CLPEX Chat Board

An article in the "Weekly Detail" list of news articles about fingerprints includes an article on convictions in a triple homicide. Regarding fingerprint idents, the article says, in part,

A witness for the prosecution, Alma Flores, a fingerprint analyst from the California Department of Justice testified that the two fingerprints found on the business card showed enough points of similarity to be conclusively matched to Smith.

However, for 12 years prior, after analysis by two other state fingerprint experts, Pape and Smith were excluded as having left those prints. In fact, one of the prints was deemed unsuitable for comparison.

If you haven't already read it in the news post, read the whole article here:
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/01/t ... innocence/

Does anybody have any additional information on this case?

Here's the closest thing I could find to testimony, but it raises more questions than it answers.

8 point standard? If there were ever a time to raise NAS/PCAST, etc. it would have been in this trial.
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Here's the grand jury transcript as well. If you search for 'fingerprint' and then navigate to the various areas, you'll see some testimony regarding exclusions.

After reading all of this, I'd have to say that the print is probably excludable for inconclusive purposes only, unless you can identify it....the points told me so.

Thanks, Boyd!

I've reviewed latent print cases from other agencies that have previously determined a print was "no value" when I was ultimately able to identify it. I look at this as a missed ID and not necessarily any other type of error. If that agency had a specific metric that was used to call something of value, and this didn't meet the threshold, it is what it is.

I think there IS an issue when one agency says exclusion and the other says ID. I also question what the examiner actually meant by 8 points - as in, do they need at least 8 to keep it as a value impression and that ultimately wound up being all the points that were used to ID? I know the tweet says they indicated it required 8 points to designate it a match but we all know how testimony can be misinterpreted by anyone else. Should it have been brought up in cross? Absolutely.