FINGERPRINTING

Fingerprinting



Fingerprinting

Introduction

A death penalty case involves three men charged with operating a multi-million dollar drug ring linked to four murders. The men involved are Carlos Ivan Llera -Plaza, Wilfredo Martinez Acosta and Victor Rodriguez. These three men sit before U.S. District Court Judge Louis H. Pollak (Sealy 1).

From this information, nothing looks out of the ordinary. A closer look into this case reveals a significant difference from other cases in the past. Judge Louis H. Pollak has ruled that fingerprint identification is unreliable. Judge Pollak banned experts from testifying whether a fingerprint taken from a crime scene matched that of a defendant (The Economist 3). This controversial decision comes at a point in time where fingerprint evidence has been accepted in courtrooms across the United States of America since the early twentieth century. Judges have always regarded fingerprint evidence as scientifically sound in the court system (Stern 3).

Discussion

In making his ruling, Judge Pollak relied on a 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The decision gives judges the power to decide what scientific evidence is admissible in a trial. The court established the "Daubert" guidelines, which are designed to prompt questions about the scientific sturdiness of certain types of evidence, such as whether it has be adequately tested, what it's error rate is, and, in the case of fingerprinting, whether there are standards for what constitutes a "match" (The Economist 2).

In order for us to determine whether or not fingerprint evidence is scientifically sound, we need to look at what constitutes a match. Fingerprints are unique. Each person's fingerprint is like a snowflake, there are millions of them, yet no two are exactly alike. I personally find it hard to take a latent print from the scene of a crime, and compare it to a database of millions of fingerprints. Fingerprint databases are built from police stations, jails, prisons, and identification programs like Identi-Kid.

What is a Daubert hearing? The opinion governs the admissibility of scientific evidence in Federal court and many state and local jurisdictions which have adopted it. Daubert opinion states that the Federal Rules of Evidence superseded "general acceptance" tests for admissibility of novel scientific evidence; the rigid "general acceptance" test, which arose from Frye v United States, 293 F2d. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923), is at odds with the liberal thrust of the Federal Rules of Evidence (Meagher 2).

Defendants Carlos Ivan Llera-Plaza, Wilfredo Martinez Acosta, and Victor Rodriguez are charged with a series of four murders for hire committed in Puerto Rico and Philadelphia in the summer of 1998. The four young men killed were Ricky Guevara Velez in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico on June 17, 1998, Luis Garcia and Jorge Martinez on July 12, 1998 in Philadelphia, and Jose Hernandez on September 24, 1998 in Philadelphia. The murders were carried out to further the goals of a large cocaine and crack cocaine distribution organization with ties to Philadelphia and Puerto Rico (Meehan 6).

Critical fingerprint identification evidence ties Llera-Plaza and co-conspirator Ivan Torres to a "hit team" car used by ...