CREATORS: A Breakthrough in Fingerprint Analysis

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
December 30, 2025

Fingerprints have long been considered the gold standard of crime investigation techniques. As early as 1903, America — with its new young president and former New York City police commissioner Teddy Roosevelt — began using fingerprints in criminal investigations. Fingerprint analysis became a "thing" back in the mid-18th century in India.

Within a couple of decades, the FBI began cataloging fingerprints. Today, the bureau is storing more than 200 million fingerprints.

Until recently, the FBI described fingerprint identification as 100% infallible. That is no longer the case. In the last twenty years, there hasn't been a lot of good news when it comes to forensic analysis, including fingerprint analysis.

What do we know about fingerprints? Impressions of fingerprints are left behind on various surfaces by the natural secretions of sweat. The friction ridges, the raised portion of the epidermis on fingers consisting of one or more connected ridges, are often the point of comparison.

First, an intentional recording of the fingerprint is made with black ink on a white card or recorded digitally. These are often collected after arrest and secured in a database. At a crime scene a "latent print," the chance recording of a fingerprint deposited on a surface, is captured through chemical methods and brought into a lab for expert analysis.

Fingerprint identification came under scrutiny in 2004. The FBI publicly acknowledged the fingerprint misidentification of an Oregon lawyer wrongfully implicated in a terrorist bombing in Madrid — a place he had never visited.

Through a study conducted in 2004, cognitive neuroscientist Itiel Dror found that otherwise competent and well-meaning experts were swayed by what they knew about a case submitted for analysis. Dror's study demonstrated that if an analyst knew that the suspect confessed or was arrested, the analyst's findings could be influenced. According to Frontline, cognitive bias seeped into the process even with the best-trained experts.

In steps deep learning, the use of multi-layered artificial intelligence to automatically learn complex patterns from vast amounts of data.

A recent study published in Science Advances entitled "Unveiling intra-person fingerprint similarity via deep contrastive learning" revealed a breakthrough in fingerprint analysis.

Law enforcement agencies worldwide have operated under the long-standing belief that no two fingerprints are alike, even across the ten fingers of a single individual.

The authors suggest that an investigator can sidestep the same-finger limitation by exploiting nontraditional fingerprint features. "Past studies provided evidence that fingerprint patterns may be partially genetically determined which implies that there could be similarities among fingerprints from the same person," the authors found.

In addition, "recent research shows that partial fingerprints from different users have common features that can be exploited to fool authentication systems."

The study concluded, "the ability to process and match distinct fingerprint samples from the same individual opens new investigative possibilities, particularly in cases where fingerprints are partial or collected under suboptimal conditions."

This breakthrough moves investigators away from matching the best print with the exact finger of a suspect. The study found, "The new AI model reduces this dependency by identifying shared features that remain stable across different fingers."

How does fingerprint evidence get in front of a jury?

Specialized rules of evidence allow expert testimony if the conclusions are based on knowledge, skill, experience, training or education in the techniques involved and the specialized knowledge will assist the judge or jury to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. The testimony must be based on reliable principles and methods, consistently applied.

Here is the new dilemma. If Artificial Intelligence is used to determine a fingerprint match, how does the expert witness convey the process of using AI to evaluate the evidence? This information is crucial to whether a judge allows the expert's opinion and whether the opinion helps jurors understand the reliability of evidence.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Fingerprint evidence not infallible

Fingerprints have been police tools for a long time, more than a century. They were considered infallible for much of that history, according to Science News.

Limitations to fingerprint analysis came to light in spectacular fashion in 2004, with the bombing of four commuter trains in Madrid. Spanish police found a blue plastic bag full of detonators and traces of explosives. Forensic experts used a standard technique to raise prints off the bag: fumigating it with vaporized superglue, which stuck to the finger marks, and staining the bag with fluorescent dye to reveal a blurry fingerprint.

Running that print against the FBI’s fingerprint database highlighted a possible match to Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer. One FBI expert, then another, then another confirmed Mayfield’s print matched the one from the bag.

Mayfield was arrested. But he hadn’t been anywhere near Madrid during the bombing. He didn’t even possess a current passport. Spanish authorities later arrested someone else, and the FBI apologized to Mayfield and let him go.

The case highlights an unfortunate “paradox” resulting from fingerprint databases, in that “the larger the databases get … the larger the probability that you find a spurious match,” says Alicia Carriquiry. She directs the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, or CSAFE, at Iowa State University.

In fingerprint analyses, the question at hand is whether two prints, one from a crime scene and one from a suspect or a fingerprint database, came from the same digit (SN: 8/26/15). The problem is that prints lifted from a crime scene are often partial, distorted, overlapping or otherwise hard to make out. The expert’s challenge is to identify features called minutiae, such as the place a ridge ends or splits in two, and then decide if they correspond between two prints.

Studies since the Madrid bombing illustrate the potential for mistakes. In a 2011 report, FBI researchers tested 169 experienced print examiners on 744 fingerprint pairs, of which 520 pairs contained true matches. Eighty-five percent of the examiners missed at least one of the true matches in a subset of 100 or so pairs each examined. Examiners can also be inconsistent: In a subsequent study, the researchers brought back 72 of those examiners seven months later and gave them 25 of the same fingerprint pairs they saw before. The examiners changed their conclusions on about 10 percent of the pairings.

Forensic examiners can also be biased when they think they see a very rare feature in a fingerprint and mentally assign that feature a higher significance than others, Quigley-McBride says. No one has checked exactly how rare individual features are, but she is part of a CSAFE team quantifying these features in a database of more than 2,000 fingerprints.

