Reliability Of Fingerprints

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Fingerprints are very unique characteristics that each person on this earth has. They are idiosyncratic and can be very complex. Fingerprinting itself has been around for a while, dating back to the nineteen centuries. Investigators use fingerprints and the method of fingerprinting analysis to help solve cases and crimes.
Fingerprints start to form when a fetus is around ten weeks and are to be completely developed when the fetus is about six months old. While developing each fingerprint forms a unique pattern. These different patterns consist of ridges, arches, loops, and whorls. Ridges are the first marks that appear on the skin. Ridges are very faint lines on the fingertips. They help create the base foundation of a fingerprint. When the …show more content…
This system required staff to measure the length of an inmate’s head, head breadth, middle finger, and the length of the feet. This method was widely accepted by many different states and was the most dominate form of identification until 1903 when the West Case tested the reliability of these measurements. In 1903, Will West was sent to a prison in Leavenworth, Kansas after committing a crime. After his measurements were taken using the Bertillon system, they were found to be almost identical to the measurements of another inmate at the prison by the name of William West. William West was serving a life sentence and had been in the Kansas prison since 1901 after he was charged with murder. The staff then compared their photographs and found that these two men even resembled each other. Even though many of their physical characteristics were similar, the fingerprints of these two men were found to be very different. After this case, the use of the Bertillon system began to decline and the use of fingerprints was used as a more accurate form of differentiating between …show more content…
Francisca Rojas two boys were brutally murdered in the village of Necochea and her throat was also slit. Rojas denied having anything to do with the murders and said that a man named Pedro Ramon Velazquez committed the crime. Velazquez was interviewed and interrogated but would not admit to killing them. Investigators found a bloody fingerprint on the bedroom door, Juan Vucetich removed it and requested that Rojas be fingerprinted. Vucetich compared the fingerprint recovered from the scene to Velazquez and Rojas. The print did not match Velazquez, but it did in fact match the two boys’ mother, Francisca Rojas. When confronted with the evidence against her, Rojas confessed to the murders. Thomas Jennings was the first man to be convicted by fingerprint evidence in the United States in 1910. Jennings was convicted of murder after his fingerprints were found on the victim’s door. He stated that he did not have anything to do with the murder and also decided to appeal his conviction but the evidence was too strong against him. Today in the United States, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) is used by the FBI and many law enforcement agencies. AFIS has been around since the 1960s and one of the primary functions of it is to obtain, store, and analyze fingerprint data from inmates and people who have committed crimes. These new modern technologies make it easier for
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