October 16, 2023 • 35 mins
Contrary to what pop culture has ingrained in the American conscience, matching known fingerprints of a suspect to prints left at the scene of a crime is not an exact science. It’s entirely subjective.
So how did fingerprints become so widely accepted and thought of as the gold standard, as fool proof evidence?
Josh Dubin discusses Fingerprint Evidence with Mary Moriarty, former Chief Public Defender of Hennepin County in Minnesota.
Kate Judson, Executive Director of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, updates Josh Dubin's Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science.
To learn more and get involved, please visit:
https://cifsjustice.org/donate/
https://www.maryforhennepin.com/meet-mary
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/junk-science
Wrongful Conviction: Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. The episode you're about to
hear is about fingerprint evidence, a type of evidence we've
(00:24):
been taught to believe is super reliable through things like
TV crime dramas. But like all the forensics we explore
in this series, the truth is more complicated than that.
One of the biggest issues is that of close non matches, which,
as it sounds, is when two prints are very similar
to each other but in fact did not come from
(00:44):
the same person. A twenty twenty article by J. Kohler
of Northwestern University reported that there was up to a
twenty eight percent air rate of false positives for close
non matches, not exactly a foolproof way to pre of
guilt or innocence, and definitely not beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's Friday night. You hop in the shower, then put
on your favorite blue button down shirt. You look at
yourself in the mirror and hype yourself up a bit.
You're forty years old, but you've taken good care of
yourself over the years and still look pretty damn good.
You head out, and when you get to the club,
(01:30):
you see your friend Alvin standing outside on the corner
waiting for you. You smile because Alvin's always a good time.
He might be the only person who can keep up
with you when you dance all night. You both head
inside and grab a drink, catch up a little bit,
and then hit the dance floor. The place is all
bass and flashing lights. Neither one of you stops moving
(01:54):
until they turn off the music, and the DJ tells
everyone it's closing time. Time to get at it. When
you get outside the club, you say goodbye to Alvin
because you have to get up early in the morning.
You're not going to go back to his place tonight.
You give Alvin a call the next weekend, but there's
no answer. You don't think much of it because Alvin
(02:16):
sometimes just doesn't answer his phone. He's the kind of
guy that does his own thing. But then a few
days later you get a call from another friend. He
tells you he passed by Alvin's house and there were
police officers surrounding it. They said that Alvin had been murdered.
(02:37):
You hang up and immediately head to the police station.
You want to help figure out who did this. You
meet with detectives and you find out that Alvin was
murdered on the night you went dancing with him, but
he wasn't discovered until nine days later. His landlord found
him on the floor of his apartment. And you hear
(02:58):
all this, and you're just immediately as if you had
stayed at his house that night, maybe you could have
protected him. You tell the police everything you can remember
about that night. You want to do anything you can
to help them find out who did this to your friend.
(03:18):
The police call you in four times over the next
two weeks as they investigate Alvin's murder. One day, they
tell you they're taking fingerprints of everyone who had been
around Alvin in the days preceding his death. They tell
you that by allowing them to take your prints, it'll
help them figure out who committed the murder. Part of
you feels like you're in an episode of some detective show.
(03:41):
When they press the tips of your fingers and the
palms of your hands on a cold inkpad, then roll
the tips of your fingers one by one on a
piece of paper. You've seen this process what seems like
hundreds of times before on TV and in the movies,
but you've never actually done it yourself. You have no record.
I've never been fingerprinted before. Not long after that, the
(04:04):
police call you into the station one more time, but
something has shifted. They bring you into an interrogation room.
The first thing they do is show you a polaroid
of Alvin's body. You immediately feel fluid bubble into your
esophagus and you quickly scan the room for a garbage can.
(04:27):
Your mind quickly computes shit. If ipw in front of
these cops, they'll think I did this. You manage to
swallow the vomit and there's a sharp burn in your throat.
Then they show you another picture and Alvin is flat
on his back. There's blood everywhere, on his clothes, the
(04:47):
carpet next to him. You can't even see his face.
Whoever did this put Alvin's big white box fan over
his head and shoulders so you can't see the top
portion of his body. You used to make fun of
Alvin for that fan, and you were always telling him
just to invest in a damn ac unit already the
whole thing seems so surreal. And now the officers are
(05:09):
pointing at the fan in the picture and they say,
you see those bloody smudges on the fan, Those are
fingerprints and the prince we took from you the other day.
We've collected over a dozen fingerprints of people who were
in Alvin's apartment before he was murdered, and only yours
matched the prints on that fan. There were no signs
(05:30):
of break in at his apartment, but you didn't have
to break in, did you. Alvin let you in after
your night out together. Then you got in an argument
with him, You got jealous that he was dancing with
other men, and you stabbed him to death, didn't you.
You stare at the officer and disbelieve.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
You say, what are you talking about? Why would I
come here willingly to help you guys out if I
had anything to do with this. They don't listen to
a word you say. They put handcuffs on you and
put you in custody. At your trial, the prosecution calls
(06:10):
a fingerprint expert to the stand. He says, before we're
even born as fetuses in the womb, human beings develop
ridges on their fingers and hands. In addition to those ridges,
we have glands that secrete oils, so that when we
touch objects the worlds loops and swirl pattern of those
(06:30):
ridges are left behind. Fingerprint analysis has been around for
over one hundred years, and we know that each of
our fingerprints are unique. The fingerprints were covered from this
crime scene were visible to the naked eye because they
were left as impressions in the victim's blood. I analyze
these prints and compare them to defining characteristics of the
(06:54):
defendants prints. The bloody prints found near the victim's body
clearly belong to the defendant. I am one hundred percent
certain about this. The prosecution calls two more fingerprint experts
to the stand, and they all agree these are your prints.
But your attorney calls two witnesses to the stan fingerprint
(07:17):
experts that claim it isn't even close. There's no way
these prints belong to you. The jury isn't phased by
the conflicting opinions of the expert witnesses. They are convinced
by the impassioned story that the prosecutor laid out. They
convict you of first degree murder and abuse of a corpse.
(07:37):
Your sentenced to life without parole. There are shouting in
the courtroom as you're escorted out by cops with your
hands cuffed tightly behind your back. You can't understand why
this is happening, What is going on? Those are not
your fingerprints. You feel totally and completely helpless. But for you,
(08:01):
this isn't the end. The fingerprint experts that testified in
your defense call this conviction a gross miscarriage of justice.