Computer software can assist fingerprint experts with a “sanity check,” says forensic scientist Glenn Langenburg, owner of the consulting firm Elite Forensic Services in St. Paul, Minn. One option is a program known rather informally as Xena (yes, for the television warrior princess) developed by Langenburg’s former colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Xena’s goal is to calculate a likelihood ratio, a number that compares the probability of a fingerprint looking like it does if it came from the suspect (the numerator) versus the probability of the fingerprint looking as it does if it’s from some random, unidentified individual (the denominator). The same type of statistic is used to support DNA evidence.

To compute the numerator probability, the program starts with the suspect’s pristine print and simulates various ways it might be distorted, creating 700 possible “pseudomarks.” Then Xena asks, if the suspect is the person behind the print from the crime scene, what’s the probability any of those 700 could be a good match?

To calculate the denominator probability, the program compares the crime scene print to 1 million fingerprints from random people and asks, what are the chances that this crime scene print would be a good match for any of these?

If the likelihood ratio is high, that suggests the similarities between the two prints are more likely if the suspect is indeed the source of the crime scene print than if not. If it’s low, then the statistics suggest it’s quite possible the print didn’t come from the suspect. Xena wasn’t available at the time of the Mayfield case, but when researchers ran those prints later, it returned a very low score for Mayfield, Langenburg says.

Another option, called FRStat, was developed by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory. It crunches the numbers a bit differently to calculate the degree of similarity between fingerprints after an expert has marked five to 15 minutiae.

While U.S. Army courts have admitted FRStat numbers, and some Swiss agencies have adopted Xena, few fingerprint examiners in the United States have taken up either. But Carriquiry thinks U.S. civilian courts will begin to use FRStat soon.

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CREATORS: DNA Reveals Flaws in Criminal Justice System

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
February 11, 2025

The Innocence Project used to track all DNA exonerations throughout the country. An exoneration clears a convicted person of blameworthiness. Now they track all "Innocence Project successes," which includes all exonerations generated through DNA or other evidence.

There were 375 DNA exonerations between 1989 and 2020. For those 375 men and women and their families, DNA saved them from the anguish and pain of being locked up for a crime they did not commit. For the rest of us, DNA revealed the many flaws in the criminal justice system.

The "other successes" are even more impressive than the DNA exonerations. In "Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice," Barbara Bradley Hagerty declared, "The double helix has sparked a revolution." DNA has exposed the errors of our way.

The Innocence Project is right to celebrate those non-DNA exonerations. "[O]verturning a wrongful conviction, even with DNA evidence, is extremely difficult. ... [Without it] it's so much harder," Rebecca Brown of the Innocence Project told Bradley. She goes on to say, "It comes down to, really, serendipity. ... We should not be having to depend on luck."

DNA is not present in every case. However, there are still mistaken identifications, police misconduct and bad forensics throughout the system. The Innocence Project lists six "contributing causes" for wrongful convictions: eyewitness misidentification; false confessions or admissions; government misconduct; inadequate defense; informants; and unvalidated or improper forensic science.

More specifically, in 63% of wrongful convictions there was eyewitness identification; 52% had inaccurate or unscientific forensic analysis; 19% had untrustworthy informants: and 28% had confessions.

Imagine that nearly 3 in 10 people exonerated pleaded guilty to a crime they did not commit. How does that happen?

In 2010, 17-year-old India Spellman was arrested by Philadelphia police for the robbery of a woman with a gun and as the shooter in the robbery and murder of a second person. India and her co-defendant were taken to the police department for interrogation. Although she was a juvenile, her parents were kept from the interrogation room.

As the 17-year-old was alone with the police, a detective hit her in the face and screamed at her. He left the interrogation room and returned with a statement that Spellman signed after detectives refused to read her the content of the statement. The statement was a confession to being involved in both robberies.

Thirteen years later, a judge vacated Spellman's conviction. The trial — which featured a misidentification, a coerced confession and prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence — had been unconstitutional.

As science evolves, so does the reliability of forensic evidence. The gold standard pre-DNA was the human fingerprint. You may be surprised to learn that the uniqueness of a fingerprint is an assumption, not a well-studied idea.

According to Discover magazine, the "lack of a fundamental scientific basis for the supposed uniqueness of fingerprints — and the inability for apparent experts to reliably match them or even agree on what's required for a match — has seen some federal courts reject fingerprints entirely as evidence."

Even DNA has come under scrutiny. As collection of DNA at crime scenes has become more sophisticated, gathering minute biological samples has emerged as potential for folly. Finding someone's DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily mean they were ever at that location. Transfer DNA can spread to objects and places by way of other human carriers.

In one case, according to Discover magazine, a man's DNA was found on a murder victim who was killed in their home. The man whose DNA was found at the crime scene was in the hospital during the murder. The DNA had been transferred by a paramedic who brought the man to the hospital and who later responded to the 911 call made regarding the homicide.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social.

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Fingerprint evidence alone not enough to convict man of robbery

A man sent to prison for robbery successfully appealed his conviction, arguing that fingerprint evidence alone was not enough to prove that he committed the crime, reported The Legal Intelligencer.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit on Tuesday ruled in favor of defendant Jamar Travillion, who was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for robbery in 2006. While successful in overturning his robbery conviction, Travillion will remain incarcerated because of a separate sentence of life without parole for second-degree murder.

Travillion was accused of robbing the Rainbow Apparel store in Pittsburgh, according to Third Circuit Judge Luis Restrepo’s Dec. 15 opinion. The store’s owner, Deborah Diodati, testified that a man with a turtleneck around his face and a stocking covering his head forced his way into the store and demanded money. She obliged, handing over approximately $6,000 from the store’s safe. In the process of the robbery, the suspect dropped a manila folder containing papers he’d carried into the store.

