In an excerpt from a law review article by the Judge, he notes:
- Fingerprint evidence is foolproof.
Not so. Identifying prints that are taken by police using fingerprinting equipment and proper technique may be a relatively simple process, but latent prints left in the field are often smudged and incomplete, and the identification process becomes more art than science. When tested by rigorous scientific methods, fingerprint examiners turn out to have a significant error rate [PDF]. Other types of forensic evidence have also been called into question by recent scholarship.
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