They demand that the evidence be reevaluated. A panel of
experts do just that and find that the prosecution's evaluation
was clearly wrong. The prints at the crime scene clearly
(08:22):
do not match your fingerprints. One of the experts for
the prosecution admits he made a mistake. You're afforded a
new trial and you are found not guilty. But this
process takes two agonizing years, and after serving that amount
of time in prison for a crime you never committed,
(08:43):
the murder of your friend, you're released. The story you
just heard is based on the true story of Richard Jackson,
who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life without parole
for the murderer of his friend Alvin Davis nineteen ninety eight.
While fingerprint analysis has been proven to be purely subjective,
(09:06):
it still holds a firm place in the public imagination
and therefore enjures minds as reliable science. I'm Josh Dubin,
civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an Innocent ambassador to
the Innocence Project in New York. Today, on Wrongful Conviction
junk Science, we examined fingerprint evidence. Contrary to what pop
(09:30):
culture has ingrained in the American conscience, Matching known prints
of a suspect the prince left at the scene of
a crime is not an exact science. It is entirely subjective,
up to the eye of the examiner. So how did
fingerprints become so widely accepted and thought of as the
gold standard as full proof evidence. It turns out that
(09:55):
the first time fingerprints were admitted into evidence was almost
one hundred and ten years ago, and the methods used
to match prints to individuals hasn't changed much since.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode
of wrongful conviction, with Jason Flahm and of the Last
Mile organization, which provides business and tech training to help
incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce. The
Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of Hoosiers
across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily to helping young people
(10:35):
and students. For more information on the work of the
Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program, visit Pacersfoundation dot
org or the Lastmile dot org.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
As Clarence Hiller painted the railing outside his home in
the early evening of September eighteenth, nineteen, he couldn't stop
looking over his shoulder. It seemed like the entire South
Side of Chicago was on edge. There had been a
number of robberies in the area, and everyone was worried
that they could be the next victim, and so in
(11:14):
the middle of that night, when Clarence heard the screams
of his wife and daughter, he was prepared to launch
into action. He confronted the stranger in his house, and
as Clarence tried to force the man out, both the
robber and Clarence fell down the stairs. Three shots were fired,
the intruder fled, and his neighbors came outside and their
slippers and robes to see what had happened. They found
(11:37):
Clarence bleeding just outside his front door with his daughter
standing over him. The police were called and a suspect,
Thomas Jennings, was found just eight blocks away. His coat
was torn and bloody, and he was carrying a revolver.
Thomas Jennings was ultimately convicted, but this wasn't the only
evidence used in his prosecution. When Thomas Jennings climbed it
(11:59):
to the Hiller's home that night, he grabbed onto the
railing that Clearance was painting the night before, leaving a
fingerprint behind in a semi wet coat of paint. The
prosecution cut off the piece of the rail with the
fingerprint that Jennings left behind. At his murder trial, jennings
defense attorney argued that this new forensic method of lifting
(12:20):
and comparing fingerprints couldn't be trusted. There were no tests
that could prove that it was reliable. But then the
prosecutor got in front of the jury and pressed his
finger onto a piece of paper. He then demonstrated how
he was able to lift his own print off of it.
By proving that he could collect the evidence, he was
able to convince the jury that it was also possible
(12:41):
to accurately analyze and match it to a suspect. The
judge ruled that fingerprint testimony was admissible, and Jennings was convicted.
The precedent of admitting fingerprints has been upheld again and again,
despite the fact that numerous men and women have been
falsely identified through fingerprint evidence. For example, on March eleventh,
(13:03):
two thousand and four, there were a series of explosions
in Madrid during rush hour. Ten bombs went off, all
within two minutes of each other. One hundred and ninety
three people died and almost two thousand were injured. Upon investigation,
Spanish authorities found a fingerprint on one of the plastic
bags that contained a detonator. They photographed it, then reached
(13:25):
out to countries around the world to help find the
culprits of the attack. The US authorities ran the print
through a database of fingerprints, twenty possible matches appeared. One
of them was Brandon Mayfield. But Brandon Mayfield hadn't left
the country in ten years. He didn't even have a
valid passport. FBI analysts had no idea how Mayfield would
(13:46):
have been able to fly to Spain and back completely undetected,
and yet they pursued him as a suspect. It turns
out that Brandon had converted to Islam after marrying his
Egyptian wife, and so American authorities must have seen him
as a convenient suspect just a few years after nine
to eleven. In fact, despite evidence that showed that it
(14:07):
was extremely unlikely that Brandon had left the prince on
that bag, three different FBI agents testified that the prince
found in Spain matched Mayfields. They said that it matched
with one hundred percent certainty. They arrested Mayfield, and while
he sat in jail, the FBI tried to convince the
Spanish authorities that these prints were Mayfields, but the Spanish
(14:29):
police didn't see what the FBI saw. The prince didn't
seem to match it all, from their perspective, a far
cry from a match with one hundred percent certainty. They
said that when they compared Mayfield's prince to the ones
on the bag, it was quote conclusively negative. They eventually
did find a match for the fingerprints and apprehended the
(14:50):
man who left them behind during the attack. The FBI
admitted that they made a mistake in pursuing Mayfield and
let him walk free. Mayfield is now probably the best
known case of mistaken fingerprints but he certainly isn't the
only one.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And we probably can guess if the Spanish police hadn't
been involved, or if they didn't have DNA. If you
can imagine this case in the United States, mister Mayfield
would have been convicted. How would his defense lawyer have
attacked three FBI agents with all of this experience, who
claimed with one hundred percent certainty that this print belonged
to mister Mayfield. But here's the point here. You could
(15:33):
assume that three fingerprint examiners with decades of experience who
were certified, followed the process and they were all wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Joining us today is Mary Moriarty, the chief public Defender
of Hennepin County in Minnesota, and I'm really excited to
have her as a guest. She is a staunch defender
of the rights of the accused, and an outspoken one
at that, and we need more public defenders like that
in our country. She has worked to challenge the admission
(16:05):
of fingerprints. So, Mary, tell us a little bit about
how you first became interested in fingerprints.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
So it goes back to when I was a child. Actually,
if you notice, my last name is Moriarty, and I
had a particular interest in Sherlock Holmes, and I got
for Christmas one year the Hardy Boys book that talked
about how to collect evidence, and one of the things
I had in there was a recipe for fingerprint powder,
(16:35):
and so I would go take my parents' glasses, wineglasses,
that kind of thing, and I would dust them for prints.