A police investigation found Travillion’s fingerprints on the folder but nowhere else in the store, including an office door that Diodati said was torn from its hinges by the robber. Additionally, Diodati was unable to identify the suspect more specifically than noting his clothing, race and dialect.

Because of that, Restrepo said, the court concluded the evidence was insufficient to convict  Travillion of robbery.

“Evidence that Travillion’s fingerprints were found on the easily movable manila folder and a paper inside the folder carried into the store by the robber and a witness’ description of the robber that does not match Travillion but doesn’t necessarily exclude him is not sufficient evidence for a rational trier of fact to place Travillion at the scene of the crime at the time the crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt,” Restrepo said.

The judge added that the evidence did nothing to place Travillion at the store during the time of the robbery.

“There was no evidence that the folder and paper were unavailable to Travillion prior to the robbery, no evidence as to the age of the prints, and no evidence as to how long the prints could remain on the folder and paper after their impression,” Restrepo said.

He added, “In addition to the absence of evidence regarding when Travillion’s fingerprints on the easily movable folder and paper were impressed, there was a lack of sufficient additional incriminating evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, so as to allow a rational juror to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Although there is evidence that Travillion touched the folder at some indefinite time with his left hand, and there is evidence that the robber carried the folder at the time of the crime in his left hand, there is not sufficiently incriminating evidence that Travillion was the perpetrator holding the folder at the time of the crime.”

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Travillion’s attorney, Kimberly Brunson of the Federal Public Defender’s Office for Western Pennsylvania, said she thought the Third Circuit “got it right.”

“Mr. Travillion was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 20 years imprisonment without sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict,” Brunson said. “This decision is a victory for every citizen who stands accused of a crime because it affirms the prosecution’s duty to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt as to every element.”

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Some long accepted forensic evidence being denounced

Hundreds of people have been  convicted in whole or in part on forensic science that has come under fire during the past decade, reported The Associated Press.

Some of that science — analysis of bite marks, latent fingerprints, firearms identification, burn patterns in arson investigations, footwear patterns and tire treads — was once considered sound, but is now being denounced by some lawyers and scientists who say it has not been studied enough to prove its reliability and in some cases has led to wrongful convictions.

Even so, judges nationwide continue to admit such evidence regularly.

“Courts — unlike scientists — rely too heavily on precedent and not enough on the progress of science,” said Christopher Fabricant, director of strategic litigation for the Innocence Project. “At some point, we have to acknowledge that precedent has to be overruled by scientific reality.”

Defense lawyers and civil rights advocates say prosecutors and judges are slow to acknowledge that some forensic science methods are flawed because they are the very tools that have for decades helped win convictions. And such evidence can be persuasive for jurors, many of whom who have seen it used dramatically on “Law & Order” and “CSI.”

Rulings in the past year show judges are reluctant to rule against long-accepted evidence even when serious questions have been raised about its reliability:

— A judge in Pennsylvania ruled prosecutors can call an expert to testify about bite marks found on a murder victim’s body, despite 29 wrongful arrests and convictions nationwide attributed to unreliable bite mark evidence since 2000.

— A Connecticut judge allowed prosecutors to present evidence that a footprint was made by a specific shoe belonging to a man accused of murder, despite a 2016 finding by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology that such associations are “unsupported by any meaningful evidence or estimates of their accuracy.”

— In Chicago, a federal judge rejected a request to exclude testimony of government experts to describe firearm and tool-mark comparisons they performed on bullets collected at crime scenes in the trial of Hobos gang members. The judge reasoned that defense lawyers were free to cross-examine the government’s experts.

Two reports by scientific boards have sharply criticized the use of such forensic evidence, and universities that teach it are moving away from visual analysis — essentially, eyeballing it — and toward more precise biometric tools.

But some defense lawyers fear any progress on strengthening forensic science may be lost under President Donald Trump.

a serious problem.”

The National Registry of Exonerations at the University of California Irvine has documented more than 2,000 exonerations since 1989. Nearly one-fourth list “false or misleading forensic evidence” as a contributing factor.

And a report last fall from the President’s Council criticized several “feature-comparison” methods, which attempt to determine whether a sample from a crime scene is associated with a sample from a suspect by comparing patterns. The council said those methods — including analysis of shoeprints, tire tracks, latent fingerprints, firearms and spent ammunition — need more study to determine their reliability and error rates.

When the reliability of forensic evidence is challenged through DNA testing or other new evidence, it often results in the granting of a new trial, even if there is other strong evidence against a

 Science, an independent panel of scientists, researchers, judges and attorneys that had been studying how to improve the reliability of forensic practices.

Some forensic methods have been questioned by defense lawyers for years, but it wasn’t until 2009 that the National Academy of Sciences, a nonprofit consisting of some of the nation’s most distinguished researchers, released a report that found that with the exception of DNA, many methods had not been tested enough to be considered valid.

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Sessions dumps National Commission on Forensic Science

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions will not renew the National Commission on Forensic   Science (NCFS), according to a statement, reported Juris. The NCFS is a 30-member group of scientists, academics, law enforcement officials, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges originally commissioned in 2013 by the Department of Justice (DOJ) during President Obama's administration. 

The commission had responsibility for developing guidance concerning the intersections between forensic science and the courtroom and developing policy recommendations, including uniform codes for professional responsibility and requirements for training and certification. 

As the use of bite-mark analysis, hair and fiber sample analysis and even fingerprint analysis have been called into question, the NCFS was charged with standardizing national guidance for forensic science practitioners. Additionally, NCFS was to develop methods for forensic measurements and validate select existing forensic science standards.

