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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Digital photography is revolutionizing the prosecution of domestic violence cases.
Jul 10, 2002 | Settling into his chair at his cluttered desk on a Tuesday morning, Scott Kessler flicks on his computer and calls up images of injuries. A woman's face emerges, her nose outlined in purplish-blue bruises. Swollen cheeks, lacerated lips, abrasions, scratches, bruised limbs and broken capillaries fill the screen as Kessler, head of the domestic violence bureau in New York's Queens County District Attorney's Office, clicks open recent files, 15 from that morning.
He pauses before an image, pointing out a cut that scores a women's eyelid like an engraving. In another, bumps rise like a ridge from a man's forehead. Kessler zooms in on a woman's back, focusing on a red patch surrounded by black and blue. "You can see the outline of the object used -- a stick," he says. "You'll never see anything like that on a Polaroid."
At the 112th Precinct in northern Queens, Officer Linda Rivera holds up a 1.2 megapixel Kodak DC-120 with zoom and built-in viewer. "I was a little nervous when I heard the word 'digital camera,'" she says. "But it's so basic. A victim comes in. We photograph her here or at the hospital. You press two buttons. You see the photo instantly." Before the coming of digital, "we got a lot of dark photos. We'd run out of film. It could be spoiled, discolored." Close-ups, critical for depicting wounds, required cumbersome attachments, some of which had to be fastened to the victim. "This is quicker and less invasive."
Digital imaging, used for mug shots and in fingerprint analysis for years, has edged its way into the touchy territory of domestic violence investigations. "Any agency that has used digital photography for general crime-scene photography is using it for domestic violence, with only a rare exception," says George Reis, whose company, Imaging Forensics, trains federal, state, county and city police forces throughout the country. "Think of all the agencies that have traditionally used Polaroids for domestic violence. Digital is certainly a cheaper and better way to do it."
Convenience isn't the only advantage a digital camera has over its predecessors. For example, Polaroid photographs, taken just after an assault, often fail to depict incipient bruising or the red marks that become more conspicuous in the following days.
"In the past, it was difficult for a prosecutor to convey to a court the extent of the injury, particularly where the injuries are quite serious but don't rise to the level of broken bones or teeth knocked out," says Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, whose office has stepped up its attack on domestic violence since receiving a $3 million grant under the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women Act five years ago.
"[Polaroid] pictures suffer from a number of problems," says Herbert Blitzer, executive director of the Institute for Forensic Imaging at Purdue University. "The lenses put in distortion. The images tend to be dark. It's expensive."
Although 35-millimeter cameras transcend the technical limitations of the Polaroids and might even offer better resolution than some digital models, few patrol officers have the photographic skills to handle them successfully. "They often make several mistakes, and the images are no good," says Blitzer.
"They often get too close to the subject, and so I had blurry pictures," says Timothy Johnson, deputy district attorney in the sex crimes and domestic violence unit in the Boulder (Colorado) District Attorney's Office. Six of the nine police agencies in his jurisdiction switched to digital cameras about two years ago. "In strangulation cases, which in Boulder County is a growing method of choice, the injuries didn't photograph. They overdo the flash. How do you prove strangulation if you don't have marks?"
Kessler, examining an 8-by-10-inch digital printout of a woman with a cut lip, says, "The color is better, especially for women with different complexions," a fact not lost in Queens, whose 167 nationalities make it the most ethnically diverse county in the country.
Most importantly, the photographs can be downloaded and zapped from the precinct to the prosecutor's office within minutes of an arrest, instead of days or weeks. "We can print them out and present them at arraignments," says Kessler, whose staff handles about 4,500 misdemeanor and 500 felony cases a year. "They're strong evidence in bail applications."
Whether technology can make a dent in domestic violence, a complicated nexus of behaviors that includes battering and injury, psychological intimidation and sexual assault between intimate partners, is anyone's guess. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner every year in the United States. Will incremental advances in technology make a real difference in those figures? And, wonder some critics, is the malleability of digital imaging a potential weakness for getting evidence accepted in court?
Police and prosecutors dismiss the possible drawbacks of the new technology. They believe that high-quality digital photographs received early in the legal labyrinth can make an impact -- especially in the complex world of domestic violence, where victims are often unwilling to testify, and pictures have to do the talking.
"There's strong evidence that they're a good tool in fighting domestic violence," says Kessler.
