The police have the legal right to say anything they want up to the point of making up a test i.e. "we looked into the eyes of the dead victim and it had your image burned into the retina (from some movie....)." So I don't see this as a problem. We've had detective make up their own DNA reports and show it to the suspect to get a confession.Neville wrote:No, the cops may tell the offender they have an ident off AFIS to try and get an admission. Has happened before today.
I have not searched through Henry cards before, but....according to today's standard of report writing yes I would. I would not have to report the ones I flipped through to get to the correct section, but all the ones I pulled to look at. That would really be a pain the butt, good thing they are mostly all electronic now.Re Do the defence have the right to ask who else you compared it with??? May I ask a question or two which will probably answer that one; when you were searching manually in the Henry collection did you supply the name on every fingerprint form you turn over in your manual search for the matching print?
Right now, we do not search past the hit. This is still in debate in some corners. Some believe that if your SOP says you look at ##, then you really have to look at ## regardless. Some say just add the sentence, "only if there is not a hit" to the SOP. We have been asked this multiple times in court. The usual answer is, "I believe that every person's fingerprints are unique, so if I do find the correct person, there is no need to look at the others that I know cannot be the correct person. If I have 50 keys on my key ring, but only one opens the lock, why would I try the other keys once I found the correct one?"Do you really compare every print on the list once you have an ident on the first one (with a score of say around 6000) on the list when the other 49 on the list have scores of around 100 or less (if you do why)?
We have been asked this multiple times in court as well for non-hits. The usual answer goes, "by the 50th candidate, the scores were so low (and we have the print out to prove it) and that the prints coming back were so off that further searching would be fruitless." It is really up to the examiner if they wish to continue. In the rare situation of when the top 50 are really close and the scores are still pretty good, then maybe querying for more candidates is warranted. The number in the SOP is for quality control to say we at least looked at this many and that number was based on past experience with the system and where the hits generally show up.Do you really think that stopping at the 50th candidate answers the obvious next string of questions? Why did you stop the list at 50, the true offender may have been 51 on the list, did you compare with every one on every other data base, blah blah blah.
This is in debate as well. I think my lab chose 50 because people have gotten hits in the 30's and 40's before. Different agencies have different numbers for different reasons. I remember one was just so they can say that they do more than the FBI. Another was because they do not have the man power to spend x number of hours on AFIS per case. There is really little scientific evidence about the probability that the correct person will show in the first ## and it may become a big issue in the future. I think Dr. Dror mentioned something about this in one of his studies (the one about moving the hit back past 20 to see if the examiner is really looking that far).Anyway why did you or the powers to be choose 50, is there any scientific basis for the number 50. Seems to me you are making life very hard. I think ours is set at 20 maybe 25 though we would never say we compared all the other 19 candidates, what is the point in that.
So I've answered you questions, and you still haven't answered mine. Does the defense have the right to ask for and look at the other candidates (all the ones you looked at)? From your answer of more questions I'm leaning towards you believing that they do not. Why is that?