Case study

CASE STUDY

90210 Murder solved in The O.C.
Beverly Hills, California.On Tuesday, February 27, 2007 a jury in Los Angeles County convicted "a parolee with a lengthy criminal record" of Attempted Homicide and Second Degree Homicide in the fatal stabbing of Jurgen Hapke, 65 of Burbank. (See NBC4.tv story here)The murder occurred at a Wells Fargo Bank in Beverly Hills on December 14, 2005.Hapke was killed when he tried to stop the defendant, Nathan Lee Hall, 51 from stabbing Hapke's business partner, Helmut Mende while both were painting the exterior of the bank.No one really knows why the defendant tried to kill two elderly men in a bank parking garage because the jury never got to hear much about the defendant's background during the trial, but the execution of Tookie Williams, which had taken place the day before this crime, may have provided a motive! (See previous post on the execution)What was heard by the jury was compelling testimony about the physical evidence from the crime scene that was ultimately linked to the defendant.DNA evidence from items left behind in the bank parking lot were examined by the Orange County Sheriff's Crime Lab within hours of the crime and the DNA profile from those items was matched in the State's DNA data base to the suspect.The OCSD Crime Lab was used at the request of the Beverly Hills Police Department which engaged in a special one-time contract for the work.Orange County Sheriff's Forensic Services Supervisor Russell Baldwin was the scientist that conducted and analyzed the physical evidence that consisted of a scarf, a hat and the murder weapon to find the DNA used for the match.Supervisor Baldwin's testimony at the Los Angeles County trial covered a couple of days that included intense cross-examination and an opposing defense witness that challenged the DNA evidence and the credibility of Supervisor Baldwin.The jury deliberated for three days before finding the defendant GUILTY!The importance of DNA evidence cannot be understated and the collection of DNA into a State database was authorized by Proposition 69 (as detailed in this previous post).DNA has been extremely important in solving "cold cases' which are those that were not solved at the time of the incident because in many cases the technology did not exist or was not as sophisticated as it is today. (See this previous post on cold case DNA hits)But this was not a cold case!Nathan Lee Hall was identified through DNA evidence and arrested within nine days of the murder - the result of good police work and GREAT forensic science evidence work!

this is just one case that had been solved thnks to forensic scientists but there are many other cases that have been solved thanks to forensic science too.

this was my final post thank you for looking if your not my teacher and feel free to comment