EDITORIAL
Police fingerprints
1/27/2004
PROSECUTORS and defense attorneys often debate whether forensic technologies, especially fingerprinting, rise to the status of "real" science. There is no debate, however, that Stephan Cowans of Roxbury spent more than six years in a real prison based largely on a bogus identification of a thumbprint by the Boston Police Department. Nothing about the so-called latent print identification unit of the Boston Police Department inspires confidence at this time. The unit consists of eight police officers, not trained scientists like those working on DNA evidence in the department's crime lab. Personnel qualifications, quality assurance, management practices, and technical procedures in the crime lab are subject to ongoing analysis by the accreditation board of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. The fingerprint identification unit, however, has never sought accreditation from the society.
It is not uncommon for fingerprint identification units to fall outside the purview of crime labs. But it's a bad organizational structure, based more on turf than efficacy. Mistakes of this kind could be avoided by placing the unit under the management of civilian scientists.
The kindest explanation would suggest that shoddy camera work and poor analysis mistakenly linked Cowans to the shooting of a Boston police officer in 1997. But a more ominous question hangs over the department. Was the desire to find the shooter of a police officer so strong that it distorted the judgment of investigators and technicians?
The mind-set of the investigators and fingerprint personnel, not just technical skills, must be examined in this case.
The Cowans case has the potential to derail other cases that rely on fingerprints. Nationwide, defense attorneys are increasingly likely to challenge the validity of fingerprint evidence, citing proficiency tests showing that crime labs frequently fail to identify a set of latent prints on the initial try. What was once considered foolproof technology is now subject to important questions regarding error rates, peer review, and professional standards.
Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley is moving to restore confidence by asking State Police experts to review the fingerprint work of the Boston police on future cases. He also expresses willingness to look at cases after conviction.
"We're not going to rely exclusively on the Boston Police Department," says Conley.
Injustice is common enough in Massachusetts to warrant an "innocence commission" to collect and analyze data in every case of wrongful conviction. It is Cowans's conviction, not his fingerprints, that belongs under the microscope.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
