IAI 'Y7' Committee findings

[Taggart]

Although this is posted on a different topic the implications of this Report are important enough to merit its own thread.(Thanks to Dave Charlton for providing the information)

Findings of the I.A.I.'s Y7 Committee
by Robert Garrett,
International Association for Identification President

In 1997, Marion Ross, and elderly woman living a solitary life, was murdered inside her home in Kilmarnock, Scotland. Investigators at the crime scene developed a fingerprint on a door frame. The print or mark was subsequently identified to Shirlie McKie, a detective constable with the Strathclyde Police, by fingerprint examiners of the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO). A problem surfaced when the detective denied ever having been in the victim's house. The detective's unwillingness to admit to leaving the print resulted in charges of perjury and a trial for the offense. The detective hired her own fingerprint examiner(s) who refuted the findings of the examiners from SCRO. The detective was found not guilty and filed suit against the service in which she ultimately prevailed. The controversy surrounding the identity of the source of the print which was known as Y7 has not abated. For many years, members of the fingerprint community have asked for the International Association for Identification (IAI) to assist in resolving the issue. In response, as President of the IAI, I had decided to use its resources and study the issue. My decision was made in the interest of fingerprint science and its practice and without regard for any of the individuals involved.

A committee was organized to examine the Y7 mark and the alleged source of the print which was, according to SCRO examiners, the left thumb of Detective Shirley McKie. The committee consisted of four experienced fingerprint examiners, all certified by the IAI in latent print examination. A fifth member was a renowned expert in forensic imaging who also had a background in fingerprint science. Images of the Y7 mark were secured from a number of sources, each image scrutinized for consistency, quality and quantity of detail.

Three of the fingerprint examiners would be responsible for the actual examination and comparison of the prints. The fourth would be the committee chair, insuring the consistency of the processes used, commonality of reference, terminology and agreement of features used for comparison. The chair would also serve as the technical and administrative reviewer and be responsible for maintaining examination notes and documents. The examiners would conduct their comparisons individually after agreeing on which ridge characteristics to use, ridge counts and tolerances. Conclusions would also be made on an individual basis. Examiners would then act to review the conclusions of their co-workers.

The examiners were required to thoroughly document their analysis of the prints; observations made during the comparison of the prints and the basis for their conclusions. The notes and materials prepared by the examiners will be maintained by the IAI and made available to researchers. A detailed article, based on the committee’s work and findings will be prepared for publication in the Journal of Forensic Identification.

On December 23, 2008 the Committee’s work was completed with the arrival of the final examiner packet. It will be a while before the article is published considering the time necessary to prepare the article for submission to the JFI, the subsequent review process and the publication schedule, As Committee Chair, I decided to issue a summary finding of the committee’s work. The examiners came to a unanimous conclusion that the developed latent print known as “Y7” and the recorded known exemplar print identified as the left thumb of Shirley McKie do not share a common source. Therefore, the left thumb of Shirley McKie is excluded as the source of latent print/finger mark Y7.

[Iain McKie]

The IAI is to be commended for carrying out the ‘Y7’ investigations and publishing the results. I have long believed that unless tackled the 'SCRO malaise' would pose a more general danger to forensics and fingerprints.

I believe that the ongoing Fingerprint Inquiry and the science as a whole will benefit from the findings and perhaps individual experts will be encouraged to admit their mistakes and put the whole miserable affair behind them.

For some further thoughts please see:

http://www.shirleymckie.com/documents/I ... e16209.pdf

[Doug Monsoor]

Hooray!!!
Finally! After long last, the IAI has -very belatedly in my opinion - issued a statement and taken a position on this controversy. Better late than never, I guess.

[claireweenie]

I appreciate that there is more to be published on the IAI's procedures and findings but does anyone know whether they had access to the original lift? Only, as I understand, the SCRO experts are claiming that they are the only ones who have had access to the original lift which is why no other expert has come to the same conclusion as they did.
Therefore, if the IAI did not have access to the original lift then in the eyes of the SCRO experts it proves nothing.
On the other hand, if they did have access to the original lift then this whole thing can finally be put to rest!

[David Fairhurst]

In the words of the warden in Alien3..."This is rumour control!"

I have spoken personally to at least three of the central characters in this case about this very issue, they all say the same thing. There never was an original lift. The mark was never lifted, it was photographed in-situ and the photograph was submitted to SCRO. Pat also photographed the mark in-situ.

The "original lift" is something that has been mentioned a couple of times before on this forum and I think it's about time we put this one to rest. So please don't take this as a personal shout-down Claire.

There is the question of whether the IAI were alowed access to the original developed mark in-situ or if indeed it has been preserved at all.