The commission is set to expire April 23, and continued efforts to "advance forensic science and combat violent crime" will be handled by the Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a committee established by executive order under President Trump. Sessions commended the efforts of the NCFS in his statement.

As we decide how to move forward, we bear in mind that the Department is just one piece of the larger criminal justice system and that the vast majority of forensic science is practiced by state and local forensic laboratories and is used by state and local prosecutors. We applaud the professionalism of the National Commission on Forensic Science and look forward to building on the contributions it has made in this crucial field.

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GateHouse: Presidential council to reveal problems with forensic evidence

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

September 10, 2016

Prosecutors and law enforcement practitioners are bracing for bad news from The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). President Barack Obama formed PCAST in 2009 following the National Academy of Science’s report that concluded, aside from DNA, there was little, if any, meaningful scientific underpinning to many of the forensic disciplines.

According to The Intercept, which saw a yet to be released copy of the PCAST report, the council has concluded that forensic bite-mark evidence, among other findings, is not scientifically valid and is unlikely ever to be validated.

The report, titled “Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods,” is marked as a “predecisional” draft, suggesting the report will be made public sometime this month, reported The Intercept.

The report reviews a handful of common forensic practices, so called feature-comparison disciplines, or pattern-matching practices which involve an “expert” examining evidence and determining whether it matches a particular image, person or object.

PCAST is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers who report to the President and formulate policy in the many areas of science, technology, and innovation.

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences reported, “Forensic science research is not well supported, and there is no unified strategy for developing a forensic science research plan across federal agencies. Relative to other areas of science, the forensic disciplines have extremely limited opportunities for research funding.”

The FBI has begun to come to grasp with the ills of flawed forensic evidence. Last year the FBI admitted that, after reviewing 500 cases that employed microscopic hair analysis, examiner’s’ testimony contained erroneous statements in at least 90 percent of the cases.

Defendants in at least 32 of those cases received the death penalty, according to the FBI. Nine of those defendants have been executed, and five died of other causes while on death row.

The review is part of an ongoing, long-term investigation of decades of FBI microscopic hair analysis that the agency is conducting in partnership with the Department of Justice, the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The project launched in July 2013, and last year’s announcement covered the first 500 cases of an estimated 3,000 spanning from the 1970s up to 2000.

With regard to bite-mark analysis the record is little better. At least 24 individuals charged or convicted, of murder or rape, based at least in part on identifying bite marks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000, according to the Innocence Project. Many of those individuals spent time behind bars. A small group of dentists belonging to the American Society of Forensic Odontologists are responsible for the proliferation of bite-mark analysis. Those dentists’ findings are often key evidence in prosecutions — even though there is no scientific proof that teeth can be matched definitively to a bite into human skin. The FBI doesn’t use it, and the American Dental Association does not recognize it.

“Bite-mark evidence is the poster child for unreliable forensic science,” Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the New York-based Innocence Project told The Associated Press. According to the Washington Post, there are hundreds of people in prison due to bite-mark testimony, including at least 15 on death row.

Even fingerprint analysis — the gold standard of evidence — is under fire. Until recently the FBI described fingerprint identification as 100 percent infallible, that is no longer the case. “There’s going to be, I think, variability anytime there’s a human involved in the process,” FBI expert Melissa Gische told PBS’s Frontline.

There is even more evidence under scrutiny — shoe and tire tread prints, tool marks, ballistics and even bias in line-up and eyewitness identification. The PCAST report is only the first step in what promises to be a long journey through the criminal justice system.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010,” was recently released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him atmattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Judge Kozinski on fringerprint analysis

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski — has recently published an article in the Georgetown Law Journal providing 12 reasons we should worry about the criminal justice system. His former law clerk and blogger Eugene Volokh has serialized the article for the Washington Post.  Periodically, this is the second in a series of Judge Kozinski's concerns with the criminal justice system, through the analysis of Mr. Volokh.

I have shared similar concerns through this blog.  I will provide links to my commentary as well.
Fingerprint evidence is foolproof. Not so. Identifying prints that are taken by police using fingerprinting equipment and proper technique may be a relatively simple process, but latent prints left in the field are often smudged and incomplete, and the identification process becomes more art than science. When tested by rigorous scientific methods, fingerprint examiners turn out to have a significant error rate. [Footnote: “[F]orensic fingerprint identification almost never deals in whole fingerprints. Rather, technicians use ‘latent’ fingerprints — invisible impressions that they ‘develop’ using a powder or a chemical developing agent. Latent prints are usually fragmentary, blurred, overlapping, and otherwise distorted. The challenge is to match the latent print to a pristine inked (or, these days, optically scanned) print taken under ideal conditions at the police station.” [Citations omitted.] In United States v. Llera Piaza, 188 F. Supp. 2d 549, 564 (E.D. Pa. 2002), for example, Judge Louis Pollack rejected fingerprint identification expert testimony after concluding that the field of fingerprint identification has failed to systematically test its underlying assumptions and claims of expertise.]

Perhaps the best-known example of such an error occurred in 2004 when the FBI announced that a latent print found on a plastic bag near a Madrid terrorist bombing was “a 100 percent match” to Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield. The FBI eventually conceded error when Spanish investigators linked the print to someone else.

