with respected criminal justice practitioners, the CSI Effect Theory website provides new insights into the effects television dramas may be having on today’s juries. Visitors to the website will:

• Hear experts from the prosecution, defense and the bench examine the evidence regarding the CSI Effect; 
• Gain strategies to employ in the courtroom that help ensure deliberations in trial proceedings are based on facts, not fiction; 
• Understand the role crime dramas are playing in influencing juror perception of forensics-based evidence, such as DNA; 
• Access additional resources and evidence pertaining to the CSI Effect theory 

 The CSI Effect Theory was developed for NIJ by the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC), award # 2008-IJ-CX-K405.

Bullcoming v. New Mexico

From SCOTUSBlog's Lyle Denniston: "New curb on crime lab reports Once more divided 5-4 on how to define the right of a criminal suspect to confront accusers, the Court rules that, if a crime lab report is offered by prosecutors, the person who did the test and prepared the report must testify, and a supervisor cannot do so in the absence of that technician.

A closely divided Supreme Court on Thursday continued its pattern of restricting prosecutors’ use of out-of-court statements to get criminal convictions, ruling that a report of a crime lab is valid evidence only if the technician who did the testing or observed it — not a substitute witness — is called to the stand. But the main opinion, and a concurring opinion, labored at length to stress just how little the Court had decided. It was clear that the Justices who controlled the outcome had been put on the defensive by an aggressive dissent — typical in this line of cases.

The case of Bullcoming v. New Mexico (09-10876) was a test of whether a five-vote majority would remain to protect the constitutional legacy of the Court’s seven-year-old ruling that for the first time demanded that live witnesses be summoned to court in a criminal trial, to face cross-examination for statements made outside of court that could help persuade a jury to convict. That basic ruling came in Crawford v. Washington. Since the most recent sequel, the 5-4 decision in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, in 2009, two Justices from the majority then have retired, so Bullcoming was the first chance to see whether their replacements would be part of a majority adhering to the Crawford doctrine.

The result was somewhat uncertain. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who replaced Justice David H. Souter, supported the outcome and joined most of the main opinion but also wrote on her own to put special emphasis on “the limited reach” of the main opinion (written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg). And Justice Elena Kagan, who replaced Justice John Paul Stevens, joined most of the Ginsburg opinion, but not support the concluding section that suggested ways for prosecutors to get crime lab reports before juries, and also did not join Sotomayor’s recital of what was not decided — a recital that also might be a road map for prosecutors from here on.

Without counting the numbers, it appeared that what might be called the current “Crawford majority” was a bit shaky. That could not be said, though, of the dissenters. Those four, using the same kind of strong rhetoric they did when Melendez-Diaz went against their views two years ago, protested with renewed vehemence about the majority’s barring of “reliable” evidence of crime because of their devotion to a “wooden formalism” in applying the Constitution’s Confrontation Clause.

This renewed battle over the Sixth Amendment right of an accused person to confront, face-to-face, those who were his accusers, came in the most routine kind of criminal case: drunk driving. By the 5-4 vote, the Court overturned a decision of the New Mexico Supreme Court. That court had upheld the conviction of Donald Bullcoming of Farmington, N.M., on charges of aggravated drunk driving. Bullcoming was sentenced to two years in prison.

The majority on Thursday ruled that Bullcoming’s confrontation right had been violated because prosecutors were allowed to offer a crime lab report analyzing Bullcoming’s blood sample, and had called to the witness stand not the lab analyst who did the tests, but a supervisor at the lab who had neither done the test nor observed it being done. Producing such a substitute, or “surrogate,” witness, the Court ruled, is not sufficient to satisfy the Sixth Amendment confrontation right. This, the Court said, logically followed from the Melendez-Diaz ruling, which had ruled that a crime lab report could not be introduced without some live testimony from an analyst to defend it and to be cross-examined about it.

