Spring 2008 SWGGUN Meeting Summary
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The SWGGUN met
in Woodbridge, Virginia, for their semi-annual
meeting from 4/15- 17/2008. Fourteen members
attended the meeting, along with the Association
of Firearms and Tool Marks (AFTE) president,
with seven Board members absent. Topics and
issues covered during this meeting are listed
below.
A presentation was given by Ms. Melissa Smrz,
Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI Laboratory,
to the SWGGUN Board detailing numerous
administrative and policy issues related to all
of the Scientific Working Groups (SWGs). During
this presentation, Ms. Smrz conveyed that both
the Department of Justice and the FBI are very
satisfied with the work of all the SWGs. She
encouraged us to continue to develop new
guidelines, as well as reviewing established
guidelines, to ensure that they are current and
relevant. Finally, Ms. Smrz proposed that we
consider the possibility of organizing a
symposium to promote further standardization in
the Firearm and Toolmark discipline.
The ARK Maintenance Committee presented the
following reports to the Board:
- Three new
court rulings have recently been added to
the ARK. These three admissibility rulings
were all favorable rulings to the discipline
and in two of these matters, the judge
denied defense motions for a hearing as they
considered Firearms and Toolmark
Identification to be an established
scientific discipline.
- The
Committee will also be including additional
publication citations under the ARK’s
Testability Section. These publications will
provide additional theoretical and practical
statistical validation of the Firearms and
Toolmark discipline.
The SWGGUN
Survey Committee reported that no new feedback
was received since the last meeting on the
SWGGUN’s CMS Survey.
The Criteria for Identification Committee
reported no feedback on its proposed guidelines
that reaffirmed the AFTE Theory of
Identification. The Board reviewed the proposed
guideline and then voted that this guideline be
placed on the website for final posting.
The Standardized Comparison Documentation
Committee reported no new feedback on its
proposed guideline that essentially included
contents of the AFTE comparison documentation
standard with the addition of some verbiage that
included CMS as a method that could be used in
the text of examiners notes to describe
examination conclusions. The Board reviewed the
proposed guideline draft and determined that
additional study should be conducted to note
whether other imaging systems, such as Condor,
be included in this guideline.
The ISO Committee presented its developed
guideline text to the Board. After some
discussion the ISO Committee will continue to
revise its present guideline text by better
defining, articulating and differentiating
between “critical” and “uncertainty” of
measurements.
Two new committees were formed during this
meeting. These committees are the Gunshot
Residue Pattern Testing and the Firearms
Function Committees. Both of these committees
will review the current examination protocols,
as well as the conclusion criteria, used in
these two areas of analysis.
The SWGGUN Chairman reported the following
contacts since the last meeting:
- The SWGGUN
was contacted by the SWGs for Material
Analysis and Shoeprint (SWGMAT & SWGTRAX).
These SWGs, which are developing their own
ARK contacted SWGGUN for details on website
set-up and formatting information.
- A response
letter was received from the President of
the California Association of Criminalists (CAC)
denying our request for respondent raw data
in the CAC Survey on consecutive matching
striae (CMS). This letter was in response to
the SWGGUN’s November, 2007 letter that
requested the CAC’s raw survey data so that
an external peer review could be conducted
on the CAC’s Survey results.
During this
meeting, SWGGUN members were afforded a tour of
the National Rifle Association’s Firearm Museum
in Fairfax, Virginia.
These committees are working to develop a
product that can be posted on the SWGGUN website
for review and comments from the forensic
community. SWGGUN continues to operate its own
website at
www.swggun.org and solicits valuable input
from the discipline through a number of
different mechanisms during the development
stages of the guidelines which we produce. These
guideline/documents are then posted on the
website for your review and we encourage peer
review of these materials. Feel free to contact
a Board member with your comments/concerns or
visit us at the “Feedback Forum” tab above.
Thank you for allowing us to serve you. Board
member information can be found under the
“Members” tab. We look forward to hearing from
you and encourage your continued participation
in these ongoing projects that ultimately affect
our work product.
Gregory S.
Klees- Chair, SWGGUN
