When Rick Jackson was arrested for the brutal murder of his lover, police showed him photos of bloody fingerprints they said placed him at the murder scene. Maintaining his innocence, Jackson felt relieved to learn about the prints knowing they were not his.
"Ah, somebody made a mistake," he thought, a mistake that would soon be rectified. However, after three local police fingerprint "experts" stated unequivocally that the prints were Jackson's, the family obtained the services of FBI field examiner, George Wynn. Along with fellow examiner Vernon McCloud, the two FBI experts (with a combined 75 years of fingerprint experience) did not reach the same conclusion. They stated that the alleged match between Jackson's fingerprints and the fingerprints found at the crime scene was "not even a close call." In court, the trio of police examiners testified with 100 percent certainty that crime scene fingerprints were the defendant's. Rick Jackson was convicted of first-degree murder and began serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
So how is it that local police and the FBI reached completely divergent conclusions about the two sets of fingerprints? To begin, the whirring, light-flashing, television "CSI" computer that signals "Match," Match," Match," when a suspect's prints undisputedly match one set of fingerprints out of a database with millions of sets of fingerprints is much more television fantasy than criminal justice reality. The FBI computer does no more than narrow the search. At this point the human eye goes back and forth between one set of prints and another looking for similarities, a process that can take hours, sometimes days.
And herein lies the problem, argues Philadelphia defense attorney Robert Espstein: "There's complete disagreement amongst fingerprint examiners themselves as to what they need to find in order to declare a match." Consider the following: To "prove" a match between sets of prints in Sweden, examiners must show seven points of similarity (or "points of comparison"), in Australia 12, and in Brazil 30. In the United States, most examiners - including the FBI - do not even use a point system. Epstein argues that the reliability of fingerprint matching has never been proven. Forensic scientist Ralph Haber (professor emeritus, the University of Illinois) agrees stating that "There isn't a single experiment that's ever been done, literally."
The training and testing of fingerprint examiners further complicates the issue. About half of current fingerprints examiners in the U.S. have failed the International Association of Identification's rigorous certification test, yet continue to practice their profession. Ken Smith, the IAI's certification chairman stated: "There are very few employers who will terminate an employee for not passing the test." In fact, the majority of examiners have never taken the test.
A proficiency test of 156 examiners administered by the IAI concluded that 20 percent of these individuals made at least one "false positive" identification concluding that two sets of prints came from the same person, when in fact, they did not. Ralph Haber states that "Virtually no crime laboratory requires that you be qualified to work in the lab, even in the FBI lab."
False fingerprint identifications have been known since the 1920s with law enforcement officials steadfastly maintaining that mistakes are few and far between. However, based on his research, criminologist Simon Cole of the University of California at Irvine, states that as many as 1,000 incorrect matches are made annually in spite of efforts to prevent mistakes. Other experts have concluded that the number of false fingerprint identifications is closer to 2,000 every year.
Cole discovered that more than 70 percent of known false fingerprint identification cases have occurred in serious felonies, including murder. It's not clear if there are more errors in these crimes, or that more errors are discovered in murder cases because this is where investigators have focused their attention. Roger Koppl of Fairleigh Dickinson University notes that forensic scientists knowing wether a case is a burglary or a murder "exposes a fingerprint examiner to a powerful unconscious bias: The emotional nature of a murder case tends to make the scientist eager to get a killer off the streets and much more likely to declare a match." These emotions may be heightened according to Koppl as forensic scientists often have a "pro-police bias" and think of themselves as part of the prosecution team rather than objective professionals.
In the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks that killed 191 people, Brandon Mayfield a 37-year-old former military officer and convert to Islam was arrested by the FBI when the Bureau linked him to the incident by way of his fingerprints on a bag of detonators recovered in Spain. In an FBI affidavit used to obtain a material witness warrant, a Bureau agent noted that the FBI was 100 positive about the fingerprint identification. As Seton Hall Law School Professor David Feige stated, the FBI turned out to be 100 wrong in its identification of Mayfield who was released after spending two weeks in jail.
In spite of evidence to the contrary the law enforcement community fosters the view that fingerprint identification is an "exact science." Steve Meagher of the FBI's fingerprint unit notes this view has long been embraced by trial judges. As such, criminal court judges refuse to accept challenges to the legitimacy of fingerprint analysis per se, considering only the possibility of human fallibility in any given case.
Criminologist Simon Cole argues that "Rather than blindly insisting there is zero error in fingerprint matching, we should acknowledge the obvious, study the errors openly and find constructive ways to prevent faulty evidence from being used to convict innocent people."
Although they have been unsuccessful to date, defense attorneys are attempting to get prosecutorial fingerprint testimony barred from courtrooms under standards set by the Supreme Court regarding unproven "junk science." A forensic scientist who has worked with both prosecutors and defense attorneys is of the opinion that challenges to the legitimacy and reliability of fingerprint testimony will eventually bring about courtroom changes.
Edward Imwinkelried notes there is a "very good possibility" judges will one day instruct juries that a fingerprint analyst is not a scientist stating an "exact" conclusion, but an expert giving an "opinion."
After serving two years in a state prison, Rick Jackson was released when the IAI stated the crime scene fingerprints were not his. One of the prosecution's fingerprint examiners was decertified and lost his job, the other two were not sanctioned. How many more individuals remain in prison, falsely convicted by bogus fingerprint matches, for crimes they did not commit?
Now retired after teaching sociology at the University of San Diego for 24 years, George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale. The Enterprise "Crime in America" series is adapted from "Myths and Realities of Crime and Justice: What Every American Should Know," George J. Bryjak and Steve E. Barkan, forthcoming 2008, Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Sources:
"Cases in Which Fingerprint Evidence Misled Juries and Judges" (2005) The Boston Globe, September 5, www.boston.com
Cole, S. (2004) "Grandfathering Evidence: Fingerprint Admissibility Rulings from Jennings to Llera and Back Again" American Criminal Law Review, No 1189, pp.1196-97
Feige, D. (2004) "Printing Problems" Slate, May 7, www.slate.com
"Fingerprints: Infallible Evidence?" (2004) CBS News, June 6, www.cbsnews.com
Koppl, R. (2007) "Breaking Up the Forensics Monopoly" Reasonline, September, www.reason.com
Newman, A. (2001) "Fingerprinting's Reliability Draws Growing Court Challenges" New York Times, April 1, www.nytimes.com
"The Real Crime: 1,000 Errors in Fingerprint Matching Every Year" (2005) Live Science, Sept. 13, www.livescience.com
Thompson, W. and S. Cole (2005) "Lessons from the Brandon Mayfield Case" (2005) National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, April, www.nacdl.org
