Tenth Circuit Joins Consensus On Admissibility Of Fingerprint Evidence
In conspiracy to possess marijuana and illegal firearm possession prosecution, expert fingerprint testimony identifying the defendant’s thumb print on guns and ammunition was admissible under FRE 702 and Daubert even though the defendant raised “questions regarding whether fingerprint analysis can be considered truly scientific in an intellectual, abstract sense”; circuit extensively explored the current argument regarding admissibility of fingerprint evidence under the ACE-V (analysis, comparison, evaluation, and verification) process for determining matches applying the Daubert admissibility factors, in United States v. Baines, __ F.3d __ (10th Cir. July 20, 2009) (No. 08-2098).
FederalEvidenceBlog also accounts for the other circuits on how they rule on such issues.
How the courts deal with fingerprints seems to illustrate a feeling that they have been admissible for so long that they are absolved from being inadmissible under Daubert. Thus Daubert only applies to “new” science.