I would put tape over it, and I would lift
the print. But I never really thought, well, what do
you do after that? It was just an interesting exercise
in taking items that I knew my parents had touched
and actually trying to lift the prints from them.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Well, I think I was like screw and around with
a Rubik's cube and playing with Gi Joe figures. So
this makes me feel a little bit insecure about what
I was doing as a kid. But it certainly sounds
like you were headed towards a career involving forensics in
the law.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
For a while, my father was actually a public defender,
and some of my dad's clients were actually my classmates,
and I got to know them as individuals. There's an
attempt to otherwise people who become public defender clients, and
the age old question that public defenders get asked is
(17:34):
how can you represent those people? And it's very easy
because those people are our brothers, our dads, our sisters,
our cousins. And you look at what those clients have
been through, and so many of them have a history
of trauma, you can understand why they find themselves in
these particular situations. And I think growing up my parents
(17:56):
fostered a really strong sense of justice in my life.
In every situation, they would sit me down and say,
you know, what is the right thing to do here?
So fast forward when I went to law school. Once
I finally made that decision, I knew that there was
only one thing that I wanted to be and that
was a public defender. I wanted to be in a
(18:17):
courtroom representing the same people that I got to know
through my father's practice.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
All right, so you became an attorney and got a
chance to right some of the wrongs that you saw
of the system. But what were your thoughts about fingerprints
when you first started out?
Speaker 4 (18:44):
I have to acknowledge. So I've been a public defender
for thirty years, and I certainly had fingerprint cases, and
I also accepted without questioning that they were based on
science and that an expert could actually testify that a
single finger made this print from the crime scene. And
(19:05):
fingerprints have been accepted as evidence in courts for over
one hundred years, and people assume that it's reliable.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So this is something that always fascinated me. I don't
even know when it was that I began to believe this,
but even I had come to the belief that fingerprints
were sort of the gold standard, And that seems to
be sort of a consistent, you know, collective thought in
the American psyche that fingerprints are regarded as being just
really reliable. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
They're in popular culture. We've all grown up being given
a certain perspective on what fingerprints are. When I started
getting an interest in fingerprints, I would say to people
outside the legal system, my friends, I would say, you know,
when you think about how a fingerprint from a crime
scene is compared to the known print of somebody, what
(19:57):
does that look like in your mind? We'll always say, well,
I envision the crime scene print on a screen right
next to the known fingerprint, and then I see a
computer merging them and bells going off, going ding ding ding.
It matches, And that makes sense. It makes sense that
people would think that. When I tell people that that's
(20:19):
not at all what happens, they are shocked. Lay people
hear that there are these databases, and they tend to
think that everybody's fingerprints are in it. And so I
think what people believe is that, Okay, you get a
fingerprint off a gun and you put it in a
database and the computer comes up with the match and
(20:39):
that's it. So that's not true at all. So of
course we're all entrenched in popular culture. We've been told
for many many years fingerprints are fantastic, and you know,
why would anybody take the time to actually look to
see what they do?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So tell us a little bit about what they actually do.
Practically speaking, how does it actually work? What af fingerprint
examiners look at.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
The way fingerprint examiners actually look at fingerprints is through
what they call a methodology called ACEV. So it's a
c slash V, which is analysis, comparison, evaluation and verification.
So here's a description of what they actually do. Let's
(21:27):
say a person is shot with a gun. They will
lift and by lift, I mean they'll look for a
fingerprint on that gun and then they will try to
remove that fingerprint so that they can compare it. So
the A part is analysis. They are supposed to look
(21:48):
at that fingerprint to see whether there is enough detail
in it to go any further. People have seen these
pictures of somebody rolling their finger over ad of ink,
and that's how you get the print. That's not what
happens when people touch objects. You get a fragment, and
(22:08):
sometimes it's smeared, and sometimes there's dust on it, sometimes
there's oil. There are a lot of different factors. And
so here's the deal. It's not that you're comparing a
fully rolled fingerprint to a fully rolled fingerprint. You are
first looking at a fragment of the print, and it
is totally within the subjectivity, the subjective discretion of a
(22:30):
fingerprint analysis or examiner to decide whether there is enough
information on that print to even go ahead and compare it.
So just think about.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
That, right, That's kind of scary because it's up to
the judgment call of one analyst on that particular day,
and I'm quite sure that another analyst looking at the
same portion of a print might come up with the
opposite conclusion. So it turns out that the A in ACV,
(23:01):
the very first step is problematic and pretty flawed. So
the next letter is the C for comparison, where you're
taking a print left at a crime scene and comparing
it to a suspects print. So tell us a little
bit about what that process.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Entails, Mary, So, once you make the decision to go forward,
then you are onto the C or comparison, and you're
comparing the fully rolled print to the fragment of a print. So, Josh,
you might look and compare those two fingerprints and say,
you know, I see enough here. I see twelve points
(23:38):
of comparison. That's enough for me to say that this
is the same person. I might look at it and say, oh,
I see five points of comparison. I think that's enough
to declare that it's a match. So, once again, it
is completely subjective.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right, and saying, well, sometimes we think ten points that
look the same between a rolled print and a fragment
of a print are enough similarities to declare match, and
sometimes we think five is enough. And that just doesn't
seem scientific, it doesn't seem very reliable. And so, Mary,
something we've been addressing a lot on this podcast is
(24:21):
the two thousand and nine NAS report. Tell us a
little bit about what the NAS report said about fingerprints.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
The National Academy of Science is the most prestigious scientific
body in the United States and they advise Congress on
issues of science, medicine, pretty much anything you can think
of when it comes to sciences, and the National Academy
of Science was asked to examine the comparative forensic sciences.
(24:53):
It was a groundbreaking report and it was very in depth.
They took testimony, the elicited research, and it rocked the
forensic science community. One of the things that you realize
when you look at the report, if you are a scientist,
you know that there are certain tenets of science, like
you have to be able to replicate the process. When
(25:16):
a scientist does an experiment, they document what they do.
And the National Academy of Science was very clear that
fingerprint examiners, as well as any other comparative forensic examiners,
do not provide documentation. And I found this to be true.
You would order, you would ask for a fingerprint examiner's file,
(25:36):
and you wouldn't really see many notes. You wouldn't know
what they were actually looking at. You might have a
picture of a fingerprint with some circles on it, but
you wouldn't know what they were looking at, so there
was no way to replicate the process that they actually used.