In the crime lab sequel case of Bullcoming, the Court decided, in the words of Justice Ginsburg as she announced the decision orally, “we decide who that live witness must be.” The only person who could fill the role on the stand, she wrote, is an expert who actually did the testing and prepared the lab report the prosecution wants to offer, or a person who closely observed the testing that led to the report. Even if the lab report is otherwise entirely reliable, Ginsburg wrote, only a technician closely involved in its preparation can be the one to defend it and face defense lawyers’ challenging questions.

The main opinion suggested that there is often an opportunity for some missteps to be made in the laboratory as evidence is analyzed, but said the Sixth Amendment demand for a witness to defend that report could not be dispensed with even if the testing was done entirely within scientific standards. And the technician directly involved has to appear, the opinion added, whether or not that individual was fully competent in a technical sense and entirely credible — possessing “the scientific acumen of Madame Curie and the veracity of Mother Teresa.”

Using a surrogate, such as an uninvolved lab supervisor in Bullcoming’s case, the Court said, “could not convey what [the technician who did the test] knew or observed about the events” in the lab as the testing was done and a report prepared. And, it added, a surrogate could not “expose any lapses or lies” on the part of the analyst who did the tests and signed the resulting report.

Those declarations had the support of Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas (although Thomas refused to support a footnote that suggested that some “business and public records” could be admitted as evidence even without confrontation, because of the benign purpose for which they were offered. Justice Sotomayor made further clear in her separate opinion that the lab report used against Bullcoming should not have been admitted.

Kagan, Thomas and Sotomayor did not support what was labeled Part IV of the Ginsburg opinion, which had the support only of Scalia. In that section, Ginsburg contended that the ruling would not “impose an undue burden” on prosecutors. She then discussed several ways by which “forensic evidence” — that is, crime lab reports — could be offered at trial. She suggested that states could require labs to preserve the evidence so that it can be retested and then call to the stand the technician who did the new analysis if the technician who did the first report is not available, or pass a law that would require prosecutors to give defense lawyers advance notice of a plan to use a lab report and take away the defense’s confrontation right if they failed to demand that the preparer appear.

In that section, Ginsburg also sought to marshal statistics — different from those used by the defense to make an opposite point — that past Crawford rulings have not caused the sky to fall. Justice Sotomayor’s concurring opinion also sought to answer the dissent’s anxious worries over impact, suggesting that a lab report might come into evidence on its own if it had not been prepared with the purpose of creating evidence of a crime, a lab supervisor might be allowed to come in to defend a report if he or she had a personal connection to the test at issue — such as observing the technician who did the testing, expert witnesses might be used to give their independent opinion about a lab report if the report itself is not admitted, or “raw data generated by a machine,” with no other subjective analysis of its contents, might be admissible along with the testimony of an expert witness on such a machine.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s strongly worded dissent was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Stephen G. Breyer. Much of the dissenting opinion amounted to an argument favoring admissions of reliable documents as evidence in criminal trials. A good deal of the rhetoric, though, was merely a continuing complaint about the entire line of cases beginning with Crawford, and a renewal of complaints about how those rulings are disrupting the way crime labs operate and criminal trials are conducted."

Enjoy.

Google's Search by Image

From Google:

"... Search by Image returns the best results for images that have related content already on the web, so you’re more likely to get relevant results for distinctive landmarks or paintings than you will for more unique photos like your toddler’s latest finger painting. In addition to getting relevant results about your image, you can also find visually similar images or the same image in different sizes or resolutions.

Search by Image starts with the computer vision technology underlying Google Goggles, and adds new techniques and functionality that optimize the experience for desktop. The technology behind Search by Image analyzes your image to find its most distinctive points, lines and textures and creates a mathematical model. We match that model against billions of images in our index, and page analysis helps us derive a best guess text description of your image. Search by Image technology also includes the ability to match against images on the web so that we can show you similar images and webpages that contain your image ..."

Click here to read the whole article. Needless to say, this could add tremendous value to your investigations.

Enjoy.