[Gerald Clough]

...this whole thing can finally be put to rest!

Hah! I'm betting ten gallons of Thorazine couldn't put this thing to rest.

[Daktari]

Pat also photographed the mark in-situ.

http://onin.com/fp/problemidents.html#first_case

Scan of photo made at the crime scene by Pat Wertheim in March 1999. The light colored scratch through the ridge detail was apparently due to inadvertent contact after the police photos were made.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin ... 6-2202.htm

Des McNulty: Earlier, we heard that the crime scene mark had a scrape on it, or striations, when you photographed it. That was shown on the photographs that were put on the internet. Why did you not report to the court officer that the mark had been damaged?
Pat Wertheim: The brush across the print, the light stroke, did not add detail, nor did it take it away. It did not change the identifiability or the excludability of the print in any way.
Des McNulty: Mr Swann, who had been the previous person to inspect the mark, has said that no scrape was there when he looked at it. However, when you looked at it and photographed it, the scrape was there. I suppose there are two
questions: did you make the scrape; and, whether you did or did not, why did you not report the scrape to the court officer? There was obviously an obligation on your part to say, "What I am seeing here is different from what has been photographed."
Pat Wertheim: I disagree, sir. First, I did not make that scrape. Secondly, the scrape did not materially affect the print and, in fact—
Des McNulty: Why did you not report it? That is the question that I am asking.
Pat Wertheim: Pardon, sir.
Des McNulty: You go in, in controlled conditions, to look at an exhibit and the photographs of the exhibit. You are looking at the exhibit and there is a scrape on the exhibit. Why did you not report it to the court officer?
Pat Wertheim: The scrape was insignificant, sir.
Des McNulty: I am not asking you whether it is significant or to judge its significance; I am simply asking you why you did not report to the court officer the fact that the print had been changed.

Eh????

[claireweenie]

No offence taken David - I'm only a trainee so this is all pretty new to me!

So, does anyone know if the IAI committee had access to the original photographs?

[Daktari]

So, does anyone know if the IAI committee had access to the original photographs?

Interesting point Claire

You say you are new to this, so here’s a bit of background

Many times the SCRO has been accused of erroneous identifications. By, inter alia, John MacLeod, Allan Bayle, Gary Dempster and of course the two Danish experts (on whose opinion Shirley’s settlement was based).
All of the above have been forced to eat their words, some have even issued an apology!
None of whom will be giving evidence to the Inquiry!

In all cases they have sought to excuse their errors on the premise that they were not given the correct, or original, material.

Kasey calls this their Get out of Jail card!

Remember to look at the rolled impression of Shirley’s left thumb, that’s the key!

Oh, and don’t worry about being a trainee, listen to what this expert tells us,
“I was in NO WAY qualified to testify to fingerprint identifications when I was first accepted in court as an “expert” in the late 1970’s. I attended a two-week class in Henry classification which also touched on latent print development and latent print identification. Our comparison exercises were all inked to inked. After that, there was no OJT in my department and I had to teach myself. Within two years, I was testifying to identifications. I never had a senior examiner check my work and never had a single proficiency test. And don’t make the mistake of thinking I was the exception”
No wonder the NAS has got plenty to say.

[Pat A. Wertheim]

Hi Claire

If you haven’t figured it out yet, our friend Daktari is a master of misdirection, mistake, misquote, misstatement, and misfeasance. He compounds those tactics by taking out of context what quotations he does cite in order to change completely their meanings.

I suspect you are baiting him like some of the others do (myself included, from time to time). But on the chance that you are not teasing him and that you might be swayed by all of his deceptions, I would like to put the record straight (not "to rest," as Gerald correctly points out).

The statement he quoted in his last posting was, of course, mine. In an unrelated thread on the state of fingerprint training in the US, I was contrasting the “training” I had 35 years ago with the training available today, and urging stricter training standards for new fingerprint trainees in today’s world and in the future. Our friend Daktari loves to quote that one paragraph and imply that is still my highest level of training. I assure you it is not. I would be happy to email you my complete curriculum vitae and I will match it against Daktari’s, or anyone else’s for that matter, anytime.

Daktari is misleading you about others acts, as well. The Danes, for example, called the SCRO wrong on an identification when the SCRO gave them the wrong latent print to look at. When the SCRO corrected their mistake and gave the Danes the correct latent print, they verified an identification for the SCRO. That was in the David Asbury case, closely related to the McKie case, but the fingerprint was on a piece of currency in David Asbury’s immediate possession. No culpability in Asbury’s fingerprint on a piece of paper money in his possession, but Daktari loves to misstate that case and say the Danes were forced to apologize, which I don’t think was the case.

