tailieunhanh - MORE THAN ZERO: ACCOUNTING FOR ERROR IN LATENT FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION

The year 2004 witnessed what was probably the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever exposed: the case of Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney and Muslim convert who was held for two weeks as a material witness in the Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004, a terrorist attack in which 191 people were killed. Mayfield, who claimed not to have left the United States in ten years and did not have a passport, was implicated in this attack almost solely on the basis of a latent fingerprint found on a bag in Madrid containing detonators and explosives in the aftermath of the bombing. Unable to identify the source. | 0091-4169 05 9503-0985 The Journal of Criminal Law CRIMINOLOGY Copyright 2005 by Northwestern University School of Law Vol. 95 No. 3 Printed in . MORE THAN ZERO ACCOUNTING FOR ERROR IN LATENT FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION SIMON A. COLE LOUISE I never would have guessed that he was selling fake insurance. CANEWELL That s what the whole idea was . . . he didn t want you to guess it. If you could have guessed then he couldn t have sold nobody no insurance. August Wilson Seven Guitars 1996 Introduction The year 2004 witnessed what was probably the most highly publicized fingerprint error ever exposed the case of Brandon Mayfield an Oregon attorney and Muslim convert who was held for two weeks as a material witness in the Madrid bombing of March 11 2004 a terrorist attack in which 191 people were killed. Mayfield who claimed not to have left the United States in ten years and did not have a passport was implicated in this attack almost solely on the basis of a latent fingerprint Assistant Professor of Criminology Law Society University of California Irvine . science technology studies Cornell University . Princeton University. This project was funded in part by the National Science Foundation Award SES-0347305 . I am indebted to Lyndsay Boggess for research assistance and to Max Welling and Rachel Dioso for assistance with the graphics. For information on misattribution cases I am indebted to Rob Feldman and the New England Innocence Project Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck Robert Epstein Ed German Dusty Clark Michele Triplett Craig Cooley and especially James E. Starrs and Lyn and Ralph Haber. I am grateful to Joseph L. Peterson for facilitating and commenting on the use of his data. This paper benefited greatly from discussions with William c. Thompson. For critical comments I am grateful to Laura S. Kelly Jane c. Moriarty John R. Vokey Sandy L. Zabell and two anonymous reviewers. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the .