US may finally get into Afghan crime scenes this week

It’s been 24 days since the Afghan massacre outside Kandahar where 17 civilians were killed, and the U.S. still hasn’t had access to the crime scene to collect evidence.

We’re hearing US investigators might be allowed in this week, but what kind of evidence can they expect to collect after so long at an unsecured crime scene?

Even if U.S. forensics experts get into the shooting scenes this week, more than three weeks will have passed where potential evidence might have been compromised, destroyed or removed.

The crime scenes have not been secured. People have been living where the shootings happened. Random people have been in and out of the area. That makes collecting good evidence very difficult.

Getting to a crime scene quickly is key to getting good forensic results, according to Mary Wilson who is a crime scene specialist from the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

“It makes it pretty complicated,” said Wilson. “If you have people who are living in there, things are being moved around. Things are being cleaned. The whole scene will change.”

Afghan investigators did process the crime scenes shortly after the attacks, gathering shell casings and other evidence, but did they do a good job, a good enough job to hold up in a U.S. military trial?

No one knows. The Afghans haven’t shared what they’ve found.

So all U.S. investigators can do once they finally get access to the scenes, Wilson says, is collect everything.

“You try and collect as much evidence as possible,” she said. “We kind of collect everything that could be related to, if its a shooting scene, or if it’s a stabbing scene. We try to collect as much evidence as possible that could relate that incident back to the crime.”

One thing U.S. investigators will try to do is dig out every bullet they can find from walls, doors and the dirt. Collect them and let the lab sort them out, Wilson said.

“You don’t know if this bullet is related to this incident or not, but you collect it anyway and you send it into the lab so that if you do have the firearm that was related to this crime you can link it back.”

But what good is any evidence collected from a crime scene that hasn’t been secured for three weeks? Will it hold up?

Dr. Marilyn Miller, a forensic scientist from Virginia Commonwealth University, said that anything found now would likely be considered suspect.

“I’d be surprised if they could find anything,” Dr. Miller said. “There may be something. I frequently will go to crime scenes many months after crimes scenes have been investigated and find, for instance, shell casings, projectiles and things like that. It’s all just going to be called into question.”

Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38, could face the death penalty if convicted of killing the 17 Afghan civilians.

His attorney, John Henry Brown, has already been attacking the evidence or the lack of it in this case.