There was no basis for saying that it came from
the same source. And most of the people who did fingerprints,
(26:00):
and probably still do in some places, are not scientists.
They are not recruited because of their scientific background. They
are often police officers who were apprenticed into this position
because the police officer who examined the print was going
to retire. And then there's the evaluation where you're actually
making the decision about whether this comes from the same source,
(26:22):
and there's a lot of controversy there. Fingerprint examiners used
to come in and say that they had one hundred
percent certainty, they were one hundred percent certain that this
print from the crime scene came from this particular client,
and there was no basis for that. In fact, that's
not even allowed anymore. And why is there no basis
(26:44):
for it? You would have to have population statistics, right,
I mean, that's what DNA has. That's why they come
up with these numbers. It's one in a million that
it came from this person. There are no population statistics
regarding fingerprints.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Okay, So we're seeing that there are a lot of
flaws with both analyzing and comparing prints, the A and
the C and ACE that neither of these steps are
actually rooted in the scientific methods. And now we're onto E, right, Ace.
So the E is evaluation where they decide if it's
a match or not. And so it seems that if
(27:30):
analyzing and comparing the prints aren't scientifically proven to work,
the evaluation of those prints and deciding whether or not
it's a match can't be done to any degree of
certainty either. That just seems like common sense. So this
is purely subjective. But there's one last letter in these
steps that examiners follow, and that's the V for verification. Right,
(27:54):
it's ACE V. And I'm already skeptical because the first
three steps of the process or flawed, So how could
the results be verified?
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Imagine this, A fingerprint examiner would decide that this fragment
of a print came from this particular person, and then
they would hand it off to another fingerprint examiner for verification.
But the issue was it was never blind. So, Josh,
let's say you and I were fingerprint examiners in the
same office, and I would make a decision about a print,
(28:25):
and then I would ask you to verify what I
had done. And the problem with that is you already
knew what I had done. It wasn't blind. In science,
they do blind verification, so that the person who's actually
attempting to verify or replicate what the first person did
it doesn't know what the result was actually, So the
(28:47):
fact that the verification wasn't blind led to what people
call confirmation bias, which is a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
All right. So once the NAS basically said that the
ACV process is really a recipe for wrongful convictions, this
should have been an explosion in the criminal justice system
in the courts, and it just wasn't. And that's, I guess,
a different issue altogether. We have to keep pushing in
that regard. But you are still trying to push and
(29:17):
challenge the admissibility of fingerprints in the criminal justice system,
and I have to tell you, it just seems like
it must be so difficult, Mary, because this is not
like any kind of scientific analysis. But it just feels
to me that everyone believes fingerprint evidence works. It's so
(29:38):
ingrained in pop culture, and just like the intrinsic belief
that people have that we've grown up with. So tell
me what are some of the problems you've run into
when trying to call and question this so called science.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
When you're in court litigating this, you're absolutely right. That
is one of the things you hear from prosecutors and
you hear from judges. Of course, this is reliable. It's
been coming into court for decades and decades, and nobody
has ever challenged it before. So that is a big
hurdle to get over, much more so than other things
like bite marks, blood spatter and that sort of thing.
(30:17):
The court system always lags behind science, and it was
an uphill climb to convince judges and prosecutors that there
were problems with fingerprints, or if you could convince them
that there were problems, you certainly couldn't convince them that
they should exclude that evidence. In fact, judges and I
(30:38):
heard this quite a bit, it's like, well, you know,
let's just let the jury decide. But then you get
back to the problem of jurors thinking that fingerprints are
you know, they've been with us forever. They're embedded in
popular culture, and you have to get over all of
that history to convince durers that there are indeed issues. Essentially,
the presumption is that prints are are infallible. In a
(31:02):
case where your client is supposed to be presumed innocent
and the prosecution or the government has to prove their
case beyond reasonable doubt, a significant piece of evidence is
presumed to be infallible, and you have a lot of
work to do to try to educate them that that's
not the case.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Right, because it turns out that judges are really no
different than jurors. I mean, in some instances they're more sophisticated,
not always. They certainly have less time and frankly sometimes
less patience, but they're sort of not immune to the
impact of pop culture and precedent. But look, some people
(31:40):
may be listening to this and thinking, I don't have
a law degree, but I want to help. I want
to do something about this. So do you have any
ideas for what our listeners can do to help I do?
Speaker 4 (31:52):
And I wanted to go back, just for a moment
to talk about precedent because where I went in my
mind are our core saying that actual innocence of a
client on death row doesn't matter because procedure was followed.
So that should alert your listeners, how how much courts
(32:12):
adhere to precedent and are deferential to previous findings to
the point where they would authorize that somebody received the
death penalty because the process was followed. Anyone in the
public wants the law enforcement, the system to get things right.
And the only way we can get things right is
(32:35):
if we understand the limitations of these forensic sciences. So
people can be writing letters, calling their prosecutors, their policymakers,
county commissioners, city council members. What are you doing to
make sure that police officers, that crime lab examiners understand
this information? And that would be really helpful because people
(32:58):
really do listen more or to constituents and people in
the public than they do potentially defense lawyers.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You know, I've said this before, and I really do
think it bears repeating. Pressure breaks pipes. What you all
can do, as listeners of this podcast is take action.
You're on here because you want to learn something, but
you also want to do something about it. The way
that we stop this junk signs from making it into
(33:29):
our courts is to shine a bright light on it.
Google the NAS report that we've continually talked about during
this season. That report details how so many of these
disciplines of forensic science, including fingerprints, are really problematic. The
problem is judges don't know about it. Find out who
(33:51):
your local criminal court judges are and send them the
NAS report. Highlight the section on fingerprint analysis and send
to your local criminal court judges. It's only by educating
our judges and speaking truth to power that we can
really make change happen. And if you don't think that
your voice matters, just take a look around the country
(34:12):
right now. It's the collective voice that is causing change
to happen, and we can do it one step at
a time in our criminal justice system. Thank you for
listening to Wrongful Conviction Junk Science. We're going to be
(34:33):
taking a little break, but our next episode will be
out on October seventh. In the meantime, we will be
keeping a critical and close eye on our criminal justice system.
We would love to hear how you're doing that along
with us, So please leave us a comment and let
us know what you've been up to, and stay on
the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed As Jason Flamm will continue
(34:55):
to release episodes between now and October seventh. Wrongful Conviction
Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our
executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company
Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara
(35:17):
Kornhaber and Britz Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Josh, follow
the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hey, folks, Kate Judson here. I'm a lawyer and the
executive director of the Center for Integrity and Forensic Sciences.
