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The SWGGUN met
at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation
Laboratory in Fort Gillem, Georgia, for its
semi-annual meeting on November 6-8, 2007.
Nineteen of the Board members were present for
the meeting with two members absent. Topics and
issues covered during this meeting are listed
below.
A presentation
by the Scientific Working Group for Imaging
Technology (SWGIT) was given to the SWGGUN Board
summarizing their established and pending
guidelines to date. This presentation detailed
how issues relating to the preservation of
digital and photographic information in casework
could be located on their website at
www.swgit.org.
The Daubert
Resource Committee presented the following
reports to the Board.
- The SWGGUN
Admissibility Resource Kit (ARK) Power Point
program was presented at the AFTE convention
last June with very positive feedback.
- An
overview of the SWGGUN and the ARK was
presented at the National Academy of
Sciences in Washington, DC this past April.
Additionally, the ARK and its critical
elements were discussed in a plenary session
at the Northeast Association of Forensic
Scientists’ annual conference in Bolton
Landing, New York.
The development
and construction of the ARK was determined, by
vote of the Board, as having been successfully
completed by the Daubert Committee. The Board
also approved that the Daubert Resource
Committee be terminated and that its present
members be transferred to a new committee
entitled the ARK Maintenance Committee.
The Conclusion
Verification Committee presented their first
guideline draft to the Board. Numerous questions
were raised regarding some of the terminology in
this draft. The Committee was requested to
prepare a glossary to better define terms used
in this draft. Work on this guideline continues
and input related its development is still
desired. Pertinent information related to this
guideline should be directed to Mark Keisler at
mkkeisler@isp.in.gov.
The SWGGUN
Survey results were presented at the AFTE
Convention last June. The Survey Committee also
reported on the released results of the
California Association of Criminalists (CAC)
survey on CMS and of the apparent disparity in
results particularly on use of the CMS method as
an identification criterion. The SWGGUN Survey
Committee will continue research to these
results to resolve this apparent disparity.
Other committee
activities and projects being addressed by
SWGGUN are:
- A Criteria
for Identification Committee was formed to
articulate SWGGUN’s endorsement of the use
of traditional Pattern Matching in
conducting side-by-side comparisons. The
Board approved for public posting the
Committee’s proposed
guideline that endorses and
reaffirms the AFTE’s Theory of
Identification as the conclusion criterion
- A
Standardized Comparison Documentation
Committee was formed to review present
recommendations for documenting examination
results. The Board approved for public
posting the Committee’s proposed
guideline that 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.
During this
meeting, SWGGUN members were afforded tours of
the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory,
the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Laboratory
and the Glock Firearms facility in Smyrna,
Georgia.
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