Here is a link to my take on fingerprint analysis in a blog at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette

Forensic evidence under the microscope, changing the way we look at expert analysis

High-profile examples of forensic evidence being less clear-cut than is typically portrayed on “C.S.I.” have littered the headlines in recent years, reported The Christian Science Monitor. Perhaps the most significant is last month’s admission by the FBI that, after reviewing 500 cases that employed microscopic hair analysis, examiners’ testimony contained erroneous statements in at least 90 percent of the cases.
Defendants in at least 32 of those cases received the death penalty, according to the FBI. Nine of those defendants already have been executed, and five died of other causes while on death row.
The review is part of an ongoing, long-term investigation of decades of FBI microscopic hair analysis the agency is conducting in partnership with the Department of Justice, the Innocence Project, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The project launched in July 2013, and last month’s announcement covered the first 500 cases of an estimated 3,000 spanning from the 1970s up to 2000.
Brandon Garrett, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said that forensic disciplines like microscopic hair analysis are, at the most, useful “as a tool to exclude” suspects, not a tool to specifically identify them. But they are rarely treated that way by forensic scientists.
“Analysts often seem to do something more ambitious – identify particular people – and that is more than many of these techniques can currently accomplish,” wrote Professor Garrett in an e-mail.
The subjective nature of forensic science has been public knowledge for some time. A report from the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 found that microscopic hair analysis – along with other juror-trusted forensic techniques like bite-mark, ballistics, and even fingerprint analysis – were unscientific in their methodology.
The trust juries put in forensic evidence is part of the problem, experts say.
Garrett published a study in 2009, which studied the trial transcripts of 156 innocent people convicted of serious crimes who were later exonerated by DNA evidence. The study found that 60 percent of the forensic analysts called by the prosecution provided invalid testimony, “with conclusions misstating empirical data or wholly unsupported by empirical data.”
The study noted “the adversarial [judicial] process largely failed to police this invalid testimony.” Defense attorneys rarely cross-examined these analysts, the study added, and rarely obtained experts of their own. Judges seldom provided relief.
Peter Neufeld, co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, says that it shouldn’t be the judge’s responsibility to provide the relief.
“The courts are the wrong place, the wrong venue to get it right,” says Mr. Neufeld, who was a co-author on Garrett’s 2009 study. “Defense lawyers, prosecutors, and even juries by and large, are scientifically illiterate.”
While many lawyers, judges, and juries may not be able to distinguish credible forensic testimony from the erroneous, the weight it can have over the ultimate verdict is immense.
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The Vindicator: Facial recognition technology easily accessable in Ohio

Matthew T. Mangino
The Youngstown Vindicator
September 7, 2014
A year ago, a Cincinnati Enquirer investigation revealed that Attorney General Mike DeWine launched a facial-recognition software program that tapped into Ohio’s database of driver’s license photographs.
DeWine did this without public input and without even bothering to tell Ohioans. In addition, he provided access to more than 25,000 individuals involved in law enforcement and the courts—the most liberal access to facial data in the U.S.
Facial-recognition technology is a cutting-edge biometric tool increasingly used by law-enforcement across the country and around the world. Though not yet as reliable as DNA or fingerprints, facial recognition can help determine a suspect’s identity through individual variations in irises, skin textures, vein patterns, palm prints and a person’s gait while walking, according to the Washington Post.
Just as fingerprints detect lines on your hand, facial recognition detects lines on your face, and then compares them against a database of photographs. Law- enforcement officials use it when they have a photograph of a suspect and need to make an identification.
‘Biometric technology’
“You can see very different appearances on the surface of a picture — from mustache to beards to glasses and moles — but this biometric technology has allowed us to match pictures with suspects, which helps police work immeasurably,” Tom Stickrath, superintendent of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation told WKYC-TV in Cleveland.
The pervasive use of facial recognition has triggered concerns. Such systems collect data on law abiding citizens from driver’s license and non-driver ID card databases. This data is collected without individuals knowing it and dumped into a database of millions of images.

According to the Enquirer investigation, 26 states and the District of Columbia allow law enforcement to use facial recognition systems—all having more limitations than Ohio. In Pennsylvania, access is limited to about 500 people. When Ohio’s program was launched, 165 members of Pennsylvania’s state police had access to Ohio’s law enforcement database and its facial recognition search.
Access
One in three officers authorized for access in Pennsylvania were also authorized for access in Ohio. According to the Enquirer, the Pennsylvania officers alone who had access in Ohio numbered more than the individuals who had access to systems in most other states.
Attorney General DeWine admitted that he should have told the public about the facial recognition system’s launch in June 2013. When some complained that liberal access to the data would spawn abuse, he said abuse would result in a felony charge and that would deter police from misusing the technology.
DeWine formed an advisory group to suggest security protocol changes that would ensure proper use of the new system. The group recommended limits on who can access the software, monitoring when it’s used and increased security to deter hackers.
Most of those recommendations have been put into place.
Last year, about 26,500 local law enforcement officials, court workers, and employees from other agencies had access to the software. As of May 31, 2014, that number had dropped to about 5,100 people — all law enforcement officials, according to Hackley.
Dividends
The software has paid some dividends. Akron police detectives used the facial recognition database to identify a suspect accused of murder.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was recently released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

Lawrence County one of worst in collecting fingerprints

Missing prints mean inaccurate criminal background checks
In 2013, 30,000 suspected criminals whose charges included sex crimes, assaults and murder were not fingerprinted by Pennsylvania police, according to state records, reported PublicSource.org.
State law requires that suspected offenders be fingerprinted within 48 hours of arrest.
So, if thousands of people aren’t getting fingerprinted, whose fault is it?
Luzerne, McKean, Lawrence and Northumberland counties are the four worst when it comes to fingerprinting, with police failing to fingerprint roughly 40 percent of the people they arrest, according to data compiled by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency and analyzed by PublicSource.
“It’s up to the police to do it. It’s a mandatory function. It’s not anybody else’s job but the arresting department,” said Eric Radnovich, director of the Bureau of Justice Services at the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office.
But police often pass the buck, relying on judges, jailers or even defendants themselves to be sure prints are made. In many cases, prints are made more than a year later, if they’re made at all.
The social cost of not fingerprinting those who are arrested is not small: Without a fingerprint, a defendant has no criminal history.
That means they can’t be tracked. Neither the court system nor other police departments have a record. Their background check would be clean if they wanted to teach or coach in a school or daycare or work in a nursing home. Their offenses wouldn’t be on record if they wanted to buy a gun.
“Just think about someone in your neighborhood who was arrested for a sex offense involving a child. It’s like the system is blind to him,” Mark Bergstrom, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, told PublicSource.
Lawrence Counties is missing 38.1 percent of cases from the last half of 2013. Prints were missing for hundreds of cases.  In nearby Beaver County only 1.9  percent of prints are missing.
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The Cautionary Instruction: FBI to review microscopic hair analysis

