by Joann Loviglio, Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - FBI-administered tests to measure the proficiency of its fingerprint examiners are “a joke,” said an expert whose work led to a conviction in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
“To give this to an expert is a joke; it’s too easy,” Allan Bayle testified Tuesday, the second day of a federal court hearing on the validity of fingerprints as evidence. “If I gave my experts these tests, they would fall (down) laughing.”
Bayle, a one-time Scotland Yard fingerprint analyst who now works as a private consultant, said the FBI’s long-secret proficiency exams don’t test examiners’ abilities at all because the fingerprints are far clearer in the tests than the often smudged and incomplete prints from real-life crime scenes.
He said the test prints are therefore too easy to match up with the accompanying 10-print identification cards, such as those kept on file in many police departments.
In some cases, the proficiency tests included fingerprints from the same person for four consecutive years - as well as fingerprint identification cards with fake names like “I. Rob Bank” and “Maxwell Coffee,” Bayle said.
“It doesn’t seem to be taken seriously,” he testified, and told U.S. District Judge Louis H. Pollak that the judge could pass the FBI tests after six weeks of training.
Bayle’s testimony was intended to discredit government witnesses who said FBI examiners almost never err when linking the tests’ make-believe crime scene prints to their maker. The government wants to convince the judge to rethink his Jan. 7 decision barring experts from testifying that fingerprints lifted from a crime scene “match” those of a particular defendant.
Pollak said in the ruling that fingerprint evidence has not been scientifically tested, its error rate has not been calculated and that there are no standards for what constitutes a match.
Bayle, however, said he did not question the validity of fingerprint evidence itself, although he was critical of the tests.
“You believe it’s reliable and you use it day in, day out, in your work, is that correct?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Sarmousakis asked. “Yes,” said Bayle, who provided fingerprint evidence in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial.
Fingerprint analysis is a century-old technique in which a print is classified by its arches, loops and whorls, then compared to crime scene fingerprints by design type and by locating certain fixed points and counting the ridges between the points.
Pollak’s ruling is believed to be the first of its kind. If left to stand, it could ultimately change the way evidence is gathered and presented in court.
The judge Tuesday recalled to the stand FBI fingerprint expert Stephen Meagher, who testified Monday that he knew of no examples of an FBI examiner making an erroneous identification and testifying about it.
When asked by the judge if he knew of mistakes by anyone else, Meagher acknowledged that he knew of several examples of other law enforcement agencies verifying a “match” in court and later being found wrong.
The fingerprint issue stems from a death penalty case in which Carlos Llera-Plaza, Wilfredo Acosta and Victor Rodriguez are charged with operating a multimillion-dollar drug ring and are linked to four killings. Their trial is set to begin next month.
Under Pollak’s ruling, experts may testify about and compare “latent” fingerprints from a crime scene and “rolled” fingerprints on file, but can’t declare a match.
Though other judges are not required to follow Pollak’s ruling, legal experts say it has opened the door for other courts to address the issue.