Omaha Memo on Fingerprint, other forensic issues

[L.J.Steele]

http://www.omaha.com/news/crime/omaha-p ... aac73.html


In a 2012 case, Omaha crime lab technician Sarah Meyer connected a fingerprint from a burglary case to an Omaha man. Two of her fellow fingerprint analysts, Amanda Miller and Todd Petrick, agreed with Meyer’s conclusion.


The burglary suspect was not charged because prosecutors had no corroborating evidence.


Good thing. Fast forward 19 months. In March 2014, another man’s fingerprint was entered into a national computer database.


That man’s fingerprint turned out to be the correct match in the 2012 burglary.


Meyer, Miller and Petrick “were wrong,” the memo says.


Karenina Smith, who was then the manager of the Omaha crime lab, alerted her bosses, who alerted prosecutors.


Smith has since retired. Petrick is now acting manager of the crime lab.


In an email, one crime lab employee referred to the mistaken identification as “our worst nightmare.”


Michele Triplett — a fingerprint expert based near Seattle — has scoured books and newspapers for fingerprint misidentifications dating back to 1924.


She has found only 54 in 90 years, she said.


Triplett said virtually any lab, including the Omaha police crime lab, has peer review — where analysts verify each others’ fingerprint findings. Such a process should ensure that mistaken identifications don’t happen, she said.


“It’s just so rare for somebody to be wrong,” Triplett said, “that colleagues start to trust each other and take it for granted and just sign off on (the initial analysis).”


The mistaken identity promises to dog the Omaha analysts in court — a prospect that has led prosecutors to hire outside experts to verify the prints and bolster the credibility of the analysis.


In separate murder trials — both of which begin Monday — prosecutors plan to call a longtime Lincoln police fingerprint expert, Robert Citta, to testify as to his analysis of fingerprints that he says belong to defendants Mitch Wynne and Tracy Parnell.

[josher89]

http://www.omaha.com/news/crime/ex-nort ... 70d3e.html