Fingerprints: Infallible Evidence?

[dArKeR]

 For as long as anyone can remember, fingerprint evidence has been accepted as foolproof. Even today, in the age of DNA, fingerprint evidence still plays a leading role in solving crimes.

Juries believe if you’ve got a match, you’ve got your man - and sometimes just the mention of fingerprint evidence is enough to get a defendant to confess or a defense attorney to cut a deal.

But, as Correspondent Lesley Stahl reported last January, if fingerprint evidence is that definitive, what happened to Rick Jackson should never have happened.


When the police in Upper Darby, Pa., arrested Rick Jackson, they told him they had solid evidence that he had committed a gruesome murder - his friend's murder.

They said they had his bloody fingerprints, and showed Jackson Polaroids of what they said were his fingerprints.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/16/60minutes/main563607.shtml


http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker

[Wonk]

1. quicktime

44 M

[Aaron]

2. Ty wonk! and ty OP too!

This stuff always concerned me. I'd heard about 4 point mathces and the like where they don't match the print, just some points on it - that there is no real standard. Now I can watch the video and learn :)

[shatoga]

3. Reasons for doubt

1st:
You have a tech whose job depends on helping cops get the guy they want to get.
2nd:
He is under pressure to "prove via print ID" the theory of the cops in charge.
3rd:
He can lift prints at the crime scene,
or in the jail,
and testify/testilie
that prints obtained in the jail were from the crime scene.

Why would he lie?
His continued employment as an "expert" depends on making his employers happy.

Fingering the guilty is easy.
Fingering the innocent is like overtime pay.
Just a bonus that guarantees steady work.

& favors returned from grateful cops (who also know they've framed an innocent)
may include a "get out of jail free" pass on future homocide.
Framing a drug dealer for murder gets a 'bad guy' off the street.
Right?

It also lets a cop or prosecutor or 'expert witness' get away with murder.

Up to one third of people behind bars in amerika have been convicted on police perjury or planted evidence.

Every time they put the wrong guy behind bars.
they let the guilty person walk free.

Why could a cop or prosecutor knowingly imprison an innocent and let the murderer walk free?

Re read the above to understand.


It's just a big streetgang with badges in all too many communities.



I've personally known two innocents convicted by police perjury and planted evidence.
James Treadaway spent half a dozen years on death row before a cop got religion and told the truth.
(that cops took pubic hairs from his laundry hamper and planted them in evidence bags from two homocides/ to convict a pot dealer of rape and murder)

IMHO
The real murderer carried a badge, and still does.

[shatoga]

4. CA's Zodiac killer had no prints unless he wanted to

the Zodiac,
who would walk up to people sitting in cars of in parks and shoot them without warning.
Put model airplane cement on his fingertips to give a blank instead of a print.
He also knew how to press victims' fingers into RTV (obtainable at any auto supply or hardware) and make copies of their prints.

Thus he could leave prints belonging to other people at crime scenes.

How do I know?

He bragged in letters to police and newspapers.

Who withheld comment on print shennaigans from the public.

[jmm]

5. I had a friend in high school who was briefly suspected

of robbing a liquor store. The police insisted her prints were found on a wet 40 ounce bottle of beer someone pretended to purchase before pulling out a gun and robbing a liquor store. Of course she volunteering at her church when it happened and the clerk, witnesses, and surveillance video all showed that the perpetrator was about 10 years old, a foot taller, and the opposite gender. When she immigrated to the US here fingerprints were taken and came up as a possible match on a computer search. The police questioned her about four different times before dropping the issue. Even then they gave her the big finger prints never lie and we still think you're involved somehow speech.

Too many people let their pride get in the way and refuse to admit that their first notion might not be correct so they're more willing to accept weak proof as long as they look good.