We're back with another episode of Junk Science, a series
we first released in twenty twenty, but these stories are
just as relevant as ever. The episode you're about to
hear is about fingerprint evidence, a type of evidence we've
(00:24):
been taught to believe is super reliable through things like
TV crime dramas. But like all the forensics we explore
in this series, the truth is more complicated than that.
One of the biggest issues is that of close non matches, which,
as it sounds, is when two prints are very similar
to each other but in fact did not come from
(00:44):
the same person. A twenty twenty article by J. Kohler
of Northwestern University reported that there was up to a
twenty eight percent air rate of false positives for close
non matches, not exactly a foolproof way to pre of
guilt or innocence, and definitely not beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It's Friday night. You hop in the shower, then put
on your favorite blue button down shirt. You look at
yourself in the mirror and hype yourself up a bit.
You're forty years old, but you've taken good care of
yourself over the years and still look pretty damn good.
You head out, and when you get to the club,
(01:30):
you see your friend Alvin standing outside on the corner
waiting for you. You smile because Alvin's always a good time.
He might be the only person who can keep up
with you when you dance all night. You both head
inside and grab a drink, catch up a little bit,
and then hit the dance floor. The place is all
bass and flashing lights. Neither one of you stops moving
(01:54):
until they turn off the music, and the DJ tells
everyone it's closing time. Time to get at it. When
you get outside the club, you say goodbye to Alvin
because you have to get up early in the morning.
You're not going to go back to his place tonight.
You give Alvin a call the next weekend, but there's
no answer. You don't think much of it because Alvin
(02:16):
sometimes just doesn't answer his phone. He's the kind of
guy that does his own thing. But then a few
days later you get a call from another friend. He
tells you he passed by Alvin's house and there were
police officers surrounding it. They said that Alvin had been murdered.
(02:37):
You hang up and immediately head to the police station.
You want to help figure out who did this. You
meet with detectives and you find out that Alvin was
murdered on the night you went dancing with him, but
he wasn't discovered until nine days later. His landlord found
him on the floor of his apartment. And you hear
(02:58):
all this, and you're just immediately as if you had
stayed at his house that night, maybe you could have
protected him. You tell the police everything you can remember
about that night. You want to do anything you can
to help them find out who did this to your friend.
(03:18):
The police call you in four times over the next
two weeks as they investigate Alvin's murder. One day, they
tell you they're taking fingerprints of everyone who had been
around Alvin in the days preceding his death. They tell
you that by allowing them to take your prints, it'll
help them figure out who committed the murder. Part of
you feels like you're in an episode of some detective show.
(03:41):
When they press the tips of your fingers and the
palms of your hands on a cold inkpad, then roll
the tips of your fingers one by one on a
piece of paper. You've seen this process what seems like
hundreds of times before on TV and in the movies,
but you've never actually done it yourself. You have no record.
I've never been fingerprinted before. Not long after that, the
(04:04):
police call you into the station one more time, but
something has shifted. They bring you into an interrogation room.
The first thing they do is show you a polaroid
of Alvin's body. You immediately feel fluid bubble into your
esophagus and you quickly scan the room for a garbage can.
(04:27):
Your mind quickly computes shit. If ipw in front of
these cops, they'll think I did this. You manage to
swallow the vomit and there's a sharp burn in your throat.
Then they show you another picture and Alvin is flat
on his back. There's blood everywhere, on his clothes, the
(04:47):
carpet next to him. You can't even see his face.
Whoever did this put Alvin's big white box fan over
his head and shoulders so you can't see the top
portion of his body. You used to make fun of
Alvin for that fan, and you were always telling him
just to invest in a damn ac unit already the
whole thing seems so surreal. And now the officers are
(05:09):
pointing at the fan in the picture and they say,
you see those bloody smudges on the fan, Those are
fingerprints and the prince we took from you the other day.
We've collected over a dozen fingerprints of people who were
in Alvin's apartment before he was murdered, and only yours
matched the prints on that fan. There were no signs
(05:30):
of break in at his apartment, but you didn't have
to break in, did you. Alvin let you in after
your night out together. Then you got in an argument
with him, You got jealous that he was dancing with
other men, and you stabbed him to death, didn't you.
You stare at the officer and disbelieve.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
No.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
You say, what are you talking about? Why would I
come here willingly to help you guys out if I
had anything to do with this. They don't listen to
a word you say. They put handcuffs on you and
put you in custody. At your trial, the prosecution calls
(06:10):
a fingerprint expert to the stand. He says, before we're
even born as fetuses in the womb, human beings develop
ridges on their fingers and hands. In addition to those ridges,
we have glands that secrete oils, so that when we
touch objects the worlds loops and swirl pattern of those
(06:30):
ridges are left behind. Fingerprint analysis has been around for
over one hundred years, and we know that each of
our fingerprints are unique. The fingerprints were covered from this
crime scene were visible to the naked eye because they
were left as impressions in the victim's blood. I analyze
these prints and compare them to defining characteristics of the
(06:54):
defendants prints. The bloody prints found near the victim's body
clearly belong to the defendant. I am one hundred percent
certain about this. The prosecution calls two more fingerprint experts
to the stand, and they all agree these are your prints.
But your attorney calls two witnesses to the stan fingerprint
(07:17):
experts that claim it isn't even close. There's no way
these prints belong to you. The jury isn't phased by
the conflicting opinions of the expert witnesses. They are convinced
by the impassioned story that the prosecutor laid out. They
convict you of first degree murder and abuse of a corpse.
(07:37):
Your sentenced to life without parole. There are shouting in
the courtroom as you're escorted out by cops with your
hands cuffed tightly behind your back. You can't understand why
this is happening, What is going on? Those are not
your fingerprints. You feel totally and completely helpless. But for you,
(08:01):
this isn't the end. The fingerprint experts that testified in
your defense call this conviction a gross miscarriage of justice.
They demand that the evidence be reevaluated. A panel of
experts do just that and find that the prosecution's evaluation
was clearly wrong. The prints at the crime scene clearly
(08:22):
do not match your fingerprints. One of the experts for
the prosecution admits he made a mistake. You're afforded a
new trial and you are found not guilty. But this
process takes two agonizing years, and after serving that amount
of time in prison for a crime you never committed,
(08:43):
the murder of your friend, you're released. The story you
just heard is based on the true story of Richard Jackson,
who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life without parole
for the murderer of his friend Alvin Davis nineteen ninety eight.
