Page 48 - Aug Sept 2016

A Personal and Indepth Interview with Dennis Hillard
Dennis Hilliard: One of the most important aspects of the crime laboratory ana-

lyst’s job is the ability to present their results in court. You must be able to effec-
tively communicate to a judge and jury what you did in the examination process,

what the results were and how those results provide significant connections between
the evidence and the crime scene, the victim or the person of interest (defendant).
Testimony in fire debris cases related to Arson is pretty straight forward in terms of

the laboratory examination. The Laboratory relies on the crime scene investigators
to provide the evidence to be examined and compared in each case. For fire inves-

tigations it is necessary to locate the point of origin of the fire. This is the location
where the evidence needs to be collected if the investigator believes an ignitable
liquid, such as gasoline, was used to accelerate the progress of a set fire. This evi-

dence must be properly collected and packaged for examination at the laboratory.
The analyst will used procedures to any extract ignitable liquid residue that may be

present in the evidence and use instrumentation to determine if these sample contain
an identifiable ignitable liquid.

When working on a fire debris case it is necessary to know the material that was
collected as certain materials may contribute chemical components to the analysis.

For example if the sample is determined to contain turpentine, it may be that fram-
ing wood may have been collected. The wood may contain naturally occurring tur-

pentine; in court the testimony that is elicited by the prosecutor can be challenged
by the defense lawyer. Even if an ignitable liquid is identified, such as gasoline, the
analyst cannot state how the material goes there or in most cases how long it had

been there. Finding gasoline in a garage fire may not mean as much as finding gaso-
line in a kitchen of living room. This is true for nearly all evidence that is testified

by the laboratory analyst, it needs to be supported by other testimony.

Sonya Trippett: Law Enforcement along with fire investigators provides the evi-
dence for your crime lab to process. Tell me about your experience working with

law enforcement, fire investigators and any other departments, if any.

Dennis Hilliard: When I started working for the State Crime Laboratory in March of
1980 as a chemist responsible for processing fire debris evidence, the samples were

being sent in coffee cans with a plastic lid. The funds that the state obtained in a
grant from the federal government provided for a chemist, two investigators for

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