Fingerprint Evidence in Court: How Flawed Error Estimations Disserve the Criminal Legal System

Estimations of rates of errors committed by forensic fingerprint examiners play an important role in the criminal legal system. Judges and jurors rely on error rate estimations as primary indications of the probative value of assertions by fingerprint examiners that they can reliably identify the people who deposit latent prints at crime scenes. Recognizing the need to qualify fingerprint…