Gary Dempster did erroneously claim in one case that an SCRO identification was wrong, but he revisited the case within hours because it was nagging at him, and he blew the whistle by correcting himself and confirming that the SCRO were correct. He apologized for his mistake and was completely open and up front about it. Daktari likes to use that, albeit incompletely, to “prove” that Gary cannot be trusted. Believe me, Gary is a man of integrity, as proven by his actions in reexamining the print in that unrelated case and publicly correcting his own mistake. Gary was perfectly willing to take credit for his mistakes and take his licks, which is more than I could ever say about Daktari.

As for your original question, David Fairhurst was correct. The print Y7 was never lifted. For all I know, it still exists on the very doorframe where SCRO developed it with black powder. I had the original SCRO photographs to work with, and then took my own original photographs. My camera was a Nikon FE-2 with a Nikkor 55mm Micro lens. I used several fine grained films, both color and black and white, and took numerous photographs at closest point of focus to the mark. The best of the negatives was scanned by Ed German using a Nikon 35mm negative scanner. The image from that scan is posted in lossless format on Ed’s website, http://www.onin.com/fp. Also posted with it are high resolution scans of Shirley McKie’s inked fingerprint, which I took in March, 1999, the same week I photographed the mark Y7. That may not be the SCRO’s “original lift,” but it is actually a sharper image than the photograph they took in 1997. The SCRO themselves tacitly acknowledged that fact when they chose to use my image for their now-infamous Tulliallen presentation to ACPOS, in which they charted 40-some odd points that supposedly “matched” between Y7 and Shirley McKie’s left thumb print. One reason they used my photograph was so they could mis-chart “level three” details that were not clearly in focus in their original photograph, just as they mis-charted the 40-some odd “points” to prove the identification.

The "rolled" versus "plain" impression argument is another misleading argument they make. If you are a fingerprint expert, you know that it does not take a "rolled" fingerprint to make an identification (or exclusion), it takes an inked print that is clear and unsmudged in the area you are comparing. In truth, an inked print that as closely as possible repeats the direction and pressure of touch as the latent print is the very best inked print to use for a comparison, except we seldom have that advantage. In this case, we do. I took over 100 inked impressions of Shirley McKie's left thumb and reproduced as closely as possible both the direction and pressure of the touch as best I could to match the apparent direction and pressure of Y7 when it was deposited. That is the inked impression on Ed's website. There is a reason Dak wants you to use the SCRO's smudged rolled impression with the "V-smudge" up at the tip of the thumb (which obscures detail) instead of a better inked print with clear detail.

Daktari (and SCRO) love to try and make an issue of the scuff mark that was present when I photographed the mark in 1999. Dak loves to quote the line of questioning by David McNulty, and MSP representing the district of some of the SCRO experts who made the erroneous identification. McNulty, always the politician who knew who had voted for him, was raking me over the coals for not “reporting” the scuff when I took my photographs. The truth of the matter is that the scuff is so insignificant that I probably never even noticed it when I was taking the photos. It in no way changes or removes any ridge details and certainly doesn’t change Y7 from one person’s print to somebody else’s print.

I know that the IAI had all of my images that were material and necessary for their review, and I gave them a sworn affidavit attesting to the provenance of the images. You yourself have those same images. All you have to do is download them from Ed’s website. Don’t be fooled by Dak’s and the SCRO’s ridiculous charges that you can’t do an accurate comparison or reach an accurate conclusion from those images. You will reach an accurate conclusion. It just won’t be the same conclusion as the SCRO reached, or their supporters Dak and Peter Swann.

If you’d like to discuss the case in more detail, or privately, please feel free to email me directly at foridents@aol.com

[Taggart]

