Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators by Jarrett Hallcox, Amy Welch

one of only two sheriff’s offices in Kentucky accredited by the KACP (Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police). The average time it takes Boone County detectives to make an arrest is less than sixteen hours. The crime scene investigation team consists of one forensic technician, one detective, and two patrol officers.
    I want the truth!” a crazed Tom Cruise yelled at Jack Nicholson in the classic military courtroom drama A Few Good Men . The movie is filled with rich theatricality and poignant drama, not unlike many courtrooms across the country. Somewhere, every day, a prosecutor is working on a case, studying the facts, trying to put a criminal behind bars. And at the same time, a defense attorney somewhere is trying to poke holes through an argument for putting a criminal behind bars. The American judicial concept of “innocent until proven guilty” is geared almost entirely to the rights of defendants—their state of mind and their actions. Unfortunately, the victim often gets lost in the mix, buried under six feet of dirt and forty feet of briefs. But there are pockets all across the country where justice still means punishing people for the bad things they have done. We were fortunate enough to find one of those pockets in Boone County, Kentucky.
    “There’s a lot of stuff we know should be here but it’s missing—not just a murder weapon.” This is how prosecutor Linda Tally Smith of Boone County, Kentucky, began her closing argument in the Beckham hotel murder case. It is not unusual for Linda to turn her back to the judge and begin a vigorous, tear-filled rant not only about why the defendant should be brought to justice but also about why the family of the victim should be brought peace. She sometimes falls to her knees, like a Church of God parishioner overcome with the Holy Spirit about to speak in tongues. An old southern Kentucky gentleman prosecutor once told her to do that when she could, almost certainly guaranteeing a victory when performed just right. Not every judge puts up with the teary closing, though the Supreme Court has determined that lawyers are human (a sometimes disputable point) and are therefore allowed to show emotion in the courtroom. But—to use a local southern expression—that dog sometimes doesn’t hunt in Kentucky, and Linda’s been warned by more than one judge about crying in the courtroom (she refers to this as the perils of being a “chick prosecutor”). She just turns her back to the judge, flips a mental bird and, though verklempt , continues pressing on with her argument just waiting for the prime opportunity to fall to her knees.
    We met prosecutor Linda Tally Smith on the second floor of the Huntington Bank building in Boone County, Kentucky. It’s an odd place for an office that houses the most powerful woman in the entire county. At the time of her election to office in 2000, she was the youngest and only female prosecutor in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The county is hardly known for its liberalism—in fact, Boone County has the largest Republican population in the state. Smith’s own Republicanism is illustrated by several prominently displayed autographed pictures of “W” holding each of her three kids. Yet the Dixie Chicks CD—the all-girl band from Texas that famously clashed with the Bush administration—on Smith’s desk also speaks to a certain amount of youthful liberalism, and that aura certainly permeates her entire office. Exuberance and playful banter reign supreme here and signify in many regards the “new way” of doing business in this area; a law enforcement renaissance, so to speak.
    Linda had always wanted to be a prosecutor, even as a child. “I remember the big ones,” she says, while checking the continuous stream of e-mails that ding on her computer, referring to the many cases she can recall having followed during her Kentucky childhood. One in particular, the Eugene Gall murder case, happened in 1979 when Linda was nine