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Professor Claims (This article was downloaded from the website hosted by the Office of International Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago at www.acsp.uic.edu/oicj/pubs/cje/060107.htm, on March 8, 1998.) A number of criminals may have been wrongly acquitted or escaped trial since the turn of the century because important fingerprint evidence has been withheld, a scientist has claimed. Professor Tony Vignaux believes that the failure of fingerprint technicians to provide evidence of “partial” fingerprints in court has been “a blind spot” in the legal system since 1902, when a method of classifying fingerprints was established by the Metropolitan Police. Andrew Riley, writing in the Daily Telegraph says that in Britain, fingerprint experts commonly need 16 points of comparison between two sets of fingerprints before they will agree to give evidence in court. But in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, the figure was 12 points and in parts of India, eight points. “There is no doubt that there are people in the UK for whom there is enough evidence to convict,” said Prof. Vignaux. “But because there might only be a partial print, with for example 15 points, the fingerprint technician is not prepared to go into court and say ”it was he." “Nevertheless, the fingerprint match was enough for the technician to have grave suspicions. In this situation, scientists would talk about probabilities. Technicians would not. It is a blind spot where the legal system does not see evidence which actually is relevant.” Prof. Vignaux and the barrister Bernard Robertson, co--authors of Interpreting Evidence--Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom, which has been published recently by John Wiley & Sons, believe that more research is needed about how fingerprint technicians reach their decisions. They want to establish a “common language” for scientific witnesses and lawyers based on a numerical scale of probabilities, “the likelihood ratio.” Weak evidence would be presented in court with a rating of one to 33, fair evidence would be 33--100, good evidence 100--330, strong evidence, 330--1000, while very strong evidence would be anything over 1,000. “I am told that very often police are told of fingerprint matches, which helps their investigation, but the fingerprint technicians also say that they would not go into court,” Prof. Vignaux said. Prof. Vignaux is professor of operations research at the Institute of Statistics and Operations Research, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Mr. Robertson is senior lecturer in the department of business law at Massey University, New Zealand. The Home Office said that acceptance of fewer than 16 points of identification was “a decision for the courts.” A spokesman said there was no legal requirement for the 16--point standard, but in practice fingerprint experts would not testify with a lower number.
This article was printed in “THE PRINT” |