End User Commentary on Investigating the Age of Blood Traces: How Close Are We to Finding the Holy Grail of Forensic Science?

Abstract

Despite significant efforts over the past decades, the forensic practitioner’s quest to establish when a blood stain was deposited, and therefore whether it might relate to the offence, has remained elusive. In an age where DNA analysis continues to garner the attention, it is often overlooked that there are many instances where establishing who shed the blood stain is not necessarily the critical issue. For example, if a victim was known to the assailant, and particularly if there was a history of violence between the individuals concerned, then there is often a need to show that the blood matching the victim is not the result of some previous incident. It is not uncommon for the examination of a crime scene to find blood stains of assorted ages, the results of previous violent altercations between householders over the years, presenting the challenge of distinguishing between those blood stains which relate to the offence and those which are historic.