24 January 2011:
Today, another boring forensic post for you.
Yes, this seems to be the only thing I can talk about, can I? Well yeah, basically I am most passionate about this so if you are reading my blog, you'll get this quite a lot.Today, there was no assembly for the Sec3s, so I had one hour to do anything I wanted. The plan for studying failed, when I realised that everyone I asked wanted to go home, or had to do the CNY decoration thingy. So, after wasting time walking around almost the whole school, I went to the library.
My pattern for going to the library is always the same; I always have the same old call numbers to look for, because the books there are about forensics, or typography, etc ... Once in a while then I while head to the fiction section.
My pattern was broken today: I found an exciting book. Written by Alex Josey, it was published in 2009, "Cold-Blooded Murders". Naturally, because of its relation to forensics, I picked it up. In it, there were two cases that was very controversial last time in Singapore.
The first one was about Sunny Ang, and how he plotted to kill his girlfriend (that's what he claims, who knows if there is real love). He did it to get insurance payouts, which was all planned carefully by him. As of now, I have not read till the end, but already, circumstantial evidence points to him.
Well, again, forensics comes into place. I knew it, there surely must be an element of forensics in crime books. Although the transcripts between witnesses and lawyers were rather long, it was after all a crime book, or rather about the court proceedings.
This case was very special then because it was the first case that related to murder without a body. Previously, all cases dealt with had a body, so at least an examination of the body could be done to find out cause of death, which in turn could be used to prove someone guilty.
In this case, the victim died by drowning (I suppose?). The suspect had been on a skin-diving trip with her to Palau Dua. She dived in first; he claims to have something wrong with his equipment, so he tried to fix it first. Before it was done, he realised that she was underwater for too long.
Tugging at the 'shot' rope was no use. The body was never found although a green flipper found severely cut was found. This was the difficult part on the prosecutors. How were they able to prove that this guy actually killed her when all they had was a green flipper?
Circumstantial evidence could be used, but the defence counsel could find something to rebut it rather easily. The only thing that could be examined was the green flipper, which was done by a Singaporean chemist. At that time, a forensics person was called a chemist. LOL
I have not finished the book, so that's basically what I know. However, this book reaffirms my feelings towards defence lawyers. I do not want to outright-edly accuse that they are lying, but they have been known to twist and distort facts to their advantage. Is that really law?
I think Six Thinking Hats apply more to law.
Six Thinking Hats is a method developed by Edward de Bono. People using this method will have to list out everything that is related, whether or not the information is critical of themselves.
That seems to be better, isn't it? If people were only concerned with pointing beneficial points about their party, would the discussion ever lead anywhere? So, thankfullly, there was still the judges and that. (The defence lawyer even tried to bribe the witness, though, obviously, he denied it.)
This has been another long post. If your eyes are not tired, my hands are. So that's all for now, I shall finish this book ASAP, not forgetting homework. ):