CLPEX Chat Board

I am curious in anyone would be willing to post a generic sample of your agency's "bench notes" or a form used for evaluation of latents and or in the comparisons of latents.

As a follow up question for those that also run AFIS sytems or look at the unsolved latents against current bookings; do you make "bench notes" for those cases (latents) that show up as candidates as part of the 10 print searches of the unsolved latent database?

Thanks

SK, we don't take contemporaneous (and that's my big word for the day) bench notes as we're analyzing and comparing fingerprints.

I was just at a conference where a prominent Fingerprint Expert (who shall remain nameless but whose initials are Pat Wertheim - hi, Pat!) noted that the three areas next to be challenged in court are 'confirmation bias', 'blind verification' and 'bench notes'.

You can imagine what a p.i.t.a. contemporaneous bench notes would be! It is almost impossible to put the comparison process into words, and it would just give the defense one more thing to pick apart on the Stand. (Besides, it would mean that I would have to clean up some of the names that I have for some ridge detail when I am searching for it.....).

My standard response to a court challenge would be that taking bench notes is not part of the procedure established by my employer. Please God that's the way that it stays!

I was just curious if there are others out there doing this specifically ASCLAD labs. With all of the comparisons that we do on a daily basis including on screen examinations from our AFIS from in-custody bookings.

Thank you for the in put and response.

There was a ruling in the New Hampshire Superior Court in January 2007 about this very issue. The court excluded latent print evidence because the examiner did not keep bench notes.

If you want a copy of the ruling let me know and I'll e-mail it to you.

jlemay@co.weld.co.us

Jan LeMay wrote:There was a ruling in the New Hampshire Superior Court in January 2007 about this very issue. The court excluded latent print evidence because the examiner did not keep bench notes.

If you want a copy of the ruling let me know and I'll e-mail it to you.

jlemay@co.weld.co.us

But the issue in the New Hampshire case, regarding bench notes, wasn't that they didn't keep bench notes. Rather that their SOP's stated that they keep "contemporaneous" notes, which it was decided that they did not. This meant that they didn't follow their own SOP's.

There's a bit of discussion regarding this in one of our earlier threads, starting on the third page: http://clpex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t= ... c&start=30