JDA - Past Events

FORENSIC MEDICINE

The talk about the "Secrets of the Czech Torah Scroll" scheduled for October 27th 2005 was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute. It will take place on Wednesday April 26th 2006.

Dr Shaun Segal, a Police Forensic Examiner kindly agreed to step in at very short notice. He is South African, Jewish, a General Practitioner (GP) and Surgeon. This is an account of his talk.

Dr Segal explained that part of his work is keeping prisoners in good health and checking their daily health. Sometimes prisoners fake diseases. Before allowing a prisoner to go to hospital and losing all DNA, a GP would examine the prisoner.

The police force in this country uses doctors in all sorts of ways.

Dr Segal gave two examples of how forensics can help to solve crimes:

1. A man reported his neighbour missing. He had not seen her for two days. Police broke in and found the woman dead. The Forensic Examiner examined the body and the crime scene.

A post mortem found that the woman had been dead for longer than three days. This made police immediately suspicious of the man who reported her missing. Detectives interviewed people and a Forensic Team checked out the woman's flat. In the flat, they found fingerprints of the neighbour who reported the crime. The fingerprints were in places that you would not think a neighbour would look. This, together with evidence of damage to the neck of the dead woman, showed "foul play".

By working backwards and trying to work out what had happened prior to the woman dying, the police were able to make an arrest. It was thought that the man had hoped that by leaving it a few days, any evidence of how his neighbour was murdered would be lost.

2. In the London bombings on July 7th 2005, detectives worked backwards to piece information together.

Police gathered information from families regarding missing people or victims. They contacted families and took evidence, e.g. hair from hairbrushes to match the DNA of the bodies and body parts found. Blood was picked up from the crime scene by using special chemicals.

Questions from the floor:

How do you tell if a person has been murdered?

There are many ways of working out that a person has been murdered. For example, a woman was found hanged outside her house. The knot was in a place that it was obvious (to the trained eye), that she could not have placed it there herself. Therefore she had been murdered.

CCTV cameras can also help with evidence. It is possible to zoom into the finest details (1 in 10 million) and identify the colour of a person's eyes, and guess height and hand size. This would be 95% correct and legally binding in a court of law.

How can we tell criminality?

A woman falls from a bedroom window. Were the injuries on her body in line with the height that she fell from? If they were worse, it could indicate that she was pushed.

Sometimes cause of death is only discovered at the post mortem, by a pathologist.

How is the post mortem affected when a Jewish man or woman dies, because the funeral must be carried out within 48 hours?

The police are very aware of religious beliefs and principles. A team of people tries to take as much evidence as possible to speed up the process. Permission is needed to do a post mortem. The only exception to this is when a post mortem is essential for national security - in this case, permission is not needed.

In the case of the London bombings, people came from all over the world and relatives wanted the bodies flown home to different countries. The police could get bomb material from the bodies and so they needed to have access to the bodies.

The Jewish Burial Society Chevra Kadisha can get involved.

Is there a priority regarding Jewish deaths?

Only if there is no suspicion linked with the death. The team works as quickly as possible in all other cases.

Many thanks to Dr Segal for a very thought-provoking talk.

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