Briscoe’s Impact upon Forensic Scientists and the Law

From Ronald K. Bullis, Ph.D., J.D., via Forensic Mag:

"...Legal soothsaying is folly, but Briscoe’s facts and remand still have something to tell us. While another “test” case will undoubtedly arise to offer the Supreme Court a chance to elaborate on Confrontation Clause requirements, Melendez seems in no imminent danger of being overturned or seriously modified. In the meantime, state and lower federal courts will look to the “notice and demand” statutes, suggested in Melendez (Georgia, Ohio, and Texas), as models for their own statutes. Thus, forensic scientists will continue to be ordered to testify as to the procedure and accuracy of the results in their reports. They will also be cross-examined. While this role is not new for many forensic scientists, this role is likely to affect more forensic scientists and will require additional training just as it surely will result in a loss of lab time. Articulating and explaining lab analyses procedures and the scientific choices attending test conclusions requires different skills than making the analysis itself. Finally, an intriguing and related question is: which scientist will testify to what? As we have seen, some state laboratories have several scientists working on the same sample. Other labs have turnover rates such that some scientists will be employed elsewhere when a sample upon which they worked is admitted at trial. That singular issue requires its own article to address.

The Briscoe case raised more issue than answers. But even these issues, and the accompanying Briefs, sharpened the kinds and quality of answers the next Melendez application the Supreme Court will be asked to address ..."

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Optical Filters and Light Modifiers for Forensic Imaging in the Visible Spectrum

From Jason Schneider via Forensic Mag:

"... The scientific capabilities of the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop are considered by many forensic photographers to be the gold standard of post-production image control. Photoshop is often used to split out individual R, G, B color channels for image analysis, and many advanced users cite the mechanics of the workflow and multiplicity of possibilities as advantages of this huge and complex system. However, there are other filter emulation and software effect systems that are more intuitive and may even offer useful capabilities that are less cumbersome than Photoshop. A good example is Tiffen Dfx, which provides 113 different filter selections in the Version 2 Standalone and is available as a plug-in for Photoshop or Aperture 2.1.

In its Image Tools & Effects, Dfx provides an EZ Mask tool that lets you easily isolate any specific area of the subject to which you want to apply effects, plus a Color Correction tool that allows you to separately adjust hue, saturation, and brightness, shadows, mid tones, and highlights, as well as gamma, red, green, and blue. You can also apply a black-and-white filter, select filter options, and then dial in the appropriate color channel until the details you want to accentuate are clearly visible. Can you do these things in Photoshop? Yes, but for most users it’s easier and faster in Dfx because it provides an intuitive user interface plus filter parameters that closely match traditional optical filters. Indeed, many CSI units are currently using this software ..."

Click here to read the whole article.

Enjoy.

Amped 5 - Deinterlace

Although interlaced video is slowly going away, analysts still see this type of evidence in their labs. The tools available for de-interlacing video can be hard to use, and even harder to explain in simple terms.

Typically, when a video is de-interlaced, the upper and lower lines are segregated and two separate files are created. The lower and upper fields correspond to separate camera views - but you're left with a choice - leave the files as is (shallow rectangle shaped half resolution) or interpolate so that the video looks "normal" (full resolution).

Photoshop's De-Interlace command can be problematic.

With Photoshop - it's an either/or proposition. Get rid of the even fields or the odd fields - then create new fields using either duplication or interpolation. ... what did you just say? .... Eliminate? Create? Ouch.

With Amped Five, it's a little different process.

Once your video is loaded, you select Deinterlace from the Edit menu. This brings up the following dialog box.

You'll want to get to full resolution somehow? How can we return to full height? We simply can't, because we actually have got a half vertical resolution file. Thus, we have to reconstruct the resulting file through interpolation. We cannot know the value, but we can guess it in some manner. In fact, in the "Interpolation" radiobox you are telling Amped Five which algorithm has to be used for interpolation:

• "None" leaves half resolution; 
• "Replication" copies the neighboring line; 
• "Linear" interpolates the neighboring lines; 
• "Cubic" interpolates by taking into account more distant lines too. 

