NCJ Number
216369
Journal
Journal of Forensic Identification Volume: 56 Issue: 6 Dated: November/December 2006 Pages: 933-971
Date Published
November 2006
Length
39 pages
Annotation
In order to address the ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts that the application of ACE-V to determine the simultaneous deposit of fingerprint impressions does not satisfy a Daubert analysis for acceptance of evidence as scientifically reliable, this paper reports on an experiment designed to determine whether two or more latent fingerprint impressions were deposited at the same time.
Abstract
Findings show that competent examiners using ACE-V methodology should have little trouble determining whether or not latent fingerprint impressions were deposited at the same time. Eighty-eight percent of examiner decisions were correct in determining whether two or more fingerprint impressions were deposited at the same time. Even when there was a conspiracy by a second donor to mimic the orientations of the first donor's deposits, examiners identified these impressions as false nearly 85 percent of the time. Additional training and research should further reduce the error rate. The experiment consisted of a series of 30 latent fingerprint impressions that were sent to volunteer latent print examiners around the world. Their assignment was to examine each impression and apply ACE-V to determine whether the impressions were deposited at the same time. Thirty-one examiners submitted results for the study. Their experience levels ranged from 1 to 28 years, with a cumulative experience of 350 years. Fifteen States and 3 foreign countries were represented. All participants stated that they had been trained to competency, that they practiced ACE-V, and that they had completed some formal training in quantitative-qualitative friction ridge analysis. This training was a prerequisite for participation. Materials and methods are described in detail. 2 tables, 8 figures, and 12 references