Statistics and Misidentifications - The weeks Detail

[Dick Dastardly]

Daktari, you have lost the plot again.

It was not the minute of the meeting that Arie was ambushed with, a suggestion I read from your post. [Minutes, of course, are usually prepared after a meeting and not before it]. What Arie was ambushed with was a pictorial presentation that has already been made public now. It was designed to show numerous points of identity between Y7 and SM's mark.

To achieve this, it required looking at a number of different islands on the mark individually. Unfortunately, when one tried to locate the islands relative to one another, one had to engage in an exercise of moving the digit by twisting, pulling etc in an impossible way.

This presentation has never been relied upon subsequent to Tulliallan, not even, so far as I am aware, by Swann and others.

But the point is this: it had clearly been prepared prior to Tulliallan; it was to be presented to a number of non SCRO personnel (the police in particular); and a deliberate decision was taken not to provide Arie with a copy in advance so that he could tear it apart. Instead, he saw it for the first time when it was demonstrated to the audience.

Now, Bob Mackenzie has a lot to answer for in this matter. Because, as I explained above, when Arie did take the presentation away, it became clear that it was, frankly, fraudulent. A cover up. A Lie.

It is impossible to be charitable about this. But since Daktari brought up the Tulliallan minute, and sniped at Alex Neil about the minute, perhaps those who read these posts should be aware of what happened at that meeting. And, guess what, the minute does not record that a fraudulent presentation was given by SCRO.........

I am not convinced that no lie lasts forever (as the best lies, like the best crimes, are never discovered). But some lies don't last forever, and Tulliallan is a great example of one found out. I am fascinated by the fact that Daktari now has to rely upon dishonest behaviour for a point: I am just not sure what the point is, as is typical of his postings.

But I suppose we can take comfort from his position that he will respond to anonymous postings but not anonymous questions. [Am I the only one who finds that verging on the bizarre?!!] So folks, if you are anonymous and want an answer, dont use the question mark!


DD

[Daktari]

I did not say that Zeelenberg was ambushed by the minute, what I said was

You mention Zeelenberg being 'ambushed'.

So how do arrive at

It was not the minute of the meeting that Arie was ambushed with, a suggestion I read from your post.

Perhaps you read too many suggestions into my posts.

But I suppose we can take comfort from his position that he will respond to anonymous postings but not anonymous questions.

I try to correct some of the misinformation that has been deliberately circulated by the McKies, their supporters, their PR companies and the many others who have jumped on this bandwagon.

[Outsider]

I have recently exchanged e-mails with Professor Christophe Champod regarding the special risk factors in McKie case (when a case is started because a disputed fingerprint ID is encountered, rather than starting from a crime, we can expect an increased risk that the case is based on a misidentification). Here is part of his message which I quote with his permission.

I followed your messages on CLPEX including your recent exchange with Cedric Neumann on the LR concept. I view your analysis as a global analysis of the case as a whole (addressing both the value of the fingerprint evidence and the assessment of the strength of the case arising from other elements). Forensic scientists (and especially in the UK, following Appeal Courts rulings pertaining to DNA) tends to restrict their testimony to the forensic findings alone (without commenting on the prior or posterior probabilities on the issue itself). Hence while reading your material, forensic scientist may have difficulties to accept the point of view you adopted. When read by the trier of fact, it make full sense of course.

I was wondering if anybody can remember if Shirley McKie’s defence at her perjury trial exploited the specific risks of misidentification in her case. I have no doubt that the general weakness of the other evidence against her was fully exposed but unless there is a specific reason to think that the fingerprint department was incompetent, it would be natural to assume that all cases carry a similar, and very small, possibility of misidentification. If the defence had not secured the services of Pat Werthiem and David Grieve this might have made all the difference.

It is difficult to estimate how different the risk is - I would put it at orders of magnitude. Of course, thousands of times zero is still zero and we CAN expect people, very rarely, to do things that they are prepared to lie about without leaving a trace, except a fingerprint. But when we have a crime we know that the wrongdoer will lie if identified so that will keep the odds stacked in favour of it being a good ID that leads to prosecution. Basing a prosecution on a denied identification which has self-selected from an unlimited pool is simply asking for trouble in my opinion.

We can assume that the Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was not thinking along these lines because he took the decision to prosecute. I think he is quoted as saying that to consider the possibility of a fingerprint misidentification is “unthinkable”. I also wonder if Shirley McKie’s colleagues in the police force might have given her the benefit of the doubt if they knew that the doubt was not the same as a normal case.

