Fingerprints: Not a Gold Standard: A Few Judges are Showing Signs of Skepticism, And It's About Time‪.‬

In January 2002, Judge Louis Pollack made headlines with a surprising ruling on the admissibility of fingerprints. In United States v. Llera Plaza, the distinguished judge and former academic issued a lengthy opinion that concluded, essentially, that fingerprint identification was not a legitimate form of scientific evidence. Fingerprints not scientific? The conclusions of fingerprint examiners not admissible in court? It was a shocking thought. After all, fingerprints have been used as evidence in the U.S. courtroom for nearly 100 years. They have long been considered the gold standard of forensic science and are widely thought to be an especially powerful and indisputable form of evidence. What could Judge Pollack have been thinking? About six weeks later, Judge Pollack changed his mind. In an even longer opinion, he bluntly wrote, "I disagree with myself." After a second evidentiary hearing, he had decided that despite fingerprinting's latent defects, the opinions of fingerprint identification experts should nonetheless be admissible evidence. With this second opinion, Pollack became yet another in a long line of judges to preserve the status quo by rejecting challenges to fingerprinting's admissibility. Since 1999, nearly 40 judges have considered whether fingerprint evidence meets the Daubert test, the Supreme Court's standard for the admissibility of expert evidence in federal court, or the equivalent state standard. Given Pollack's about-face, every single judge who has considered the issue has determined that fingerprinting passes the test.