Validating and Discrediting IAFIS
The adoption of the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System led to groundbreaking prosecutions. Unfortunately, the system is not perfect as misidentifications and database errors have occurred since its implementation.
Video from FBI's 2009 Latent Hit of the Year (2010).
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Oct. 1978, Sarasota, Florida: Murder of John AllamanLatent prints were recovered from the crime scene, but no matches could be made. After exhausting each lead, the case went cold until investigators used IAFIS to close it in 2009.
"The Sarasota Police Department reopened the investigation in 2008 with the hope that current forensic technology would help solve it. The latent prints recovered from the television set were searched in IAFIS, and within 15 minutes, a response was returned with a list of possible suspects and their prints. A latent print expert from the Sarasota PD compared the prints and made a positive identification—a California man with extensive criminal records in multiple states. He was located in California and extradited to Florida." |
Oct. 2002, Washington, DC: Beltway Sniper Case"...at 3:19 in the morning on October 24, 2002, to be exact—(the FBI) closed in on the snipers who’d been terrorizing the Washington, D.C., area over the course of 23 long days...During the month, 10 people had been randomly gunned down and three critically injured while going about their everyday lives—mowing the lawn, pumping gas, shopping, reading a book." "On October 17, a caller claiming to be the sniper phoned in to say, in a bit of an investigative tease, that he was responsible for the murder of two women...during the robbery of a liquor store in Montgomery, Alabama, a month earlier...Investigators soon learned that a crime similar to the one described in the call had indeed taken place—and that fingerprint and ballistic evidence were available from the case...The following morning, fingerprint database (IAFIS) produced a match—a magazine dropped at the crime scene bore the fingerprints of Lee Boyd Malvo from a previous arrest in Washington State…The arrest record provided another important lead, mentioning a man named John Allen Muhammad." "IAFIS was instrumental in the capture of Lee Boyd Malvo, one of the two suspects in the 2002 Washington, D.C., area sniper case (because) a latent print entered into IAFIS matched Malvo." |
Photos taken from WTOP.com's "Beltway Snipers Artifacts: An Inside Look," the National Law Enforcement Museum's "Collections Update: Beltway Snipers Task Force", and TruTV.com's "Trail of the Capital Beltway Sniper Photo Gallery".
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"The FBI defended itself on Wednesday after admitting that it had missed a fingerprint match for a man who the authorities say went on to kill three women and one teenage girl in three states. The man, Jeremy B. Jones, was arrested for minor offenses in Georgia in January and June 2004. But Mr. Jones was released when computerized checks did not turn up a 2000 warrant for him for rape, sodomy and jumping bail in Oklahoma...He gave the name John Paul Chapman. His prints were sent to FBI to run against the national database. No match turned up, and Mr. Jones was released. The FBI created a new record for his prints under the name Chapman." |
In 2005, IAFIS failed to identify a murderer who gave a false name, revealing a technical error with the system.
Photos and captions from Elizabeth Engstom's Article "Jeremy Bryan Jones, Serial Predator and Meth Monster" on TruTV.com (2012).
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The Misidentified "Thanksgiving Day 2002 Slayer"
"Lana Canen, 53, was released Friday from the Elkhart County Jail after a judge who overturned her 2005 murder conviction in the Thanksgiving Day 2002 slaying of Helen Sailor ordered her free...At her trial, prosecutors said she conspired with her co-defendant, Andrew Royer, to rob Sailor and that Royer strangled the woman. Both were convicted and given 55-year prison sentences. Canen appealed her conviction and earlier this year, an Arizona fingerprint expert discovered that an Elkhart County sheriff's detective, Dennis Chapman, had misidentified a fingerprint found on a pill bottle in Sailor's apartment as Canen's." |
Headline and quotation taken from Honolulu Star Advertiser's "Woman freed over fingerprint that wasn't hers" (Nov. 4, 2012).