Opinion ID: 3014242
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Government’s Experts

Text: approach—which gained favor with the FBI in the late 1940s, App. 378a— is to Steven Meagher, an FBI special use a combination of quantity and agent, testified at the hearing about Level quality: If ridge characteristics are 1, Level 2, and Level 3 detail (as abundant, then the quality of Level 3 described above), and other aspects of detail is unimportant; but a paucity of fingerprint identification. With regard to Galton points can be compensated for by the FBI’s practices, technology, and high-quality Level 3 detail. While this operations, he testified about the ACE-V 7 protocol; that the FBI does not rely on a cellular bases for the permanence of minimum “points” standard for matching friction ridge arrangements. Ed German, fingerprints (and why it does not); and of the United States Army Criminal about the Automated Fingerprint Investigation Laboratory, testified to the Identification System (“AFIS”) computer lack of similarity found between system (which automates some corresponding fingerprints of identical preliminary aspects of fingerprint twins, a conclusion established by his matching). Meagher also described a own research on identical twins and survey (which we discuss, infra) of state confirmed by other studies of identical fingerprint identification agencies that he twins. prepared and circulated for the purpose The government also offered David of demonstrating that the fingerprint Ashbaugh, of the Royal Canadian match in this case was, by wide Mounted Police, who testified broadly consensus, correct. He also described an about the development, comparison, and experiment (which we also discuss, identification of friction ridge skin and infra) designed and run in cooperation impressions. Like the other government with the contractor for the FBI’s AFIS witnesses who were examined on the computer system, Lockheed Martin, that matter (viz., Agent German, Agent would search a portion of the AFIS Meagher, and Dr. Budowle) he database for identical fingerprints. responded that it was his opinion that Donald Zeisig, of Lockheed Martin, and friction ridge arrangements were unique Bruce Budowle, a statistician and (the “uniqueness proposition”) and population geneticist with the FBI, were permanent (the “permanence also involved in this experiment, and proposition”), and that positive both testified at the Daubert hearing. identifications can be made from Zeisig also testified in greater detail fingerprints containing sufficient about the technical background of the quantity and quality of ridge detail. Dr. AFIS computer system. Babler also opined that friction ridge The government offered two arrangements are unique and permanent. witnesses focusing principally on the These propositions were the foundation biological aspects of fingerprints. Dr. of the government’s argument that latent William Babler, of Marquette University, fingerprint identification evidence testified about the prenatal development satisfies Daubert. of friction ridges, opining that unique The government conducted two arrangements of friction ridges develop experiments in anticipation of the in the womb within a matter of months Daubert hearing: (1) a survey of state after conception. He also testified to the fingerprint identification agencies asking medical community’s accepted them, inter alia, if they could match the understanding of the anatomical and latent prints in this case to Mitchell’s ten- 8 print card; and (2) a search for identical Part B of the survey was designed as fingerprints using data in the AFIS a demonstration of the ACE-V computer system.2 The specifics of these identification protocol, and it used the experiments bear on their relevance as latent fingerprints at issue in this case. expert evidence, and so we describe them Part B offered each agency photographs in some detail. of the two latent prints and of Mitchell’s ten-print card. Agencies were asked first For purposes of this case, Meagher to attempt to identify the ten-print card created a survey packet that was sent out using their own computerized fingerprint to the principal law enforcement agency database. It is common practice (for of each of the fifty states, plus the efficiency’s sake) to “filter” the database District of Columbia, Canada’s Royal in making an identification, by Canadian Mounted Police, and the considering only the subset of records United Kingdom’s Scotland Yard. The (by race, sex, date of birth, etc.) that are survey contained three parts: Part A likely to result in a match. Meagher involved questions about whether the requested that agencies not filter their agency currently accepts fingerprints as a database for this test, to ensure that the means to individualize (i.e., make an prints were compared against the identification), and about whether the maximum possible number of print agency regards fingerprints as unique records. Of the forty-seven agencies that and permanent. All fifty-three recipients responded, the only match that was found responded in the affirmative to both was in Pennsylvania, where Mitchell’s queries. Joint Supp. App. at 56. Part C ten-print record was already on file. inquired whether the agencies had ever found two individuals to have the same In the second segment of Part B, fingerprint; the response was, agencies were asked to attempt to match unanimously, no. Part C also revealed the latent prints to their existing records. that, in the aggregate, the ten-print The only “hits” were made by the two records of nearly 70 million agencies (Mississippi and South Dakota) individuals—or about 700 million that inputted the ten-print card supplied fingerprints—have been examined by Meagher into their system prior to during the course of the agencies’ running the search (and thus raised the operations. likelihood of a match). Pennsylvania was unable to run this search because of equipment troubles, but represented that 2 We note that these experiments—and, it undoubtedly would have made a match indeed, much of the expertise marshaled if its system were fully operative. both by the government and by The third segment of Part B asked Mitchell—required resources and agencies to perform manual comparisons preparation that are far from typical in of the latent prints to the ten-print card federal criminal trials. 