In general, Cubic is the best choice, even though there is not much difference with the linear interpolation.

But ... now we have got all the frames of the sequence, shuffled together (as hinted at above). Often, in CCTV, subsequent frames are related to different cameras and consequently, we have many different sequences blended together. How can we separate the frames of the sequence of interest from the other ones? All we have to do is to use a selector filter, to be chosen from the category "Select Frames". 

• "Single selector" selects just one frame; 
• "Range selector" selects a range between two frames; 
• "Sparse selector" selects sparse frames in sequence. 

Since the frames we need are scattered throughout the video, we need the flexibility of the "Sparse selector". We add it to the chain, then find out the initial position, and go through every frame of the video. When you encounter a frame that belongs to the sequence you need, just "Add Current" to the list. Once done, apply: you will get a short sequence, made of all the selected frames.

Going frame by frame is a pain. I'm told by the developer that the next release will tackle this problem in a more automatic fashion.

Stay tuned for more.

Enjoy.

Aptissimi

Governments are at a philosophical cross-roads. The cynical politician withholds those services that taxpayers expect; police and fire, road maintenance, and basic administration whilst lavishing upon the preferred.

The city's leaders are facing tough and unpopular choices - return government to core functions and stop the free ride ... or ... Most are just performing accounting tricks and kicking the can down the road. The problems get worse. More reaction. Then worse again.

The man who handed me an application to join police service over a decade ago had a dream of assembling the very best he could find, the Aptissimi, and enabling them to dream big, to dare, to challenge convention, and to succeed in building an amazing enterprise. He knew, as others like Henry Ford have known, that you don't have to know everything or be the best yourself. He wanted to surround himself with those kinds of people - the Aptissimi. Bring them together, enable them with the best tools, and get out of the way so that they could succeed. Their success became the enterprise's success - and the City's success.

Many around the country attempted the same experiment. Together, in groups like LEVA, NATIA, the IAI, and the SWGs, we dreamed and dared and came up with some amazingly innovative solutions to very complex problems. Refusing no one of talent, privateers joined the cause.

At the very time in history where the National Academy is demanding scientific standards and practices, and Senator Leahy attempts to put teeth to their recommendations, governments big and small are allowing expediency to dictate, for good or ill - mostly ill. Budgets are being cut. Aptissimi are being let go, or repurposed to other less suitable tasks. The politician says to the Aptissimi, your services are no longer needed. Yet the courts demand that standards be maintained.

Winston Churchill said, "a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." It is my hope that the Aptissimi remain optimistic and engaged. The work still needs to be done.

Who will assist the Trier of Fact? Those with the training and experience to know the difference between truth and fact, the difference between what you know in your heart to be true and what you can prove. Proof requires facts. Proof requires valid processes. Validity and expediency don't always play well together.

So chin up. Soldier on. Let's help each other get through this rough patch. If you need me, I'll be here.

Enjoy.

Hacking episode

I think we've untangled all the mess from getting hacked. Posts to resume soon. Sorry for the delay.

Obscuring a face with the Track Matte Key effect

One of the more popular requests in Law Enforcement is to blur or obscure undercover officers or cooperating witnesses (entirely or just their faces) from surveillance video. Adobe's Colin Smith provides a video tutorial on Adobe TV that shows how to obscure a face using the Mosaic effect and the Track Matte Key effect in Adobe Premiere Pro. He also shows a rough and manual way to do this in After Effects in this video. For a more automated and precise way to accomplish this in After Effects, see this video.

Enjoy.

What's new and changed in Premiere Pro CS5.5?

Here's a nice summary of what's new and changed in Adobe's Premiere Pro CS5.5.

Enjoy.

Moving your Avid MC sequences into Premiere Pro

With the many agencies using Media Composer as their primary platform looking to transition to Adobe's product line, confusion is mounting as to how to get the two to play nicely together. Here's a simple procedure from Adobe for getting your Media Composer sequences into Premiere Pro CS5.

