Forensic Entomology in Criminal Investigations

Abstract

Forensic entomology is the application of the study of insects and other arthropods to legal issues, especially in a court of law. The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in forensic investigations by entomologists. Lord & Stevenson (83) identified three categories of forensic entomology: urban, stored-product, and medicolegal. Urban forensic entomology includes such things as litigations and civil law actions involving arthropods in dwellings or as house and garden pests. Law suits dealing with the misuse of pesticides are included here. Stored-product forensic entomology generally deals with arthropod infestation or contamination of a wide range of commercial prod­ ucts (e.g. beetles or their parts in candy bars, flies in ketchup, or spiders in bathroom tissue). Like its urban counterpart, this category usually involves litigation. The third category, medicolegal forensic entomology, is the focus of this review and is the most popularized aspect of the science. It deals with arthropod involvement in events surrounding felonies, usually violent crimes such as murder, suicide, and rape, but also includes other violations such as physical abuse and contraband trafficking (116). A more accurate name for this category is medicocriminal forensic entomology (53).