I may have exaggerated a bit. Fingerprint evidence is almost entirely subjective analysis, relying on the person looking at the prints being ethical and unbiased. A perfect description of cops, if you ask me.
There have been a lot of high profile cases where fingerprint evidence was a “100% match”, even though that would been impossible. The Madrid train bombings 20 years ago are the first case that immediately comes to mind—a guy halfway across the world, who had no passport, and hadn’t left the country in a decade, had “his” fingerprints all over the bombs. But, he’d recently converted to Islam, and the wAr On TeRrOr had just started firing on all cylinders in Iraq, so he got Patriot Act’d for a month.
Fingerprints may very well be unique, but subjective analysis ain’t real science.
I may have exaggerated a bit. Fingerprint evidence is almost entirely subjective analysis, relying on the person looking at the prints being ethical and unbiased. A perfect description of cops, if you ask me.
There have been a lot of high profile cases where fingerprint evidence was a “100% match”, even though that would been impossible. The Madrid train bombings 20 years ago are the first case that immediately comes to mind—a guy halfway across the world, who had no passport, and hadn’t left the country in a decade, had “his” fingerprints all over the bombs. But, he’d recently converted to Islam, and the wAr On TeRrOr had just started firing on all cylinders in Iraq, so he got Patriot Act’d for a month.
Fingerprints may very well be unique, but subjective analysis ain’t real science.