While fingerprint analysis has been proven to be purely subjective,
(09:06):
it still holds a firm place in the public imagination
and therefore enjures minds as reliable science. I'm Josh Dubin,
civil rights and criminal defense attorney, an Innocent ambassador to
the Innocence Project in New York. Today, on Wrongful Conviction
junk Science, we examined fingerprint evidence. Contrary to what pop
(09:30):
culture has ingrained in the American conscience, Matching known prints
of a suspect the prince left at the scene of
a crime is not an exact science. It is entirely subjective,
up to the eye of the examiner. So how did
fingerprints become so widely accepted and thought of as the
gold standard as full proof evidence. It turns out that
(09:55):
the first time fingerprints were admitted into evidence was almost
one hundred and ten years ago, and the methods used
to match prints to individuals hasn't changed much since.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode
of wrongful conviction, with Jason Flahm and of the Last
Mile organization, which provides business and tech training to help
incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce. The
Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of Hoosiers
across Indiana, supporting organizations dedicated primarily to helping young people
(10:35):
and students. For more information on the work of the
Pacers Foundation or the Last Mile Program, visit Pacersfoundation dot
org or the Lastmile dot org.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
As Clarence Hiller painted the railing outside his home in
the early evening of September eighteenth, nineteen, he couldn't stop
looking over his shoulder. It seemed like the entire South
Side of Chicago was on edge. There had been a
number of robberies in the area, and everyone was worried
that they could be the next victim, and so in
(11:14):
the middle of that night, when Clarence heard the screams
of his wife and daughter, he was prepared to launch
into action. He confronted the stranger in his house, and
as Clarence tried to force the man out, both the
robber and Clarence fell down the stairs. Three shots were fired,
the intruder fled, and his neighbors came outside and their
slippers and robes to see what had happened. They found
(11:37):
Clarence bleeding just outside his front door with his daughter
standing over him. The police were called and a suspect,
Thomas Jennings, was found just eight blocks away. His coat
was torn and bloody, and he was carrying a revolver.
Thomas Jennings was ultimately convicted, but this wasn't the only
evidence used in his prosecution. When Thomas Jennings climbed it
(11:59):
to the Hiller's home that night, he grabbed onto the
railing that Clearance was painting the night before, leaving a
fingerprint behind in a semi wet coat of paint. The
prosecution cut off the piece of the rail with the
fingerprint that Jennings left behind. At his murder trial, jennings
defense attorney argued that this new forensic method of lifting
(12:20):
and comparing fingerprints couldn't be trusted. There were no tests
that could prove that it was reliable. But then the
prosecutor got in front of the jury and pressed his
finger onto a piece of paper. He then demonstrated how
he was able to lift his own print off of it.
By proving that he could collect the evidence, he was
able to convince the jury that it was also possible
(12:41):
to accurately analyze and match it to a suspect. The
judge ruled that fingerprint testimony was admissible, and Jennings was convicted.
The precedent of admitting fingerprints has been upheld again and again,
despite the fact that numerous men and women have been
falsely identified through fingerprint evidence. For example, on March eleventh,
(13:03):
two thousand and four, there were a series of explosions
in Madrid during rush hour. Ten bombs went off, all
within two minutes of each other. One hundred and ninety
three people died and almost two thousand were injured. Upon investigation,
Spanish authorities found a fingerprint on one of the plastic
bags that contained a detonator. They photographed it, then reached
(13:25):
out to countries around the world to help find the
culprits of the attack. The US authorities ran the print
through a database of fingerprints, twenty possible matches appeared. One
of them was Brandon Mayfield. But Brandon Mayfield hadn't left
the country in ten years. He didn't even have a
valid passport. FBI analysts had no idea how Mayfield would
(13:46):
have been able to fly to Spain and back completely undetected,
and yet they pursued him as a suspect. It turns
out that Brandon had converted to Islam after marrying his
Egyptian wife, and so American authorities must have seen him
as a convenient suspect just a few years after nine
to eleven. In fact, despite evidence that showed that it
(14:07):
was extremely unlikely that Brandon had left the prince on
that bag, three different FBI agents testified that the prince
found in Spain matched Mayfields. They said that it matched
with one hundred percent certainty. They arrested Mayfield, and while
he sat in jail, the FBI tried to convince the
Spanish authorities that these prints were Mayfields, but the Spanish
(14:29):
police didn't see what the FBI saw. The prince didn't
seem to match it all, from their perspective, a far
cry from a match with one hundred percent certainty. They
said that when they compared Mayfield's prince to the ones
on the bag, it was quote conclusively negative. They eventually
did find a match for the fingerprints and apprehended the
(14:50):
man who left them behind during the attack. The FBI
admitted that they made a mistake in pursuing Mayfield and
let him walk free. Mayfield is now probably the best
known case of mistaken fingerprints but he certainly isn't the
only one.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
And we probably can guess if the Spanish police hadn't
been involved, or if they didn't have DNA. If you
can imagine this case in the United States, mister Mayfield
would have been convicted. How would his defense lawyer have
attacked three FBI agents with all of this experience, who
claimed with one hundred percent certainty that this print belonged
to mister Mayfield. But here's the point here. You could
(15:33):
assume that three fingerprint examiners with decades of experience who
were certified, followed the process and they were all wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Joining us today is Mary Moriarty, the chief public Defender
of Hennepin County in Minnesota, and I'm really excited to
have her as a guest. She is a staunch defender
of the rights of the accused, and an outspoken one
at that, and we need more public defenders like that
in our country. She has worked to challenge the admission
(16:05):
of fingerprints. So, Mary, tell us a little bit about
how you first became interested in fingerprints.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
So it goes back to when I was a child. Actually,
if you notice, my last name is Moriarty, and I
had a particular interest in Sherlock Holmes, and I got
for Christmas one year the Hardy Boys book that talked
about how to collect evidence, and one of the things
I had in there was a recipe for fingerprint powder,
(16:35):
and so I would go take my parents' glasses, wineglasses,
that kind of thing, and I would dust them for prints.
