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THE FINGERPRINT (Thanks to our Historian Bill Corson for submitting this interesting article. The origin is unknown.) In the world of children's fiction Mr. MacGregor had a garden and Mr. Wiggins had a cabbage patch. Both MacGregor and Wiggins were dead set on keeping out any Peter Rabbit--like intruders. In the real world of County Limerick, Ireland, John O'Brien also had a cabbage patch situated a long throw outside the town of Croom. O'Brien could not keep his neighbor James Ryan out of his cabbages, no matter how much he beefed. There may have been less trifling and more long--standing reasons for the enmity between the neighboring Ryan and O'Brien families, but when James Ryan, on one September midnight clear, was seen to trespass on John O'Brien's cabbage crop, the enmity erupted into violence. As Ryan walked on a public road past O'Brien's house shortly after the trespass, each was armed and ready and steeled for a confrontation. Ryan had a sword and O'Brien wielded a slash--hook during the affray in which a jury later found Ryan to have been the aggressor. Instigator though he may have been, Ryan got the worst of it by far, having been found lying nearly unconscious in the roadway, sorely wounded. At the time of his criminal trial two and one half years later, Ryan's physical injuries may have healed but the wrongs he felt to have been inflicted upon him by the O'Briens had not been assuaged. Arrested though he had been, Ryan and his family sturdily defended themselves against the charge of attempting to inflict grievous bodily harm upon O'Brien. A 12 or 13 year old at the time of the roadway fracas, testified in his father's defense that the sword found beside his nearly unconscious father was not owned or possessed by anyone in the Ryan family. He himself had never handled it, he stoutly protested. With those preliminaries stenographically recorded, the prosecution sprung its trap. Much to the younger Ryan's surprise and chagrin, the prosecutor introduced the testimony of a fingerprint expert that a latent print had been found on the sword blade. The print, in his expert estimation, was that of the right middle finger of Alan Ryan. He had counted some eight points of similarity between the latent print and the corresponding print of Alan Ryan. That testimony sealed the elder Ryan's fate and the jury, following the four day trial, convicted him of the offense charged. On appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal Ryan maintained that without a minimum of twelve points of similarity no fingerprint match could have been claimed nor presented to the jury. True enough, said the appeals judges, but the twelve point rule was only a “matter of practice” and then only when a fingerprint is “adduced against an Accused.” In this case it was the son's, a witness's, fingerprint that was in issue not that of an accused. As to the son , unlike his father, the failure to satisfy the twelve point rule did not defeat the identification. The lesser number of points of similarity went only to the weight not the admissibility of the fingerprint evidence. The reviewing judges were not disposed to disturb the jury's verdict. To the judges Ryan had no beef and got what he justly deserved for cabbaging O'Brien's patch. People v. Ryan, Court of criminal Appeal, Ireland (30 Nov. 1992).
This article was reprinted in “THE PRINT” |