Claire,
I think to add some clarity to what is nothing short of a smokescreen perpetuated by daktari, we need to firstly determine what the ‘original’ material is.
In the case of fingerprint ‘Y7’ the ‘original’ fingerprint is still on the door frame.
SCRO used photographs of the ‘original’ mark which are therefore ‘first generation’ copies of the original print.
The SCRO experts to my knowledge have never physically examined the doorframe against the left thumb point of Shirley McKie; however that will be clarified at the Inquiry.
We do know however know a number of experts have physically examined the doorframe, and a number of experts have been given access to the very same photographs as used by the SCRO Experts. Only Peter Swann concluded the prints as match, after seeing the original material, however a significant number of experts who viewed the same material as used by the SCRO Experts concluded the prints did not match. In this list we have Pat Wertheim, David Grieve, Arie Zeelenberg, Torger Rudrud, John Macleod, along with three senior experts from the National training Centre at Durham
The SCRO experts have criticised any expert who worked with differing material. I have however a point to make with regards to this. Firstly we know the print Y7 was photographed on at least two further occasions, by Pat Wertheim and Terry Kent of the Police Scientific Development Branch. In reality both these images are also ‘first generation’ copies making them equal with the SCRO image.
Terry Kent’s image has openly been described by Experts as the best image available.
If the SCRO experts wish to challenge the findings of any expert who has used these two images at any time, then they have a serious problem.
Peter Swann openly admits to using the Terry Kent images for his comparisons, and John Berry used the Pat Wertheim image in his chartings.
We can only assume that Martin Leadbetter also used the same material as Peter Swann.
Are the SCRO experts going to rubbish what in effect are 3 of their only 4 known supporters?
I am also intrigued by the claims of the SCRO that they are the only ones with the original image. Let me set a poser. We know that Strathclyde Police photographed the fingerprint Y7 on three separate occasions. So which one of the three images is the ‘original’ image? Is it the first photograph ever taken? Are the subsequent two images used by SCRO in their court charts ‘original’ images? Can you have three different ‘original’ images? Given the subsequent photographs were taken in an exact similar fashion why are they not ‘original’ images?
I suggest you have a look yourself at the various images.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin ... AnnexI.pdf

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/busin ... nexJ-K.pdf

SCRO Experts already on record as stating that they Pat Wertheim image is ‘damaged’ to the extent they cannot find 16 points in agreement in it. Also for clarity Fiona McBride has stated she did not recognise Pat Wertheim’s image when she saw it in court.
These comments regarding the images will become critical during the Inquiry. The SCRO Experts are going to have to evidence why Pat Wertheim’s is so poor. The time for mere words and discrediting experts is past. This Inquiry will be primarily based on scientific analysis and the explanation of such by the various experts.
The evidence of the various experts will be fascinating. Also we look forward to Swann. Leadbetter and Berry contradicting the SCRO Experts with their use of the other images! Truly wonderful stuff!
Until then daktari might be able to clarify which one of the three SCRO images is the ‘original’ image??

[Taggart]

Pat,

Daktari’s latest postings have made me reconsider some observations which were made to me some time ago from an interested observer. At the time I gave it no credence, however the longer daktari posts the more I am inclined there could be some truth to these thoughts. Let me share with you this observation, and let me explain.

It was suggested that rather than daktari being an SCRO ‘supporter’ nothing could be further from the truth. In fact they are a McKie ‘supporter’ who uses this forum to keep the debates going.

As I said I dismissed this, however there could be a lot to be said for this.

We can all agree that daktari is not an SCRO ‘supporter’. The key word being the latter given at no time on this forum do they actually ’support’ the SCRO experts. At no time have they been able to justify or evidence one single wrongdoing by the Experts relying instead on misinformation, innuendo and discrediting individuals.

Think about this, daktari has done untold damage to the SCRO experts. Without them on this forum there would be very little debate, very little information on the case, but they must take credit for not only keeping the discussion going but for turning any neutral expert against the SCRO experts.

Let me give daktari one chance to prove me wrong. In a posting earlier this week they stated:

It just that you must know by now that stuff like this only add fuel to those still clinging on to the misidentification theory.

Prove me wrong by telling of just one independent report, by any one single expert anywhere in the world that agrees with the SCRO experts.

And then sit back until the Inquiry to see who really is clinging onto their beliefs!

Look forward to seeing you over soon Pat, not sure if you will need to bring your sharpshooter with you this time though, given the opposition is resorting to firing blanks!

[Pat A. Wertheim]

It was suggested that rather than daktari being an SCRO ‘supporter’ nothing could be further from the truth. In fact they are a McKie ‘supporter’ who uses this forum to keep the debates going.

Interesting concept. A "Devil's Advocate" who, through his reversed arguments, succeeds in proving the existance of the Devil? You may be onto something there, Taggart. I'm not convinced, although I must say if you are right, he is succeeding admirably. By the way, what did you think of Dak's bit of doggerel on his latest thread? Fancies himself a songwriter, methinks.

I've got some weeks blocked out on the calendar at the suggestion of the Inquiry team, but no specific time for my testimony yet. We must get together for a wee dram of Scotland's finest Highland or Speyside single malt while I'm there. Perhaps Dak will join us for a threesome and settle the question you pose.

What about it, Dak?

[Taggart]

Look forward to buying you that Scotch!

Until then we await our friend highlighting details of any, as yet unknown, independent comparison(s) that agrees with the SCRO experts....

We could have a long wait methinks.

[Big Wullie]

Daktari

I have asked you time and time again:

Has Peter Swann or Martin Leadbetter sat any IAI competency tests or proficiency tests.

Simple Question Really

I salute IAI for their Findings.

Where next for SCRO lot