To import a Media Composer sequence into Adobe Premiere Pro:
1. In Media Composer, select a sequence and click File > Export.
2. In the Export dialog box, select AAF and select “Link to (Don’t Export) Media”.
3. Name your exported sequence, browse to a location to save it, and then click Export.
4. In Adobe Premiere Pro, open a new project from the Welcome screen by clicking the New Project button, or choose File> New> Project (on a Mac, Option+Command+N or Cntrl+Alt+N on a PC). Click OK.
5. The new Sequence Dialog Box will appear. Continue without creating a new sequence.
6. Double click on the empty project pane of the new Adobe Premiere Pro project, which will open up the Import dialog box.
7. In that dialog box, find your exported AAF file and either double click on it or click on it and then click “Import.”
8. A dialog box will open requesting the location of the media files. Navigate to the Avid MediaFiles folder and find the first of the missing files. Adobe Premiere Pro will recognize the other missing files in that location and import them automatically. Your media will be imported into the project with the same media names that you had in Media Composer. Your sequence will also be imported and you can double click it in the Project pane to open it into the timeline.

If Adobe Premiere Pro and Media Composer are running on the same system, all media should link up automatically. If, however, you are moving from one computer to another, Adobe Premiere Pro will prompt you for the location of the source media. If moving from a Mac to a PC, be aware that certain QuickTime codecs have not been released for the PC, and the source media in those formats will not play on the PC. This includes, for example, QuickTime files that use ProRes. If you experience problems with QuickTime media in Adobe Premiere Pro, check to see if the source media will play correctly in QuickTime Player on the PC first before troubleshooting in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Enjoy.

Premiere Pro for Forensics at DSI-Vegas

I'll be one of the featured speakers and workshop presenters at August's DSI-Vegas.

You're used to me presenting and working with Photoshop. This time, I'll be showcasing Premiere Pro. In the workshop, you'll get a hands-on look at the many features of Adobe's Premiere Pro as you move from import/capture, to processing, to export. This workshop will offer practical techniques that are specific to law enforcement's unique requirements. Topics covered: getting the most from your hardware, platform issues, saving still images for Photoshop, speed changes, fields/frames, resizing, and much more.

Enjoy.

Getting started with Premiere Pro

I'll be putting up more posts related to Adobe Premiere Pro ahead of my appearance at August's DSI-Vegas. Here's the first shot - some free stuff from Adobe.

Enjoy.

Photoshop 12.1 = Photoshop 12.0.4

This just in from Adobe's John Nack: "What’s the difference between Photoshop CS5 and 5.5? Nothing besides subscription support. Here’s some concise clarification from Jeff Tranberry:

Photoshop CS5 (Version 12.1 – which comes as part of Creative Suite 5.5) and Photoshop CS5 (Version 12.0.4 – a free update for the version of Photoshop which came as a part of Creative Suite 5) are exactly the same in terms of functionality except that 12.1 will support a subscription license.

Both contain the same updates to fix issues, both have the same camera support with Camera Raw 6.x, and both work with the Photoshop Touch Apps."

Enjoy.

G-mail hacked

Sorry for the long delay. The g-mail account that is used to facilitate this blog was hacked. Thankfully, Google was able to resolve the issues ... it just wasn't as timely as I'd hoped.

That being said, I wasn't in the London Embassy in need of everyone to wire me cash to Nigeria ...

I do appreciate the e-mails of concern.

The blogging will resume soon ...

Medical examiner may not be immune to bias

From the Durango Herald: "Should forensic scientists know as little or as much as possible about the facts of the underlying case?

An article from the University of California, Irvine, school of law addresses this question and presents the following anecdote:

An evolutionary biologist studying the lineage of the Australian finch utilizes DNA testing to determine whether more brightly colored males mate more and produce more young and whether the male in a bonded pair is always the father of his partner’s offspring.