I would put tape over it, and I would lift
the print. But I never really thought, well, what do
you do after that? It was just an interesting exercise
in taking items that I knew my parents had touched
and actually trying to lift the prints from them.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Well, I think I was like screw and around with
a Rubik's cube and playing with Gi Joe figures. So
this makes me feel a little bit insecure about what
I was doing as a kid. But it certainly sounds
like you were headed towards a career involving forensics in
the law.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
For a while, my father was actually a public defender,
and some of my dad's clients were actually my classmates,
and I got to know them as individuals. There's an
attempt to otherwise people who become public defender clients, and
the age old question that public defenders get asked is
(17:34):
how can you represent those people? And it's very easy
because those people are our brothers, our dads, our sisters,
our cousins. And you look at what those clients have
been through, and so many of them have a history
of trauma, you can understand why they find themselves in
these particular situations. And I think growing up my parents
(17:56):
fostered a really strong sense of justice in my life.
In every situation, they would sit me down and say,
you know, what is the right thing to do here?
So fast forward when I went to law school. Once
I finally made that decision, I knew that there was
only one thing that I wanted to be and that
was a public defender. I wanted to be in a
(18:17):
courtroom representing the same people that I got to know
through my father's practice.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
All right, so you became an attorney and got a
chance to right some of the wrongs that you saw
of the system. But what were your thoughts about fingerprints
when you first started out?
Speaker 4 (18:44):
I have to acknowledge. So I've been a public defender
for thirty years, and I certainly had fingerprint cases, and
I also accepted without questioning that they were based on
science and that an expert could actually testify that a
single finger made this print from the crime scene. And
(19:05):
fingerprints have been accepted as evidence in courts for over
one hundred years, and people assume that it's reliable.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So this is something that always fascinated me. I don't
even know when it was that I began to believe this,
but even I had come to the belief that fingerprints
were sort of the gold standard, And that seems to
be sort of a consistent, you know, collective thought in
the American psyche that fingerprints are regarded as being just
really reliable. Why do you think that is?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
They're in popular culture. We've all grown up being given
a certain perspective on what fingerprints are. When I started
getting an interest in fingerprints, I would say to people
outside the legal system, my friends, I would say, you know,
when you think about how a fingerprint from a crime
scene is compared to the known print of somebody, what
(19:57):
does that look like in your mind? We'll always say, well,
I envision the crime scene print on a screen right
next to the known fingerprint, and then I see a
computer merging them and bells going off, going ding ding ding.
It matches, And that makes sense. It makes sense that
people would think that. When I tell people that that's
(20:19):
not at all what happens, they are shocked. Lay people
hear that there are these databases, and they tend to
think that everybody's fingerprints are in it. And so I
think what people believe is that, Okay, you get a
fingerprint off a gun and you put it in a
database and the computer comes up with the match and
(20:39):
that's it. So that's not true at all. So of
course we're all entrenched in popular culture. We've been told
for many many years fingerprints are fantastic, and you know,
why would anybody take the time to actually look to
see what they do?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So tell us a little bit about what they actually do.
Practically speaking, how does it actually work? What af fingerprint
examiners look at.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
The way fingerprint examiners actually look at fingerprints is through
what they call a methodology called ACEV. So it's a
c slash V, which is analysis, comparison, evaluation and verification.
So here's a description of what they actually do. Let's
(21:27):
say a person is shot with a gun. They will
lift and by lift, I mean they'll look for a
fingerprint on that gun and then they will try to
remove that fingerprint so that they can compare it. So
the A part is analysis. They are supposed to look
(21:48):
at that fingerprint to see whether there is enough detail
in it to go any further. People have seen these
pictures of somebody rolling their finger over ad of ink,
and that's how you get the print. That's not what
happens when people touch objects. You get a fragment, and
(22:08):
sometimes it's smeared, and sometimes there's dust on it, sometimes
there's oil. There are a lot of different factors. And
so here's the deal. It's not that you're comparing a
fully rolled fingerprint to a fully rolled fingerprint. You are
first looking at a fragment of the print, and it
is totally within the subjectivity, the subjective discretion of a
(22:30):
fingerprint analysis or examiner to decide whether there is enough
information on that print to even go ahead and compare it.
So just think about.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
That, right, That's kind of scary because it's up to
the judgment call of one analyst on that particular day,
and I'm quite sure that another analyst looking at the
same portion of a print might come up with the
opposite conclusion. So it turns out that the A in ACV,
(23:01):
the very first step is problematic and pretty flawed. So
the next letter is the C for comparison, where you're
taking a print left at a crime scene and comparing
it to a suspects print. So tell us a little
bit about what that process.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
Entails, Mary, So, once you make the decision to go forward,
then you are onto the C or comparison, and you're
comparing the fully rolled print to the fragment of a print. So, Josh,
you might look and compare those two fingerprints and say,
you know, I see enough here. I see twelve points
(23:38):
of comparison. That's enough for me to say that this
is the same person. I might look at it and say, oh,
I see five points of comparison. I think that's enough
to declare that it's a match. So, once again, it
is completely subjective.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right, and saying, well, sometimes we think ten points that
look the same between a rolled print and a fragment
of a print are enough similarities to declare match, and
sometimes we think five is enough. And that just doesn't
seem scientific, it doesn't seem very reliable. And so, Mary,
something we've been addressing a lot on this podcast is
(24:21):
the two thousand and nine NAS report. Tell us a
little bit about what the NAS report said about fingerprints.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
The National Academy of Science is the most prestigious scientific
body in the United States and they advise Congress on
issues of science, medicine, pretty much anything you can think
of when it comes to sciences, and the National Academy
of Science was asked to examine the comparative forensic sciences.
(24:53):
It was a groundbreaking report and it was very in depth.
They took testimony, the elicited research, and it rocked the
forensic science community. One of the things that you realize
when you look at the report, if you are a scientist,
you know that there are certain tenets of science, like
you have to be able to replicate the process. When
(25:16):
a scientist does an experiment, they document what they do.
And the National Academy of Science was very clear that
fingerprint examiners, as well as any other comparative forensic examiners,
do not provide documentation. And I found this to be true.
You would order, you would ask for a fingerprint examiner's file,
(25:36):
and you wouldn't really see many notes. You wouldn't know
what they were actually looking at. You might have a
picture of a fingerprint with some circles on it, but
you wouldn't know what they were looking at, so there
was no way to replicate the process that they actually used.
There was no basis for saying that it came from
the same source. And most of the people who did fingerprints,
(26:00):
and probably still do in some places, are not scientists.
