Citation

Caterino J, Clark J, Yohannan JC. Forensic Sci. Int. 2019; 305: e110000.

Affiliation

Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1520 Penn Ave, 15222, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Electronic address: joshua.yohannan@alleghenycounty.us.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.forsciint.2019.110000

PMID

31698203

Abstract

There have been several cases in the news regarding the presence of synthetic cannabinoids on paper being smuggled into jails and prisons in the United States. The Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner has been involved in the analysis of multiple cases. For the first time the laboratory received an analysis request for not only identification of controlled substances, but also for the presence of latent fingerprints. It was unknown if the processing methods used by the latent print unit would interfere with the identification of the controlled substances. This paper shows that DFO and ninhydrin processing will remove some of the synthetic cannabinoids, possibly effecting concentration on the paper, but the substances were still able to be positively identified after processing.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

DFO; Latent print processing; Ninhydrin; Paper; Synthetic cannabinoids