Fingerprint Botch Felt
in Maryland
BALTIMORE
- For more than 100 years, police have relied on fingerprints to
help identify criminals.
But in a groundbreaking ruling, a Baltimore County judge has
disallowed prosecutors from using fingerprint evidence against a man
facing the death penalty in a 2006 carjacking and murder at Security
Square Mall.
“Fingerprints — along with DNA — are the gold standard for
evidence,” said Scott Shellenberger, the Baltimore County state’s
attorney, who said he was “shocked” by the judge’s ruling. “The
judge took 100 years of history and rejected it.”
In
her Friday ruling, Judge Susan Souder wrote that just because
fingerprints have been used by police for years does not make them
reliable.
“The
long history of use of fingerprint identification does not by itself
support the decision to admit it,” Souder wrote. “Courts began admitting
fingerprint evidence early last century with relatively little scrutiny.
Relying on precedent, later courts simply followed.”
Caught
off-guard by the ruling, prosecutors asked — and received — a
postponement Tuesday in the death penalty case against Bryan Rose, 23,
of Baltimore, who is charged with first-degree murder and attempted
armed carjacking in the January 2006 killing of Warren Fleming, 31,
outside the mall. The trial is rescheduled for April 7.
In her
ruling, Souder cited problems with fingerprint evidence in a joint
investigation conducted by Spanish and U.S. authorities.
After
the March 11, 2004 terrorist bombing of commuter trains in Madrid,
Spanish National Police recovered fingerprints from a plastic bag
containing explosive detonators, but the FBI used the prints to
misidentify a suspect in the case, Souder wrote.
That
case is not alone, wrote Souder, lamenting the lack of the certainty
with fingerprint evidence — which is not 100 percent reliable —
especially in a death penalty case.
“For
many centuries ... humans thought that the earth was flat,” the judge
wrote, comparing fingerprint evidence to an old, discredited idea. “...
But science has proved that the earth is not flat.”
Souder’s decision was immediately hailed by Rose’s defense attorneys,
but Shellenberger and his prosecutors worried other judges might soon
follow suit and eliminate the crucial form of evidence for police and
prosecutors to use.
“How
far does this go?” he asked. “In Baltimore County and the state of
Maryland?”
