The Restless Sleep:

Great Idea re: Forensic Labs

I'm embarrassed that I didn't think of this myself, but this is great idea and absolutely the way to go. From an OpEd today in the New York Post by Roger Koppl.

"The time has come to free forensic science from the pressures of prosecutorial bias. To that end, crime labs should become independent of police and prosecutors, and public defenders should be given greater access to forensic advice and testing."

What Koppl suggests is also the way to go with evidence storage. It would perfectly address the problems there.

(This is a detail from an old photograph of some NYPD police lab guys and their equipment.)

Fingerprint Evidence Study

A couple of facts from my book: DNA was used in less than 2% of the cases the Cold Case Squad cleared. At the time The Restless Sleep went to press, the total forensic DNA hits in New York was 1,529. 7% were for murder cases, 72% were for sex crimes.

"In most state or federal systems, for every crime solved with DNA, we solve 26 with fingerprints," according to Ed German, a recently retired Chief of Intelligence for the Army Criminal Investigation Command.

An interesting article by James Randerson called Study questions reliability of fingerprint evidence was published in The Guardian on March 23rd, 2007. From the article:
 
"The reliability of fingerprint evidence has been called into question by a study that tested whether forensic experts make consistent judgments on print matches.
 
Despite the perceived infallibility of fingerprint evidence, the study found that experts do not always make the same judgment on whether a print matches a mark at a crime scene when presented with the same evidence twice.
 
The finding comes in the wake of two high profile cases in which fingerprint matches were subsequently shown to be wrong. The Scottish police officer Shirley McKie was wrongly accused of having been at a murder scene in 1997 after a print supposedly matching hers was found near the body."

Given the percentage of crimes solved and convictions that came about as a result of fingerprints, I'd like to know if the study came up with a percentage of incorrect matches found. Without being critical of the concept of using fingerprints as evidence itself, but since fingerprint matching is dependent on training and the skills of the person making the call, the answer is to improve the procedure and oversight. But just how bad is it (not that any mistake is acceptable)?

Fingerprint picture is from: http://www.gradycosheriff.com/