Application Exercise

Application of laws and concepts to "Murder Scenes"

For two classes prior to the practical exercise the students are taken through the "Degrees of Murder" and the 5 stages or states of bodies "Post Mortem."  Then power point scenarios are provided where students as a "team of four detectives" read a scenario, look at the picture of a deceased individual and determine stage of death, estimated time of death and upon solving of the case the level of intent associated with the killing and the degree of murder to be charged.

The next week the students as a team are tasked with "investigating" four murder scenes.  This helps to reinforce new concepts and ideas through a practical application exercise. This simulates real world, showing call out of detectives, response to the scene of the crime, receiving limited information up front, preserving, observing, evaluating evidence and predicting aspects about the murder based on their observations and the limited information.

The following week they will receive a low stakes quiz on the concepts and hopefully before the end of the semester they will revisit some scenes in one final application exercise and very limited quiz about the scene.

                                  The Practical Application Exercise

 At the start of class students are advised they are to investigate some murder scenes, given some directions that are posted on the board and in a handout and are sent out of the room while I set up the scenes.  They return to the classroom and are dispatched (via 3 X 5 card) as teams to "investigate" four different "murder" scenes.

Their task involves observing and making detailed notes about the scene and the body found there.  Then based on those observations predict the how or manner of death, the post-mortem stage of death that gives them an approximate time element, to evaluate how long the individual may have been deceased. The students continue their observations to determine what evidence may be present at the scene and decide what is relevant and why this would be important to solving the case. Then as part of the in-class writing exercise I ask them to think about what more information they need to solve the case and develop a plan once the crime scene has been cleared.  The importance of preservation of evidence, observation, analysis, evaluation of the crime scene is critical since once the scene is cleared it may soon after be cleaned up, or contaminated post incident.  Thus students photograph the scene in situ.  In the out of class portion of the assignment the students are given time to make a thorough incident report along with photos to document their crime scene investigation.  This is then graded.  A few weeks later the students will receive a low stakes quiz related to identifying the stages of post mortem bodies and the degree of murder based on the information.  Then a final exercise before the end of the semester spaced over time.

WORKING TOGETHER AS A TEAM, WORKING WITHOUT SUPERVISION

DRIVEN BY EXCELLENCE AND A PURSUIT OF THE FACTS