Professor Christophe Champod’s ideas are interesting. My understanding of them is that it is impossible and undesirable for an expert to suggest a probability that the accused deposited a fingerprint because that can only be concluded by taking into account factors that are outside his or her expertise (such as the number of suspects, starting from an ID rather than a crime or how likely it is that the criminal deposited the print). Instead, the expert reports the ratio of the likelihood that the latent fingerprint - in the state that we see it - was deposited by the accused, to the likelihood that it was deposited by anyone else. The jury then have to judge this with all the other evidence in the case. This would open the possibility of using IDs that would not qualify as “individualisation” under the current system. I am not sure that this would prevent the prosecutor or the jury from committing the prosecutor’s fallacy, but the forensic expert would play no part in it.

http://www.stevehornsc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pf.htm

[Pat A. Wertheim]

Dear Steve,

The old dogma is that fingerprint identification is black and white -- absolute identification or nothing. Probabilities are never discussed. Even today, with the work of Champod, Dror & Charlton, Busey & Vanderkolk, Langenburg, and others -- the community itself has not yet accepted any discussion of statistics or probabilities.

This was not discussed at Shirley's trial, nor would it have even occurred to her attorneys or the experts (Dave Grieve and myself) to consider it. Certainly, the police with whom she worked would have accepted the word of the SCRO without question. To the SCRO and her coworkers, she was lying, plain and simple. Mistakes were never made and statistics did not apply.

Black and white. If the case isn't white, it's black as can be.

[Daktari]

Of course if statistical probabilities had been looked at they would have soon worked out that the probability of a mistake (honest or otherwise) would have been billions to one!
I’ll bet Shirley is glad they didn’t.

[Big Wullie]

Daktari

Black and white and Shirley's case has now called into question the Conduct of SCRO and their methods of allowing other workers to sign others signatures.
I cannot wait for the Judicial Enquiry of which you can be assured i will be attending daily.
Fingerprint evidence if conducted properly is great evidence, but SCRO have been shown to commit fraud and act criminally to cover up their dirty deeds.
Exactly what was going on in there Daktari? Were people taking days off and allowing others to sign their names on evidence which is supposed to be cross checked , Please enlighten us all with your evidence.
Sorry forgot exactly who i was speaking to there for a moment, You have never thus far produced any concrete evidence to prove any matters you raise, nor do you answer anonymous posters eh?
You are a sad person i believe who lost their Job and cannot accept it, Please do not waste any more time spouting untruths that you cannot back up. Bye

[Iain McKie]

When Shirley’s defence was mounted the assumption by the police, criminals, lawyers, judges, politicians and many experts was that after 100 years of never being challenged fingerprint evidence was infallible.

This put any person appearing before our courts on such evidence in an impossible position and while Shirley’s prosecution was indeed solely based on a ‘denied identification’ there was no understanding of the dangers of this. Even if there had been I doubt if that would have registered as an effective defence argument.

We are now aware of course that the prosecution evidence was deeply flawed because of a mixture of incompetence and criminality.

Shirley’s position was exacerbated because not only did the prosecution regard fingerprint evidence as infallible but there were political, psychological and emotional pressures at work in the rush to convict David Asbury of murder and ensure the Scottish justice system remained whiter than white in the lead up to the Lockerbie trial.

There is little doubt that the work of people like Champod, Dror & Charlton, Busey & Vanderkolk, Langenburg, Horn and others is adding to the reliability of the science of fingerprinting by challenging these previous assumptions of infallibility.

Fortunately a judicial enquiry is being held in Scotland and Daktari, who we now know to be a competent witness, will have the opportunity of giving evidence and supporting the many postings made on this site.

Before then the publication of the SCRO ‘Tulliallan ‘ presentation should please their experts as it will give colleagues across the world a further opportunity to evaluate the quality of their work.

[Daktari]

but SCRO have been shown to commit fraud and act criminally to cover up their dirty deeds.

Sorry Wullie but they have been cleared time after time, Judge after Judge, Inquiry after Inquiry of any wrongdoing! At the risk of being repetitive, no other group of have been the subject if so much scrutiny and cleared every time. Bet you wish you could say the same about yourself!

[Daktari]

We are now aware of course that the prosecution evidence was deeply flawed because of a mixture of incompetence and criminality.

Iain see above.
James MacKay put these allegations in his Report because YOU made them. There is nothing to substantiate them as the Regional Fiscal, Willian Gilchrist, made clear.
There has been much bluff lately about about publishing hitherto unseen confidential documents. You will have MacKay's full Report. To mis-quote Lord Wellington, Publish it and be damned!

