by TChris

It's time for fingerprint experts across the country to start sweating. Until now, jurors have been accustomed to thinking that any testimony given by a fingerprint expert is unassailable. Defense lawyers may find jurors more receptive to attacks on the accuracy of fingerprint identifications after the FBI called the connection between a partial print and Brandon Mayfield "absolutely incontrovertible" and a "bingo match."

[W]hen three top experts manage to blow such an important identification, our longstanding faith in fingerprints must be questioned. Nor is this the only such mistake to come to light in recent months. In January a Massachusetts conviction was overturned when the fingerprint identification, the cornerstone of the case, was shown to be erroneous.

Fingerprint evidence has always depended more on faith than science.

We lack good evidence about how often examiners make mistakes, nor is there a consensus about how to determine what counts as a match. Our current approach to fingerprint evidence, in which experts claim 100 percent confidence in any match, is dangerously flawed and risks causing miscarriages of justice.

Full confidence is impossible to achieve, but it sure sounds good in court. It's time for judges to start questioning the nearly automatic admissibility of fingerprint evidence, as one judge tried to do before changing his mind.

More TalkLeft coverage of fingerprint issues here.