Latent Print Analysis Passes Frye-Mack Challenge

State v. Dixon, Minn.Ct.App., 11/5/2012.  The state charged Mr. Dixon with first degree burglary.  The state’s evidence mostly was finger and palm prints collected by the Minneapolis Police Department at the location of the burglary.  Mr. Dixon launched a Fry-Mack challenge to the admissibility of evidence that he was the source of these prints.  Four days of hearing resulted in a determination that:

friction-ridge-print identification using the ACE-V methodology is generally accepted by experts in the field as reliable and that the examiner in this case complied with the appropriate standards and controls and could testify that she reached her resulting conclusions “to a reasonable scientific certainty.”

Here’s what the examiner, Ms. Bunkers, did:

Bunkers initially entered two latent fingerprints obtained from the scene of the burglary into MAFIN, requesting the ten best matches. For both prints, MAFIN identified the fingerprint card of appellant Terrell Matthew Dixon as the number one match. Bunkers made her own comparison of the latent prints to Dixon’s exemplar, evaluated the results, and concluded “identification.” Bunkers’s identification conclusion for each print was validated by another lab examiner. Bunkers notified an investigator on the case of the identification and continued to examine the rest of the prints obtained from the scene. Bunkers’s comparison of the remaining prints to Dixon’s finger- and palm-print exemplars resulted in Bunkers’s conclusion of “identification” for all of the latent prints as being from Dixon. These identifications were verified.

The trial court answered a number of questions on its way to concluding that fingerprint analysis is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community and that the testing of these particular fingerprints was reliable.  First, the relevant scientific community consists of experts in the field, which includes experts who actually analyze fingerprints and those who research the reliability of such analysis.  Next, the court concluded that the methodology employed by experts in the field – ACE-V – is widely accepted.  Next, the testing of these fingerprints was reliable.  Finally, the court said that Ms. Bunkers could express her opinion “to a reasonable scientific certainty.”