Morphologic, experimental-comparative investigation as an identification of the injuring instrument method

Abstract

Aiming to identify the injuring tool characteristics and the tool itself morphologic, experimental-comparative investigations of the skin wound, rib and cartilage injuries taken during the autopsy are performed. During 1995-2004, 489 investigations were performed for this purpose. In 418 cases, knives were submitted for identification of the specific injuring tool (in total-835 knives). In 205 cases the investigation included not only skin wounds, but also the injured rib cartilages. Identification investigations were performed by investigating both the skin wounds morphologic characteristics and dynamic traces-trails in the rib cartilage tissue left by the micro relief of the knife blade edge. In the case of the investigated and experimental skin wounds characteristics coincidence the experimental and comparative dynamic traces investigation was performed when the traces were suitable for the tool identification purposes. In the case of the investigated and experimental skin wounds, dynamic traces coincidence, the totality of the coincided characteristics was considered individual. In those cases, the conclusion included the fact that the injury had been made by a particular knife. According to our data during 1995-2004 in 23 cases-15.9% (5.5% out of the total investigated cases), the knife identification was based on the skin wound characteristics and dynamic traces in the rib cartilage tissue. In our opinion, the dynamic traces in the rib cartilage tissue investigations supplement the identification field and are valuable in the tool identification. In 11 (2.6% out of the total investigated cases) cases knives were identified only by the skin wounds morphologic characteristics, the ribs being not injured or dynamic traces being not suitable for the tool identification.