By Dave Workman
Remember the name Brandon Mayfield. He’s the Portland, Oregon attorney who was wrongly jailed earlier this spring because of a faulty FBI analysis of fingerprints found at the scene of a terrorist bombing in Madrid, Spain.
That he was freed after spending weeks in jail – maintaining his innocence all along, while it seemed like the FBI and Justice Department had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the point of admitting a mistake had been made – clearly demonstrated why so many in the firearms community are skeptical of the way some people want to use “fingerprints” to identify crime guns.
I’m not talking about latent fingerprints, the kind that the FBI misread even after Spanish authorities rejected them as belonging to Mayfield. This isn’t even about bogus DNA evidence that has come back to haunt the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety over the past couple of years. DNA testing is supposed to be even more reliable than fingerprinting, but shoddy testing in cases involving federal or state crime labs has raised doubts about hundreds of cases.
This is about so-called “ballistic fingerprints” which were heralded in the wake of the Beltway Sniper killings as the newest panacea for gun crime. The correct technical term is “ballistic imaging,” but even experts with California’s Department of Justice and Belgium’s National Institute for Forensic Science maintain that current technology is, at best, unreliable.
Mayfield, a Muslim convert, was jailed on the basis of an FBI analysis of a fingerprint, a technology that has been around – and relied upon in courts of law – for generations.
Ballistic “fingerprinting” is a relatively new technology that needs a lot of work. Yet the usual choir of do-gooders in the gun control movement quickly embraced this questionable science and made it a buzz term for days on the networks. At least two states now require it for all handguns sold in their jurisdictions, even though the technology has not helped solve a single crime in either state.
The problem is that, unlike fingerprints and DNA, which do not change, a firearm’s ballistic “fingerprint” will definitely change over the service life of the gun. You don’t even have to change a firing pin, scratch a barrel, or add a file stroke to a bolt or breech face to alter the ballistic image. A test of 790 handguns in which more than 2,000 rounds were fired resulted in a 38 percent failure rate even when ammunition of the same type and brand was compared. The failure rate climbed to 62 percent when ammunition was switched.
Currently, the FBI is combing the nation for a specific pistol, with a particular type of barrel, in its effort to solve the October 2001 murder of assistant federal prosecutor Thomas Wales in Seattle. Wales was the outspoken, sometimes shrill, president of Washington CeaseFire, an anti-gun lobbying organization. The killer used a gun chambered for a European cartridge, but used the wrong ammunition. Ballistics experts told me – while I was researching the story about this search that was first reported in Gun Week last year – that it would be virtually impossible to get a ballistics match on the murder weapon, if it even still exists.
After the Mayfield blunder, is it any wonder why owners of handguns similar to the one used in the Wales killing might be concerned about providing their pistols for ballistics testing to the FBI? If crime lab technicians can’t be relied upon to accurately read a latent print without cutting corners, and jailing an innocent man as a result, how can they be trusted to not take shortcuts on so-called “ballistic fingerprint” tests, and possibly lock up an innocent gun owner?
Wary shooters have every right to be suspicious, if not justifiably paranoid, about surrendering their firearms for ballistic imaging, the results of which would be entered into a database. This is especially true for people who own the same kind of gun, with the same kind of barrel, used in the Wales slaying.
Was Brandon Mayfield’s case an anomaly? It certainly is a signal flare. If an agency of the FBI’s caliber can get it wrong with a genuine fingerprint, how can anyone be expected to get it right with something as questionable as a “ballistic fingerprint?”
FAQs
Even though fingerprints are commonly used as tools in the investigation of crimes by law enforcement, the identification of a person through fingerprint analysis is not completely reliable, and the use of fingerprints without any other forms of corroborating evidence may result in wrongful convictions.
Are fingerprints accepted as evidence in US courts? ›
The only limitation [the Supreme Court] has imposed on the admissibility of fingerprint comparisons to prove the identity of the perpetrator of a crime is a requirement that the testimony be given by an expert in fingerprint identification.
