Fingerprint Analysis Again Passes Daubert Muster
The Tenth Circuit recently joined the Third Circuit in upholding against a Daubert and FRE 702 challenge the admissibility of fingerprint identification. In United States v. Baines, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 15945 (10th Cir., July 20, 2009), the appeals court affirmed a trial court's decision to admit fingerprint identification testimony which implicated Baines in the possession of certain weapons.
FRE 702 requires, inter alia, that expert testimony result from the application of reliable principles and methods, and the Supreme Court in Daubert set forth a series of criteria against which to measure those methods and principles, including testing; peer review and publication; potential error rates; standards of operation; and general acceptance in the relevant community. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., 509 U.S. 579, 594-94 (1993). It was clear from the record below, which included pretrial testimony from an FBI fingerprint specialist, that the government could not establish several of the Daubert criteria -- the process of reviewing known against latent prints is not measured by the FBI for error rates, because no such statistics are kept; no objective standards for comparison exist, and the FBI admittedly applies subjective criteria; and there is little or no peer review.
Nevertheless, the Baines court upheld the testimony's admissibility. The Daubert criteria, the Tenth Circuit, emphasized, are flexible and fingerprint analysis is not really the kind of scientific testimony at which Daubert was aimed, and is more akin to technical expertise. Applying a relaxed version of the Daubert criteria, the Baines court agreed with the Third Circuit opinion in United States v. Mitchell, 365 F.3d 215 (3d Cir. 2004)