They are not recruited because of their scientific background. They
are often police officers who were apprenticed into this position
because the police officer who examined the print was going
to retire. And then there's the evaluation where you're actually
making the decision about whether this comes from the same source,
(26:22):
and there's a lot of controversy there. Fingerprint examiners used
to come in and say that they had one hundred
percent certainty, they were one hundred percent certain that this
print from the crime scene came from this particular client,
and there was no basis for that. In fact, that's
not even allowed anymore. And why is there no basis
(26:44):
for it? You would have to have population statistics, right,
I mean, that's what DNA has. That's why they come
up with these numbers. It's one in a million that
it came from this person. There are no population statistics
regarding fingerprints.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Okay, So we're seeing that there are a lot of
flaws with both analyzing and comparing prints, the A and
the C and ACE that neither of these steps are
actually rooted in the scientific methods. And now we're onto E, right, Ace.
So the E is evaluation where they decide if it's
a match or not. And so it seems that if
(27:30):
analyzing and comparing the prints aren't scientifically proven to work,
the evaluation of those prints and deciding whether or not
it's a match can't be done to any degree of
certainty either. That just seems like common sense. So this
is purely subjective. But there's one last letter in these
steps that examiners follow, and that's the V for verification. Right,
(27:54):
it's ACE V. And I'm already skeptical because the first
three steps of the process or flawed, So how could
the results be verified?
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Imagine this, A fingerprint examiner would decide that this fragment
of a print came from this particular person, and then
they would hand it off to another fingerprint examiner for verification.
But the issue was it was never blind. So, Josh,
let's say you and I were fingerprint examiners in the
same office, and I would make a decision about a print,
(28:25):
and then I would ask you to verify what I
had done. And the problem with that is you already
knew what I had done. It wasn't blind. In science,
they do blind verification, so that the person who's actually
attempting to verify or replicate what the first person did
it doesn't know what the result was actually, So the
(28:47):
fact that the verification wasn't blind led to what people
call confirmation bias, which is a huge problem.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
All right. So once the NAS basically said that the
ACV process is really a recipe for wrongful convictions, this
should have been an explosion in the criminal justice system
in the courts, and it just wasn't. And that's, I guess,
a different issue altogether. We have to keep pushing in
that regard. But you are still trying to push and
(29:17):
challenge the admissibility of fingerprints in the criminal justice system,
and I have to tell you, it just seems like
it must be so difficult, Mary, because this is not
like any kind of scientific analysis. But it just feels
to me that everyone believes fingerprint evidence works. It's so
(29:38):
ingrained in pop culture, and just like the intrinsic belief
that people have that we've grown up with. So tell
me what are some of the problems you've run into
when trying to call and question this so called science.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
When you're in court litigating this, you're absolutely right. That
is one of the things you hear from prosecutors and
you hear from judges. Of course, this is reliable. It's
been coming into court for decades and decades, and nobody
has ever challenged it before. So that is a big
hurdle to get over, much more so than other things
like bite marks, blood spatter and that sort of thing.
(30:17):
The court system always lags behind science, and it was
an uphill climb to convince judges and prosecutors that there
were problems with fingerprints, or if you could convince them
that there were problems, you certainly couldn't convince them that
they should exclude that evidence. In fact, judges and I
(30:38):
heard this quite a bit, it's like, well, you know,
let's just let the jury decide. But then you get
back to the problem of jurors thinking that fingerprints are
you know, they've been with us forever. They're embedded in
popular culture, and you have to get over all of
that history to convince durers that there are indeed issues. Essentially,
the presumption is that prints are are infallible. In a
(31:02):
case where your client is supposed to be presumed innocent
and the prosecution or the government has to prove their
case beyond reasonable doubt, a significant piece of evidence is
presumed to be infallible, and you have a lot of
work to do to try to educate them that that's
not the case.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Right, because it turns out that judges are really no
different than jurors. I mean, in some instances they're more sophisticated,
not always. They certainly have less time and frankly sometimes
less patience, but they're sort of not immune to the
impact of pop culture and precedent. But look, some people
(31:40):
may be listening to this and thinking, I don't have
a law degree, but I want to help. I want
to do something about this. So do you have any
ideas for what our listeners can do to help I do?
Speaker 4 (31:52):
And I wanted to go back, just for a moment
to talk about precedent because where I went in my
mind are our core saying that actual innocence of a
client on death row doesn't matter because procedure was followed.
So that should alert your listeners, how how much courts
(32:12):
adhere to precedent and are deferential to previous findings to
the point where they would authorize that somebody received the
death penalty because the process was followed. Anyone in the
public wants the law enforcement, the system to get things right.
And the only way we can get things right is
(32:35):
if we understand the limitations of these forensic sciences. So
people can be writing letters, calling their prosecutors, their policymakers,
county commissioners, city council members. What are you doing to
make sure that police officers, that crime lab examiners understand
this information? And that would be really helpful because people
(32:58):
really do listen more or to constituents and people in
the public than they do potentially defense lawyers.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
You know, I've said this before, and I really do
think it bears repeating. Pressure breaks pipes. What you all
can do, as listeners of this podcast is take action.
You're on here because you want to learn something, but
you also want to do something about it. The way
that we stop this junk signs from making it into
(33:29):
our courts is to shine a bright light on it.
Google the NAS report that we've continually talked about during
this season. That report details how so many of these
disciplines of forensic science, including fingerprints, are really problematic. The
problem is judges don't know about it. Find out who
(33:51):
your local criminal court judges are and send them the
NAS report. Highlight the section on fingerprint analysis and send
to your local criminal court judges. It's only by educating
our judges and speaking truth to power that we can
really make change happen. And if you don't think that
your voice matters, just take a look around the country
(34:12):
right now. It's the collective voice that is causing change
to happen, and we can do it one step at
a time in our criminal justice system. Thank you for
listening to Wrongful Conviction Junk Science. We're going to be
(34:33):
taking a little break, but our next episode will be
out on October seventh. In the meantime, we will be
keeping a critical and close eye on our criminal justice system.
We would love to hear how you're doing that along
with us, So please leave us a comment and let
us know what you've been up to, and stay on
the Wrongful Conviction podcast feed As Jason Flamm will continue
(34:55):
to release episodes between now and October seventh. Wrongful Conviction
Junk Science is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Signal Company Number One. Thanks to our
executive producer Jason Flamm and the team at Signal Company
Number One executive producer Kevin Wardis and senior producers Kara
(35:17):
Kornhaber and Britz Spangler. Our music was composed by Jay Ralph.
You can follow me on Instagram at dubin Josh, follow
the Wrongful Conviction podcast on Facebook and on Instagram at
Wrongful Conviction and on Twitter at wrong Conviction
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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