Ali Kocak
Dept. of Sciences, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Faculty of Chemistry, The Graduate Center City University of New York

Abstract:

The growing importance of Vibrational spectroscopy in many other fields has spread and expanded more widely to forensic laboratories where the field and lab applications are being involved in the determination of forensic evidences. Vibrational spectroscopy can be instrumental and important complementary tool to other techniques for determining precisely the piece of the scene evidence.

Spectroscopic methods for examining neat human hair have the potential to provide important forensic evidence. Hair samples are typically easy to acquire and the medulla component has been shown to change upon drug exposure. ATR infrared spectroscopy can be used to detect changes in the medulla of neat human-scalp hair samples resulting from both external and internal drug exposure. The effect of these drugs will be discussed.

The use and abuse of hallucinogenic mushrooms in many areas of the United States continues to be a matter of forensic importance. Psilocybin containing mushrooms are the most frequently encountered. The analysis of psilocybin presents difficulties due to its thermal lability and lack of extraction using standard liquid-liquid procedures. The use of ATR and Transflection spectroscopic techniques for the qualitative analysis of psilocin extracted from hallucinogenic mushrooms and control spiked mushrooms will also discussed in this presentation.