The biologist is adamant that DNA test results must be examined blind (the scientist can’t know, for instance, which birds are a bonded pair when determining offspring lineage) because it’s human nature to seize upon evidence that supports the investigator’s hypothesis and minimize or discredit evidence to the contrary.

Because the danger of bias is well-known, a scientist using less rigorous procedures would never be able to obtain financial support or publish in peer-review journals, the biologist says.

“You must understand that this work is extremely important,” she said. “It affects our understanding of the entire evolutionary history of the finch!”

The interpretation of forensic evidence often has a major influence on the outcome of criminal prosecutions, so it’s extremely important, too, but rarely do forensic scientists interpret evidence blind.

They usually know the basic facts and nature of the case, and they understand how their determinations will influence the investigation and the likelihood of successful prosecution.

Decades of psychological studies have made it clear that contextual bias is a fundamental part of human decision-making rather than a moral failing, that people are unaware to a remarkable degree of the extent to which context influences them and that they are not able to eliminate these biases by rigorous training or force of will.

Most scientific disciplines take great care to eliminate contextual bias, and the argument that it poses no problem for criminalists working in labs is becoming less credible (especially since a 2010 report of the National Academy of Sciences on the forensic sciences).

Still, most people don’t admit that contextual bias might be a problem for medical examiners.

Are they not physicians? Should they not be privy to all information? Does anyone think doctors should focus only on physical examinations and be kept ignorant of context when making diagnoses? Of course not.

But there’s a basic difference between forensic and clinical medicine that people rarely consider: When a doctor is trying to figure out if a patient has heart trouble or indigestion, no moral considerations create bias by favoring one diagnosis over the other.

When a medical examiner is convinced by circumstantial evidence that some low-life has killed a child, it’s morally right to do everything possible to support the prosecution.

When she’s convinced by circumstantial evidence that an innocent man has been wrongfully accused or imprisoned, it’s morally right to do everything possible to exonerate him.

Are medical examiners able to reliably ignore these sorts of contextual biases when interpreting autopsy findings?

Don’t bet the farm ..."

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Not all experts know things in exactly the same way

"...In the summer of 1999, the United States Supreme Court issued the last in a trilogy of 1990s cases dealing with the question of the admissibility of expert testimony in federal courts. In Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, the Court was asked to decide if the judicial gatekeeping role it set forth in the first of these three cases, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, applied only to "scientific" knowledge or to all expert testimony. The court concluded that all expert testimony must be both relevant and reliable before it can be admitted, but that the specific factors set forth in Daubert to judge the reliability of scientific evidence may be supplemented and perhaps replaced by other factors when expert testimony is based on "technical" or "other specialized" knowledge. The opinion explicitly recognized that not all expert testimony can be judged by a single standard because not all experts know things in exactly the same way ..." - From Kumho and how we know by Joseph Sanders.

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Toward an Ethics of Expertise

"... The relationship between expert and layperson is grounded on an epistemic inequality. The expert knows more than the layperson about matters within the scope of her expertise. And if the layperson appeals to the judgment of the expert, he usually does so because he acknowledges the superiority of the expert's judgment to his own. Thus, the epistemology of the expert-layperson relationship can be focused on the concept of rational deference to epistemic authority. This rational deference lies at the heart of the particular form of power that an expert has and is also the center of the particular form of vulnerability that each of us, as a layperson, is in.

The concept of rational deference presupposes that the layperson appeals to the expert and acknowledges the rational authority of the expert. Obviously, someone must appeal to the expert, some layperson must acknowledge the authority of the expert or the expert's knowledge will be socially irrelevant and useless. So, the ideas of appealing to epistemic authority and rational deference may suffice for the epistemology of expertise. But when we turn to the ethics of expertise, we must not forget that often an expert's expertise is applied to those who have not appealed to the expert. They may well not even agree that this opinion represents a form of expertise. Indeed, expert opinion alters many people's lives without their knowledge, much less their consent ..." - From Toward an Ethics of Expertise by John Hardwig

