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Saturday, May 22, 2004
Portland case puts fingerprint technology under gun
PORTLAND -- The arrest and abrupt release of an American lawyer who was initially linked by fingerprints to the deadly train bombing in Madrid, Spain, may reflect the limitations of computerized fingerprint-matching, experts say.
Brandon Mayfield was jailed two weeks ago after a computer identified his prints on a bag of detonators in Spain. But he was freed Thursday after Spanish officials said fingerprints belonging to an Algerian were on the bag.
Fingerprint experts said that if Mayfield was the victim of an identification mistake, such errors are likely to become more common with the expanding use of computers that compile police records into huge databases.
"We're all baffled," Pat Wertheim, a fingerprint examiner for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, said when asked about the partial match that put Mayfield in jail. "The fingerprint community is really anxious to see these prints and try to understand what has happened."
In theory, no two fingerprints are the same, but some can look similar, according to the Web site of the Scientific Working Group on Friction Ridge Analysis, a group for fingerprint examiners.
No statistics exist on false fingerprint matches in the United States, but mistakes are believed to be rare, in large part because all fingerprints are checked by human examiners who make the final decision on a match.
But the federal database that tied Mayfield to the plastic bag in Madrid holds tens of millions of fingerprints. The computer compares curve angles and patterns to produce a list of possible suspects.
"Obviously, the larger the database, the greater the possibility of two fingers having roughly similar sets of coordinates," Wertheim said. "It's an issue that has troubled some of us in the business."
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