Evidence of fingerprints
Abstract
Evidence of fingerprints has proved to be undoubtedly to be crucial in the solving of criminal cases. This paper gives out a discussion depicting the history of fingerprints. It goes ahead to explain the importance of fingerprint using several examples, which include the case studies where fingerprints have played a crucial role in solving many crimes that were complex to solve.
Introduction
Throughout time fingerprints have proved to be a crucial aspect, especially in solving crimes. Fingerprints have aided many individuals in the determination of who is who and which prints belong to which person. It is the work of crime scene investigators to solve crimes, sometimes the crimes are usually complicated, but having the right tools and evidence, the answers can be more easily found. Fingerprints are a vital tool used by crime investigators in the process of solving crimes. The fingerprints are always found at actual crime scenes, and they are taken to the labs for analysis and a determination of whose fingerprint it is made. Each human being has their individual fingerprint, and this is why the aspect of fingerprinting is very crucial in solving crime and also as an evidence piece.
History of Fingerprints
To begin with, the whole procedure and history of fingerprints date back in time to the 1800s. Sir Herschel William, the first individual to employ the fingerprints as signatures on contracts, before they were realized to be more useful in solving crimes (History of Fingerprints Timeline, 2012). Dr. Henry Faulds, a British surgeon, wrote down about the employment of fingerprints for the identification of persons. He started by first taking a look at a clay pot that had printed, and then he set off to study the patterns and ridges made on the clay pot. In the year 1891, Vucetich Juan gave a suggestion to begin taking criminal fingerprints in order to keep the records of the prints. In the following year, Mr. Vucetich was able to identify a print from a young woman who had murdered her two sons. The crime investigators got her print and were able to match it correctly with her identity. Sir Francis Galton, a cousin to Charles Darwin, published his first book which talked about fingerprints, in his book he talked about how every person has a fingerprint that is unique to them (History of Fingerprints, 2012). In the early 1900s, the fingerprints grew in popularity in the United States. The FBI and many departments of police started to use the prints as proper identification ways, and in the end, the prints were stored.
A figure of ancient fingerprints.
Fingerprints have proved to be important in solving crime cases; for instance, the first case I am going look at is the British murder case in the tear 2009, where fingerprint evidence was employed in solving the murder and yielded the required results. In south London, clubbed bodies of Ann and Thomas Farrow are found by their neighbors. At that point, Mr. Thomas was already dead, but Ann was all the while just seated but eventually kicked the bucket after not being able to recover her cognizance after four days. The wrongdoing, which was very merciless, fathomed the use of the newly created system of fingerprinting. Three years later, an English court capitulated that there was a unique fingerprint impression, which was a breakthrough as proof of a trivial case of burglary. The case of the Farrows acted as the first occasion when innovation was capitalized in a prominent case of homicide. One print in the case did not coordinate the individuals in question. Luckily a milkman in the neighborhood hood gave a detailed explanation of how he saw two young individuals in the region of the house of the Farrows upon the homicide’s arrival. Before any longer, the two were distinguished as siblings, and later after some days, the police caught up with them and were fingerprinted. One of the siblings’ fingerprints, correct thumb turned out to be an excellent counterpart for the fingerprint that was on the money box of the Farrows. That unique mark emerged into the arraignment’s just crucial proof when it turned out that the milkman was not able to decidedly identify the siblings.
Fingerprint evidence, despite often not being able to solve that British murder case, still may be low recurrence capitalized within crime investigations. The police use fingerprint evidence to make the identity of individuals by comparing them with those that were lifted at crime scenes with the prints that already exist in the police files. (Today, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has got a collection of fingerprints which numbers in millions).
A criminal trial that was the first one to employ the use of fingerprint evidence was when an individual by the name Thomas Jennings employed a freshly painted railing to escape a scene of the murder. However, he unwittingly left something behind that would change the works of the detectives. In the wake of robberies, many residents of the south side Chicago neighborhood were already pushed on the edge. A railroad clerk by the name Hiller ran to confront an intruder. In the process of the scuffle, two individuals fell down the stairs. His daughter later recalled the sounds of three shots. Later a man was seen by neighbors as he was fleeing the home while leaving Mr. Hiller dying at his front door. The assailant who was unknown did not make it far. Jennings Thomas, who had been on parole earlier on for six weeks, was stopped a mile away with a bloodied and torn coat, and he was also carrying with him a revolver. Despite all that, it was what Mr. Thomas left behind, which was the focal point from which his trial would base on. The fingerprint, which was from a freshly painted rail unto which he hoisted himself through the house window of Hillers’s house.
The police took photographs of the rail and also cut off the rail, they asserted that the rail would give the identity of the perpetrator. In the court’s eyes, the police were so right that Hillers murder led to the conviction of the first criminal case with the use of fingerprint evidence in the US. This method, at times very controversial, the method endured more than a century later. Not only does fingerprinting contain a framework that is legitimate but also has a strategy that is hidden when it was first used by the American police. Fingerprints, as composed in the late 19th century by Sir Francis Galton, are still assessed in a similar manner with dependence on the curves portrayal, whorls, and circles. To add on that, the crucial procedure of collecting and contrasting the fingerprints remain to be strikingly comparative with that which was connected to the arrangement of the prints which were discovered at Hillers home.
In 1924, an individual named Preston W. James in Los Angeles was arrested for a minor charge. The media houses in Los Angeles ran stories depicting him as the culprit, and the jury went ahead to sentence him. However, after a few years, the real culprit was found due to a fingerprint impression that was realized, and Preston was released. In the year 2004, in another case, through the use of fingerprints, an individual named Brandon Mayfield from Oregon was indicted wrongfully for a bombarding in Madrid, Spain, in an event where the Federal Bureau of Investigations examiners asserted a 100% unique marking coordinate. After a few weeks, an Algerian National was viewed to be the real culprit, and the left many natives also questioning the legitimacy of the fingerprint impression evidence.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we have learned that since time immemorial, fingerprints were a crucial aspect in the aiding of solving cases and also acted as a medium through with other individuals who were exonerated from other crimes that they did not commit. This paper had further depicted how the current development in countries like the United States, Spain and also the United Kingdom had enhanced the utilization of fingerprints in solving crime for instance in bombarding that took place in the streets of Madrid in Spain when fingerprints were employed 8n the process of indicting an individual after the culprit was caught up with. It is indeed clear that in the process of crime-solving, fingerprints play a very crucial role in aiding officers who come across the perpetrators of those crimes.