Matthew T. Mangino
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/ Ipso Facto
August 2, 2013

The Cautionary Instruction has periodically examined the fallibility of long accepted forms of scientific evidence used in criminal cases. This blog has explored fingerprint analysis,  bite mark identification and even eyewitness identification. Last month, the FBI announced that the agency will review thousands of old cases in which microscopic hair analysis helped secure convictions.

More than 2,000 cases processed from 1985 to 2000 will be re-examined, including some in which execution dates had been set.

The study will focus on whether analysts exaggerated the significance of their hair analyses or reported them inaccurately. Defendants will be notified and free DNA testing offered if errors are unearthed.

Three hundred and ten individuals have been exonerated through DNA evidence, according to an Innocence Project database, 72 were convicted in part because of microscopic hair evidence.

In addition, as many as 27 prisoners facing the death penalty may have been wrongfully convicted based on microscopic hair analysis.

It is not known how many of the cases involve errors, how many led to wrongful convictions or how many mistakes may now jeopardize valid convictions. Those questions will be explored as the review continues.

Since at least the 1970s, written FBI Laboratory reports typically stated that a hair association could not be used as positive identification. For years some agents went beyond the science and testified that their hair analysis was a near-certain match.

The new review listed examples of scientifically invalid testimony, including claiming to associate a hair with a single person “to the exclusion of all others,” or to state or suggest a probability for such a match from past casework.

FBI Special Agent Ann Todd says "there is no reason to believe the FBI Laboratory employed 'flawed' forensic techniques," adding that microscopic hair analysis is "a valid forensic technique and one that is still conducted at the lab" alongside DNA testing. Todd notes "the purpose of the review is to determine if FBI Laboratory examiner testimony and reports properly reflect the bounds of the underlying science."

“When there’s a problem, you have to face it, and you have to figure out how to fix it, move forward and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann.

Although the FBI continues to supports hair analysis, the accuracy of hair analysis is not clear. A 2009 National Academy of Sciences report found no good studies of the technique's error rates. The academy concluded that hair analysis has "limited probative value" and isn't able to pinpoint individual defendants.

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Supreme Court Takes up DNA Collection at Arrest

The Pennsylvania Law Weekly
March 12, 2013

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that challenges the constitutionality of collecting DNA samples from individuals charged with a crime.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. described the case of Maryland v. King, No. 12-207, as "perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this court has heard in decades."

Proponents of the law — and there are many — contend there is no difference between DNA testing and fingerprinting. Twenty-eight states and the federal government have enacted laws that provide for automatic DNA collection from people at the time of their arrest. All 50 states and the federal government collect DNA from convicted criminals.

Last year, the Pennsylvania General Assembly took up Senate Bill 775, which would have required DNA samples from individuals upon arrest for certain crimes.

The bill would have required law enforcement to obtain DNA samples as part of an arrest, similar to fingerprinting. The sample would be entered in Pennsylvania's DNA database, as well as the federal database. If the person were acquitted, the state would be required to remove the sample from its database.

Interestingly, although 49 states and the federal government joined with Maryland in advocating for the constitutionality of post-arrest DNA collection, the Pennsylvania State Police said, with consternation, that SB 775 would have an enormous impact on the state's DNA lab. The bill stalled in the state House of Representatives.

Collecting a DNA sample from an arrestee — often called a "DNA fingerprint" — provides a record of the number of times specific sequences of genetic material repeat themselves at 13 locations on the DNA molecule. That string of numbers, according to the United States' amicus brief, "is a powerful tool for identification because of the infinitesimal likelihood (less than one in 10 billion) that two individuals who are not identical twins will share the same number of copies of the same material at all 13 loci."

The FBI has a coordinated system of federal, state and local DNA databases known as CODIS — Combined DNA Index System. CODIS has more than 10 million DNA profiles.

The case before the Supreme Court grows out of the Maryland arrest of Alonzo King in 2009 on assault charges. Maryland had a state law that permitted police to collect King's DNA. The sample was submitted to CODIS.

Eventually King's DNA was found to match DNA recovered during an investigation of the rape of a 53-year-old woman. King was subsequently tried for the rape and sentenced to life in prison.

The conviction was overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals. The court ruled that authorizing DNA collection from people who have been arrested violated the Fourth Amendment.

In a surprising glimpse into the leanings of the court, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said to Maryland Chief Deputy Attorney General Katherine Winfree, after she touted the successful prosecutions in her state that flowed from post-arrest DNA collections, "Well, that's really good. I'll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you'd get more convictions, too."

King's lawyer, Kannon K. Shanmugam, told the justices there's a "legitimate expectation of privacy" in the contents of an individual's DNA.

"An individual's DNA contains far more information and far more personal information than an individual's fingerprints," Shanmugam said.

He went on to argue, "The better view is that fingerprinting is not a search, and to the extent that this court has addressed the question it has suggested that fingerprinting is not a search because an individual has no expectation of privacy in their fingerprints because their fingers are constantly exposed."

