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