Forensics Journal - Stevenson University 2012 | Page 30

STEVENSON UNIVERSITY

accountant who wore horn-rimmed glasses. The woman immediately
contacted authorities. Agents went to the home of “Robert Clark,”
and confronted his stunned wife. They arrested List at his office ten
days after the updated photo was shown. Fingerprints confirmed that
he was John List. Through the use of forensic art, Bender and many
others like him will continue to use their talents to bring criminals to
justice.

to 30 year old black and white males fails to account for the crimes
committed by the occasional female, Asian, Latin, or older suspects.
Some systems offers separate race and gender packages but at an
additional cost. In most programs the artist is left with using what
they have and that may not be enough to complete the task because
of excessive costs (Jackson, 2004).
Another critical issue relates to the information used to average the
facial tissue thickness. There is a problem with the lack of methodological inconsistency in approximating facial features because an
official method has not been established for reconstructing the face.
(Reichs & Craig, 1998, 491-511). Also, there are certain accuracy
limits that may occur during the facial reconstruction process. Sculptors can only guess hairstyles and cannot produce the expressions on
a person’s face that make the sculpture completely life like (“Facial
Reconstruction,” 2004). Reconstructions only reveal the type of face
a person may have shown because of artistic subjectivity. Generally,
the position and shape of the main facial features are accurate because
they are significantly determined by the skull (Helmer & Isacan,
1993, 229-243).

REFERENCES
Demonstrative Evidence - Further Readings. (n.d.). Retrieved May 31,
2011, from Net Industries website: http://law.jrank.org/pages/6060/
Demonstrative-Evidence.html
Facial Reconstruction. (2004, October). Forensic Science. Retrieved
April 17, 2011, from Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation
website: http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00206/pti_facial_reconstruction.htm
Frowd, C. D., Hancock, P. J., & Carson, D. (2004, July). EvoFIT:
A holistic, evolutionary facial imaging technique for creating
composites. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP), 1(1).
doi:10.1145/1008722.1008725

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS
There has been much debate on the accuracy of composite images. In
an effort to improve this low-tech process, two research groups in the
United Kingdom have invented similar solutions as to how to create
a better “facial composite” of a perpetrator in a more psychologically