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