Some are concerned that after collecting DNA, the government might choose to profile a suspect's entire genome, looking for a predisposition to violence that could be used to deny a person bail or increase the length of a sentence.

That is not so farfetched. The New York Times recently reported that researchers intend to study the DNA of the Newtown, Conn., school shooter, Adam Lanza. According to the Times, scientists "could look at all of Mr. Lanza's genes, searching for something unusual like gene duplications or deletions or unexpected mutations ... in an extended search for aberrations that could determine which genes are active and how active they are."

Some scientists are skeptical.

"It is almost inconceivable that there is a common genetic factor" to be found in mass murderers, Dr. Robert C. Green, a geneticist and neurologist at Harvard Medical School, told the Times. "I think it says more about us that we wish there was something like this. We wish there was an explanation."

Shanmugam noted during his argument, as described by National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, that a complete DNA analysis can reveal a "treasure trove" of information about an individual's medical and personal history. Allowing the state to have access to the information, without a warrant or some individualized suspicion, he argued, is like loading an information gun to invade people's privacy.

Should we protect criminals who leave their DNA at a crime scene under the premise that authorities may someday use their DNA for more than matching, maybe even profiling the accused for future dangerousness?

Future dangerousness is already considered in a number of settings. Pennsylvania's sentencing guidelines, as they currently exist, are a crude form of risk assessment — prior record is the best indicator of future criminal conduct. Counties use risk assessments for bail determinations; the parole board uses risk assessment to make parole decisions.

Pennsylvania will soon incorporate risk assessment into the sentence guidelines. Forecasting future dangerousness has already found a place in the criminal justice system.

Scalia's left-leaning concerns aside, it appears that a national consensus exists in favor of DNA collection at the time of arrest. For, as Alito noted, "This is what is at stake: Lots of murders, lots of rapes that can be solved using this new technology that involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy." 

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Texas considers review of discredited evidence

In Texas lawmakers are backing a renewed push to streamline the appeals process for those who were convicted based on science that has since been discredited.

Senate Bill 344 would establish a statute expressly allowing Texas courts to overturn convictions in cases where the forensic science that originally led to the verdict has changed. There a companion bill filed in the Texas House.

Though the proposal has failed twice before, several recent Court of Criminal Appeals decisions may make it more likely to pass, and that prosecutors who have opposed it in the past should come around.

Currently, people convicted of a crime in Texas can submit a writ of habeas corpus to the Court of Criminal Appeals, in which they ask for a new trial based on evidence that was not available when they were originally convicted. If the science used to convict them has changed, there is no special guideline allowing the court to grant them a new trial, and the judges often disagree about whether to do so.

The advent of more reliable scientific evidence like DNA has exposed or helped discredit long accepted forms of evidence.  Some of the newly discredited evidence includes arson analysis, bite marks, handwriting, toolmarks, hair & fiber even fingerprint analysis.

To read more:
http://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/04/criminal-justice-advocates-renew-call-flawed-scien/

The Cautionary Instruction: Bias seeps into fingerprint analysis

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Ipso Facto
April 27, 2012

Last fall, I wrote a series of blogs on the Report of the Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions issued by the Pennsylvania Joint State Government Commission. One portion of the report suggested that cognitive bias in a suspect line-up or photo array could be reduced by implementing some simple procedures.

There is an abundance of research that suggests eyewitness identification can be influenced by things that are said or done during the identification process. Most eyewitnesses are untrained civilians who may be for the first time encountering the criminal justice system.

However, we are learning that even highly trained professionals can be influenced by what they know about a case prior to their analysis of evidence.

Fingerprint analysis had been considered the gold standard of evidence. Until recently the FBI described fingerprint identification as 100 percent infallible, that is no longer the case. “There’s going to be, I think, variability anytime there’s a human involved in the process,” FBI expert Melissa Gische told PBS’s Frontline.

What do we know about fingerprints? Impressions of fingerprints are left behind on various surfaces by the natural secretions of sweat. The friction ridges, the raised portion of the epidermis on fingers consisting of one or more connected ridges, are often the point of comparison.

First, an intentional recording of the fingerprint is made with black ink on a white card or recorded digitally. These are often collected after arrest and kept in a database. At a crime scene a “latent print,” the chance recording of a fingerprint deposited on a surface, is captured through chemical methods and brought into a lab for expert analysis.

Fingerprint identification came under scrutiny in 2004. The FBI publicly acknowledged the fingerprint misidentification of an Oregon lawyer wrongfully implicated in a terrorist bombing in Madrid.

Since then, the Department of Justice has begun research to set standards for the analysis of fingerprints. As part of that process, the FBI has implemented “blind verification” of analysis by agents unfamiliar with initial examinations.

Through a study conducted in 2004, cognitive neuro-scientist Itiel Dror found that otherwise competent and well-meaning experts were swayed by what they knew about a case submitted for analysis. Dror’s study demonstrated that if an analyst new that the suspect confessed or was arrested, the analyst’s findings could be influenced. Cognitive bias seeped into the process even with the best trained experts. 

The solution may be similar to those suggested for eyewitness identification. Bias can be muted by “blind” line-ups or arrays, where the police officer administering the line-up does not know the suspect. For forensic evidence, a blind analysis where the analyst knows nothing about the case, a step further than the FBI’s blind verification, may equally reduce bias.

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Maryland court says no to DNA collection

Maryland's highest court blocked police in most cases from collecting DNA samples when they arrest suspects in violent crimes and burglaries.  The collection of DNA in Maryland is similar to what is done in nearly every state with regard to fingerprints.

