Six and a half years is a long time to spend in prison. For Stephen Cowens of Roxbury, Massachusetts, it was six and a half years too long.
In January of Boston police and prosecutors admitted they were wrong when, at Cowens trial for murder, they claimed that fingerprints found at the crime scene unquestionably belonged to him. Cowens, 33 at the time of his release, had spent a fifth of his life in prison. Despite this wrongful conviction—and at least several others—fingerprint examiners maintain that print identifications are infallible. Attorneys for Terry Patterson, accused in the murder of a Boston police detective, asked the SJC to throw out the fingerprint identifications, the only evidence against Patterson, and to bar all print identifications until the method is subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny.
Most famously, Brandon Mayfield , an Oregon lawyer, spent two weeks in jail in because three FBI experts matched his prints with those found on a plastic bag that was evidence in the investigation of the Madrid train bombings. Spanish authorities continued to try to match the prints after the FBI arrested Mayfield and eventually linked them to an Algerian man.
S ince defendants rarely challenge the accuracy of fingerprint evidence, there could be many more undiscovered mistakes. Regardless of the exact number, it is clear that innocent people have been jailed because of fingerprint identifications that were wrong.
Since , when prosecutors first introduced them as evidence, U. But unlike DNA evidence, fingerprinting was adopted before the Supreme Court decided that attorneys and expert witnesses have to prove that evidence is scientific and reliable. Fingerprint identification rests on a simple anatomical feature of primates. The skin of their soles, palms and, most importantly, fingers contains raised ridges and glands that secrete oil to keep the skin supple. When someone touches an object he transfers some of the oil from his fingers, leaving behind the ridge pattern.