[Iain McKie]

Dear Daktari,

See you at the judicial enquiry.

Best wishes,

Iain

[Outsider]

When I think about the very large number of police elimination comparisons being performed all over the world every day, I find it difficult to believe that Shirley McKie is the only police officer who has ever denied being in the location that their fingerprint was identified. I think there is an interesting question in how different police, fingerprint and prosecution authorities would report and handle such an occurrence. I also wonder how it would have been handled here in Scotland if the police officer had been a popular “team player”.

This takes us into the realm of the interplay between psychology and working procedures.

[Big Wullie]

but SCRO have been shown to commit fraud and act criminally to cover up their dirty deeds.

Sorry Wullie but they have been cleared time after time, Judge after Judge, Inquiry after Inquiry of any wrongdoing! At the risk of being repetitive, no other group of have been the subject if so much scrutiny and cleared every time. Bet you wish you could say the same about yourself!

Daktari are you talking Pish Again (Judge after Judge) When have any of SCRO been Cleared by any Judges???????
I have never heard so much claptrap in all my life and you were supposed to be the expert or one of them that Wrongly Identified Shirley's Y7 Print
Please help us god if they have based all their findings on people like you.
Please just go away and stop spouting any more keke we are sick of your Venom, Of which when asked you cannot produce a shread of evidence to back up what you are saying.
If you can produce any evidence at-all then lets hear it or just shut your Claptrap.
You will never get to me through my own case no matter what you say, I know at the end of the day my case will Out and heap more much more misery on the police to try to continue to cover up the facts of my Defective Defence Team which included Taylor QC from the Lockerbie Trial.
People like you give me plenty of opportunities to get my points across with debates like these for this i thank you very much.
Give my regards to McBride and be assured i will be asking why she was allowed to sign other signatures on Y7.
Maybe even raise the question in Parliament Now through my MSP.
My final say is that these muppets at SCRO got all they deserved when they were sacked, I Sincerely hope you are one of them.

[Daktari]

i will be asking why she was allowed to sign other signatures on Y7.

Good luck mate!
She (Fiona McBride) didn't forge any signatures.
But you know that already, don't you?

[Outsider]

Having spent a long time looking at the context of the Shirley McKie identification, I was wondering if there was anything unusual about the IDs that led to David Asbury's conviction. One of these is generally accepted as being a misidentification so maybe this could be an interesting line of thought.

As regards the (mis)ID of Marion Ross from the Marks and Spencer tin, the most obvious thing is that David Asbury's bedroom is not a crime scene and the identified person did not become the accused. This means that the “denial selection” mechanism is not at work (which would cause a random misID to self-select). The ID did not cause Asbury to become a suspect, the ID from Christmas tag and his disappearance had already done that, so there may have been strong psychological pressure for a connection to the victim to be established. I am not sure how the concept of “prior probability” might apply to this situation, I wonder if the police already had a theory that the tin was stolen from the Ross house before the ID or if that came as a result of the ID. The ID was within the context of a crime investigation so the population of IDs that a misID might occur from is limited in the normal way (unlike the McKie ID).

I was wondering how unusual it is for a fingerprint ID that is not of the accused to be used to establish guilt. If it IS unusual then it is interesting to note that out of the three IDs in the Ross/McKie business (McKie from the door frame, Asbury from the Christmas tag and Ross from the tin) only Asbury from the tag is generally accepted as a good ID, and this is the most “normal” of the three (it identified the accused from a latent print in the crime scene). Accidents often occur with exceptions from the normal.

I am not suggesting that any of this should be used to devalue any particular type of ID as evidence, but it might help create a sensitivity to where dangers lie. Even better if it leads to theories that could be tested by research.

I have not speculated about what might have caused the misidentifications but I would say that you would expect random factors to lead to very rare events (failure to individualise opening the possibility of a random match). The only time that it is reasonable to say that two very rare events can happen by chance is if the combination of the two is what draws the case to your attention. For example, Sally Clark. Two cot deaths in the one family is why anybody talks about her out of all the mothers in the world. This did not happen with McKie/Asbury because we first knew about the McKie case and this led to looking again at the Asbury and Ross identifications.

[Daktari]

I was wondering how unusual it is for a fingerprint ID that is not of the accused to be used to establish guilt.

Very often, in case of theft, fraud, etc where it is necessary to prove ownership of an article found in a suspect's possession or in a suspect's home, etc.

Another thing to ponder is
How many nineteen year old unemployed joiners in Kilwinning are likely to have nearly two grand in a Marks & Spencer's biscuit tin under their bed?