The Court of Appeals ruled 5-2 that the state violated Alonzo Jay King Jr.'s constitutional rights by using DNA evidence taken from him after a 2009 assault arrest, reported the Baltimore Sun. That sample led to his conviction in a six-year-old rape case, but the court said it violated King's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches without a warrant. The judges ordered that King's rape case be sent back to Wicomico County Circuit Court for a new trial.

Governor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, told the Sun he was saddened by the court's decision, noting that it came during Victims' Rights Month. The governor said the law was one of the state's most valuable crime-fighting tools and that he has not ruled out an appeal to the Supreme Court.

"The concept is simple: When we increase the library of DNA samples in our state, we solve more crimes," O'Malley said in a statement, reported by the Sun. "We take more criminals off the streets more quickly and put them in jail for a longer period of time so that they cannot murder, rape or harm other citizens among us."

The state has collected nearly 16,000 DNA samples since the law took effect in January 2009 and used that evidence to gain 58 convictions, including in 34 burglaries and eight rapes. The court did not address whether the state could retain the samples on file.

To read more: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-04-24/news/bs-md-court-ruling-dna-20120424_1_dna-collection-dna-samples-violent-crimes-and-burglaries

Fingerprint analysis under scrutiny

Fingerprint evidence is a staple of the American criminal justice system. The analysis of fingerprints evidence is being questioned. While fingerprint analysis is one of the most valuable and frequently applied investigative tools, its accuracy has not been scientifically defined, according to the Washington Post.

FBI examiners claimed until recently that they can match fingerprints to the exclusion of any other person in the world with 100 percent certainty using a method with an error rate essentially of zero. The academy report found that assertion was “not scientifically plausible” and had chilled research into error rates.

In 1999, a Justice Department official, Richard Rau, told a federal court that the department delayed such a study because of the legal ramifications. As recently as last year, Pennsylvania State University researcher Cedric Neumann was denied a department grant to determine potential fingerprint error rates using closed cases, repored the Post.

A person familiar with the episode blamed a polarized climate in the adversarial legal system, saying, “Few agencies in the forensic-science community want to be the first ones associated with an error rate.” The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive federal research funding decisions.

Meanwhile, errors occur. In 2004, DNA for the first time exonerated a person convicted with a fingerprint match and, separately, the FBI made its first publicly acknowledged fingerprint misidentification. Brandon Mayfield, a Portland, Ore., lawyer, mistakenly was arrested in connection with the terrorist train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people. The FBI apologized.

Since then, the Justice Department has begun research to try to quantify how complete a fingerprint must be to properly declare a match; how different conditions may affect the reliability of examinations; whether computers can do such work; and how to present forensic testimony about probabilities to judges and juries. The FBI has also required “blind verification” of results by agents unfamiliar with initial examinations, reported the Post.

The bureau said that skilled analysts are extraordinarily accurate, at least when they know they are being tested. An FBI study with Noblis Corp. last year found that when 169 examiners compared thousands of fingerprints and decided there was enough information to declare a match or not, they were correct 99.8 percent of the time.

Still, the Mayfield case highlighted the need for research into real-world conditions. A 2006 study by a London-based scientist, Itiel E. Dror, asked experts to analyze fingerprints that, unbeknownst to them, they had analyzed earlier in their careers. This time, however, examiners were given biasing statements, such as that a suspect had confessed or that a suspect was locked up at the time of the offense. In 16.6 percent of cases, examiners reversed earlier judgments, reported the Post.

To read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/forensic-techniques-are-subject-to-human-bias-lack-standards-panel-found/2012/04/17/gIQADCoMPT_print.html

Long Accepted Evidence Being Challenged in Court

Fingerprints, Eye Witnesses and Arson Investigations all Subject to Scrutiny

A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer explores the potential problems with evidence used in criminal trials. The article explores several forms of evidence including eye witness testimony, fingerprints and arson investigation techniques.

According to the Inquirer, the legal challenges around the country are an outgrowth of the revolutionary impact of DNA testing, which has freed 267 prisoners nationwide, including 10 in Pennsylvania and five in New Jersey.

Eyewitness testimony was a factor in the convictions of 75 percent of those exonerated through DNA testing, according to the New York-based Innocence Project. Faulty forensic evidence contributed to 50 percent of the convictions. The project said that 25 percent of the defendants later found innocent had confessed or pleaded guilty, and that jailhouse informants were a factor in 15 percent of the overturned cases, reported the Inquirer.

The Inquirer suggested that eye witness evidence, always thought to be the gold standard of evidence, can be influenced by the race of the alleged offender and witness, use of weapons, time elapse between offense and testimony and trauma. The article laments that Pennsylvania does not permit the challenge of an eye witness by expert testimony.

Fingerprints long accepted as conclusive evidence of guilt are being challenged.In a recent Philadelphia case an attorney cited 21 cases of mistaken identifications by print examiners since 1990, including a Delaware County murder case in which a defendant, jailed for two years, was freed after a panel of experts agreed that his fingerprint was not at the crime scene, reported the Inquirer.

Arson investigations are another area of concern. A National Academy of Sciences report found serious deficiencies in how fire investigators decide whether a fire had been intentionally set. In Texas, Cameron Willingham was convicted of murder and executed for the deaths of his three young children as the result of an arson.

Willingham's case gained national attention in 2009 when an article in The New Yorker examined the arson investigation through experts and demonstrated that, contrary to the claims of the prosecution, there was no evidence that the house fire was intentionally set.

Pennsylvania convened a wrongful conviction committee which is expected to proposed that all confessions obtained by police be video taped, police departments implement a new lineup procedure and that the state create a forensic board to set standards for evidence analysis in Pennsylvania.

To read more: http://articles.philly.com/2011-03-21/news/29171675_1_dna-testing-wrongful-convictions-validity/4