Are fingerprints enough forensic evidence for conviction? ›
While fingerprints might not have the evidentiary strength of DNA evidence, they are still used in criminal cases. Fingerprints are generally considered to be reliable, and juries understand what they mean. Every person has a series of ridges on their fingers that are ostensibly theirs and no one else's.
How accurate is fingerprint recognition? ›
As noted above, fingerprint scans are accurate at least 98% of the time at worst, with ideal outcomes topping out around 99.91% accuracy.
What is the error rate for fingerprinting? ›
During the past decade, several studies have been conducted to estimate the false positive error rate (FPR) associated with latent fingerprint examination. The so-called Black-box study by Ulery et al. is regularly used to support the claim that the FPR in fingerprint examination is reasonably low (0.1%).
Why are fingerprints sometimes unreliable evidence? ›
Fingerprint examiners lack objective standards for evaluating whether two prints “match.” There is simply no uniform approach to deciding what counts as a sufficient basis for making an identification.
What are the limitations of using fingerprints as evidence? ›
If a particular surface or item is collected/packaged improperly, any latent prints may be destroyed. The print may be found but not contain a sufficient amount of information to be useful. For example, it could be a partial print, a smeared print, or from a part of the hand for which a known print is not available.
How infallible are fingerprints? ›
Crime shows like Dateline or NCIS portray fingerprint analysis as an exact science. There's a print found, and if it is matched to a suspect, there is no doubt about its accuracy. The U.S. judicial system also treats fingerprint identification with the same absolute certainty.
What is the most common mistake in fingerprinting? ›
Two important types of errors are false positive errors and false negative errors. A false positive error occurs when an examiner concludes that two prints share a common source when, in fact, they do not.
What type of information cannot be obtained from a fingerprint? ›
For example, there's no scientific way to determine when a latent print was first deposited on a surface. Under the right conditions, prints can survive indefinitely. And it is not possible to determine sex, age or race from a print unless traces of DNA were left behind as well.
Environmental factors such as dirt, grease, or moisture can affect the quality of fingerprints and make them difficult to read. Fingerprints can change over time due to factors such as aging, injury, or disease, which can make it difficult to match them accurately to previous records.
Should fingerprint evidence be admissible in court? ›
The courts did engage with the limitations of the discipline of fingerprint analysis more so than they had in the past, but in the end concluded that the evidence should be admitted because there is an “implicit history of testing,” where experts do not themselves describe making errors—except in rare cases—and any ...
Why don't criminals just wear gloves? ›
Offenders who wear gloves tend to use their hands and fingers very freely, and thus, because their gloves give them a false sense of protection, leave easily distinguishable glove prints on the surfaces they handle.
What percent of crimes are solved by fingerprints? ›
Although an estimated 35 percent of crime scenes yield usable fingerprint evidence, cold searches are rarely conducted.
How accurate is device fingerprinting? ›
The fingerprints uniquely identified 74% of desktop versus 45% of mobile users. Furthermore, 10% of devices the researchers observed multiple times changed their fingerprints between observations. This data demonstrates that using device fingerprinting to identify a device doesn't guarantee accurate results.
Is fingerprint authentication accurate? ›
Despite its risks—all technologies come with risks—biometric authentication is still widely considered by experts to be one of the most accurate and secure methods of authenticating user identity because of its high level of accuracy.
What are the disadvantages of fingerprint evidence? ›
If a particular surface or item is collected/packaged improperly, any latent prints may be destroyed. The print may be found but not contain a sufficient amount of information to be useful. For example, it could be a partial print, a smeared print, or from a part of the hand for which a known print is not available.
How effective is fingerprint in security? ›
Biometrics are among the strongest identification methods available due to their uniqueness. No two individuals, not even identical twins, have the exact same identifiers – be it fingerprints, irises, voice scans or faceprints.