9 provided to them. This survey was than M itchell; and in the third segment, single-blind, i.e., while Meagher knew no agency matched a latent print to any that the latent prints had been identified finger other than the one to which the as Mitchell’s, knew that the ten-print FBI had matched the latent print. card was Mitchell’s, and believed the The second experiment conducted by latents could be matched to the ten-print the government’s experts was known as card, none of the survey recipients was the “50/50” experiment. This was an told any of this. Roughly two thirds of empirical examination by computer of a the agencies responded to this portion. subset of the FBI’s fingerprint records to Over three quarters of the responding search for pairs of very similar agencies matched both prints consistently fingerprints taken from different sources. with the FBI’s identification. Of those Finding such a pair would undermine the that did not match both prints, half uniqueness proposition, see supra page matched only one print consistent with 8, that the government’s other experts the FBI’s identification, and half testified was well-established. The matched neither print. In followup experiment data set was a set of fifty communications, the FBI either thousand prints (out of about 340 million convinced these non-identifying agencies in the FBI’s AFIS computer system). that a match did exist and they so Rather than select these fifty thousand acknowledged (though it took the strong prints at random, the experimenters suggestion of annotated blown-up (Agent Meagher, Mr. Zeisig, and Dr. photographs of the prints), or otherwise Budowle) took them from the subset of established reasons for the non- prints that were from white males and identification (e.g., the examiner deemed exhibited a left-sloped whorl pattern at the quality of the supplied photographs to Level 1 detail. The experimenters also be too poor to make an identification, ensured that multiple prints from the and would have preferred an original; or same person were included in the set of the comparison was performed by an fifty thousand. The effect of these inexperienced examiner, and on review, restrictions was to bias, from the outset, a senior examiner was able to find a the prints toward being more similar (and match). hence more likely to contain a matching A critical summary point is that no pair).3 agency ever registered a “false” positive (i.e., a positive match that contradicted 3 the FBI’s result): In the first segment of An analogy may illustrate this biasing Part B, no agency matched Mitchell’s effect: Consider a large multicolored pile ten-print card to someone else’s ten-print of crayons produced by mixing several card; in the second segment, no agency boxes of crayons. If one chooses a dozen matched the latent prints to anyone other “dark” crayons at random, one is more likely to find among those dozen crayons 10 In the first part of the test, a computer the world other than the person who program—using the same algorithms as deposited the print at approximately one the FBI’s AFIS computer system uses to in ten to the eighty-sixth power (i.e., 1 match prints—attempted to match each chance in 1 followed by 86 zeroes), a of the fifty thousand prints against the very low probability indeed. full set of fifty thousand prints (hence the Apparently recognizing that analysis moniker “50/50”). Thus, a total of of full-rolled prints was not particularly 50,000 x 50,000, or 2.5 billion, germane to the question of the comparisons were performed. For each identification of latent partial prints, the print, the best match was, by an government’s witnesses conducted a enormous margin, itself.4 Based on second experiment. From each of the statistical extrapolation from these fifty thousand prints, they had the results, the experimenters put the chances computer create a simulated latent print of a single full-rolled print matching (referred to as a “pseudolatent print” or another full-rolled print from anyone in simply a “pseudolatent”), as might be recovered from a crime scene, by taking a pair of exactly the same color than one only about a fifth of the full-rolled print.5 is to find such a pair if one selects a They then ran a similar fifty thousanddozen crayons at random from the pile at by-fifty thousand comparison to see how large. strongly the pseudolatent prints matched full prints from which they had not been 4 We note that the comparisons were derived. With one exception which we run for each print against all 50,000 identify in the margin, each pseudolatent prints, not against the other 49,999 was a strong match with the full print prints. Thus, every print was assured of from which it had been derived, by a having a tautologically perfect match wide margin over any other full print. 6 (i.e., itself) that could serve as a baseline for statistical comparisons. This was done to quantify statistically how much 5 The pseudolatents were 21.7% of the better the perfect match was than all areal size of the full print, a figure which other comparisons. The cases in which a Meagher determined was the average print was a strong match for a print other size of a set of actual latent prints that he than itself were subsequently discovered had previously used for testing. to be the product of a double-entry in the 6 database (i.e., a set of prints from the Meagher explained that the sole same person had been entered into the exception was caused by a poorly created database twice). The experimenters fingerprint card. On the card in question, testified that the system’s ability to catch the flat impression had strayed out of the this unintentional duplication bolstered region on the card designated for the flat their confidence in its capabilities. impression, and had left part of a print in 11 Statistical computations based on this described which agencies adhered to a experiment put the probability of a latent point system, how many points they partial print matching the full print of required to make an identification, and anyone in the world other than the person noted that the agencies that did not find a who deposited the print at approximately match generally reported that they had one in ten to the sixteenth power (i.e., 1 found an insufficient number of points of in 10,000,000,000,000,000), also a very similarity between the latent print and the low probability. ten-print card. Ms. Peterman also reported on the varying levels of