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The Advocate for a Cause

"Although the courts sometimes invoke the dangers of the "professional witness" and the "hired gun," the real legal problems with expert testimony are more subtle. Even the most vehement critics of litigants' use of scientific expert testimony acknowledge that litigants usually do not need to influence their experts. On the contrary, a litigant usually can find an expert who will express the view that the litigant wants to have expressed. 79 Nor does this necessarily suggest that the expert is biased, even if the testimony is a minority view: "Some of these experts are undoubtedly motivated by financial concerns; others may simply possess eccentric viewpoints ..." - From Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Expert Testimony by Mark R. Patterson

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The "Hired Gun"

"It is certainly true that the testimony of a "hired gun"--or, as some courts put it, an expert who is "available to the highest bidder"-is not "scientific knowledge" and therefore should be inadmissible under Daubert. Given the frequency (and vehemence) with which this danger is invoked, especially in the popular press, one might expect it to be a frequent focus of the courts. In fact, though, courts are seldom concerned about this issue, presumably because, as Daubert II recognized, "few experts appear in court merely as an eleemosynary gesture." One cannot use the mere fact that an expert is paid by his client as a basis for inferring that his testimony is biased; one must look more carefully at the expert's testimony to determine if it is biased, and once one makes that further inquiry, one is not relying on the premise that the expert is a "hired gun." - From Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Expert Testimony by Mark R. Patterson

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The "Professional Witness"

"An expert who is a "professional witness" is not necessarily biased. Courts most often use this term to describe an expert who "spends substantially all of his time consulting with attorneys and testifying." Independent of any bias such an expert might have, spending all of his time testifying will inevitably erode his scientific skills and knowledge, and he will become less qualified to opine on the subject of his (former) expertise. A court rightly might refuse to admit the testimony of such a witness because "he' is more a professional witness than an expert." Strictly speaking, though, the court would not be rejecting the witness's testimony itself; the court instead would be deciding that the proposed witness is not qualified as an expert at all.

No issue of bias necessarily exists here, at least on the part of the witness. It is true that if a "professional witness" is one who lacks real scientific competence, he may be more likely to testify for the party whose position is less scientifically accepted, because that party will find it more difficult to hire competent experts. That does not show that the witness is biased, though, or that his testimony is false. It instead might be that "professional witnesses" can be found with a wide range of views, so that the only bias in their use is in the universal selection by parties of witnesses that will support their positions." - From Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Expert Testimony by Mark R. Patterson

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Conflicts of interest

"Sources of bias in scientific expert testimony can be divided into three categories. The first does not, strictly speaking, involve conflicts of interest on the part of the experts, but it is nevertheless a source of bias: parties to litigation control both the testimony presented and, often, the scientific research that is the basis of that testimony. For example, an interested party might select experts who will present testimony favorable to the party's point of view rather than purely objective testimony, or it might choose to fund only research that it believes will reach results favorable to its position. The second problem is a more traditional conflict of interest: the inclination of experts to give testimony that favors a party or position in which the experts have a financial interest. The third problem is the possibility that the underlying research record itself may be distorted by conflicts of interest." - From Conflicts of Interest in Scientific Expert Testimony by Mark R. Patterson

Hiring an expert

Here's something to consider when hiring an expert who may eventually testify in court for your case:

"That an expert testifies based on research he has conducted independent of the litigation provides important, objective proof that the research comports with the dictates of good science. For one thing, experts whose findings flow from existing research are less likely to have been biased toward a particular conclusion by the promise of remuneration; when an expert prepares reports and findings before being hired as a witness, that record will limit the degree to which he can tailor his testimony to serve a party's interests. Then, too, independent research carries its own indicia of reliability, as it is conducted, so to speak, in the usual course of business and must normally satisfy a variety of standards to attract funding and institutional support. Finally, there is usually a limited number of scientists actively conducting research on the very subject that is germane to a particular case, which provides a natural constraint on parties' ability to shop for experts who will come to the desired conclusion."
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 43 F.3d 1311, 1317 (9th Cir. 1995)

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