False Fingerprint Evidence

James W. Preston was convicted of robbing a Los Angeles widow and shooting her when she tried to escape. The victim, Mrs. Dick R. Parsons lived at 906 W. 50th St. The perpetrator had entered through a first floor window, and on the dust of the screen, fingerprints were found. Preston was arrested on a minor charge a few days after the crime. His fingerprints were compared with those found on the screen, but did not match. For some reason, however, the Los Angeles newspapers carried stories stating that Preston had been identified as Mrs. Parsons' assailant through the fingerprints. The source of this misinformation could not be determined.

Mrs. Parsons read these accounts, and when Preston was brought to her bedside she identified him as the man who had shot her, claiming she saw in him the eyes of the masked robber. She also assured the police that Preston's voice, which was admittedly a peculiar one, was the same as the voice that had ordered her to "stick 'em up."

Prior to trial the prosecutor must have been very doubtful of his case, because he kept offering plea deals that became more and more generous. On the third try, he offered to drop all charges if Preston would plead guilty to simple assault, which carried a maximum sentence of 6 months. Preston replied, "I didn't do it, and I will not plead guilty to anything."

At trial, the prosecution withheld fingerprint evidence. Preston had an alibi witness who placed him 22 miles away in Long Beach at the time of the crime. He also testified in his own defense. The jury convicted him of robbery, burglary, and assault, but not of assault with intent to murder. At sentencing the judge appeared to believe that fingerprints found at the crime scene matched those of Preston, though the evidence was not brought up at trial. Perhaps the judge had read and believed the newspaper stories. The judge cross-examined Preston at sentencing, mentioned the fingerprint evidence, and seemed incredulous that Preston refused to admit his guilt. The judge sentenced Preston on each of the three charges ranging from 11 years to life, to be served consecutively.

In May 1926, a match was found from the crime scene fingerprints to a suspect arrested for other burglaries. While being questioned by the police, the suspect expressed the contempt for fingerprint identification and said: "Listen! If I told what I knew about fingerprints an innocent man would be released from San Quentin tomorrow." In Sept. 1926, following the suspect’s conviction for the Parsons’ crime, Governor Richardson granted Preston a full pardon. (CTI) [11/07]

Cook County, IL	James Newsome	Oct 30, 1979
Newsome was convicted of the murder of Edward "Mickey" Cohen, 72, during a robbery of Cohen's grocery store. The store was located at 8911 S. Loomis St. in Chicago. After two eyewitnesses had picked photographs of someone else out of a mug book, police put Newsome into a lineup. He was then informed that he had been identified. Newsome was tried and convicted of murder and armed robbery based on these witnesses and a third eyewitness. In 1989, Newsome obtained a court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to run unidentified fingerprints from the murder scene through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The check was run, and the officer in charge falsely reported that the search found no prints matching anyone else. It was not until five years later that police admitted that prints were found to match those of Dennis Emerson, who by then was on death row for another murder. Newsome was freed in 1994 and Gov. Edgar granted him a pardon based on innocence in 1995. In 2003, Newsome was awarded $15 million for 15 years of wrongful incarceration. (NL) [6/05]

Suffolk County, MA	Stephen Cowans	May 30, 1997 (Jamaica Plain)
Cowans was convicted of charges related to firing a bullet into Sgt. Detective Gregory Gallagher's buttocks using the officer's own gun. The conviction was based on fingerprint evidence, but it was later determined that the fingerprint that allegedly matched Cowans, came from a hostage of the real shooter. The officer and another witness identified Cowans as the assailant, but the hostage witnesses who spent the most time with the assailant disagreed. The Boston Police Department technician, who processed and matched the fingerprint, had been suspended for ten days in 1992 after he was caught drunk without his pants along the Charles River. DNA tests exonerated Cowans and he was released in 2004. In 2006, Cowans was awarded $3.2 million. (IP141) (InjusticeBusters) (Boston Globe) [10/05]

St. Louis County, MN	Roger Sipe Caldwell	June 27, 1977
Caldwell was convicted of murdering Elisabeth Congdon, an elderly Duluth heiress, and her nurse, Velma Pietila. Caldwell had married Marjorie Congdon LeRoy, the adopted daughter of the victim, in 1976. Marjorie received $22,000 per year from trust funds established by the Congdon family, and stood to inherit and estimated $8,200,000 when her mother died. Caldwell was convicted because his fingerprints allegedly matched prints left behind by the perpetrator. A year later when his codefendant went to trial, three expert witnesses for the defense testified that Caldwell's prints did not match. Caldwell's conviction was later reversed on appeal. [10/07]

Delaware County, PA

Riky Jackson

Sept 1997 (Upper Darby)

After Alvin Davis was stabbed to death, investigators found bloody fingerprints on a window fan leading to his body. Upper Darby Police Detective Anthony Paparo then matched the prints to Davis’ friend, Riky Jackson, finding at least 11 points of similarity. Paparo had a fellow fingerprint examiner, Police Superintendent Vincent Ficchi double-check his work. Ficchi concurred. At trial, Papparo, Ficci, and another expert testified that the prints belonged to Jackson. The defense had two retired FBI examiners testify that the prints did not match. However, Davis was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Following the conviction, the defense experts filed a complaint with the International Association for Identification about the three prosecution experts. The complaint triggered a review of the evidence by the FBI, which concurred that the prints did not match. Because of the FBI’s finding, Jackson’s conviction was reversed and he was released from prison after serving more than 2 years of his sentence. (Tribune) [3/08]

Northampton County, PA	Robert Loomis	1918 (Easton)
Loomis was convicted of murdering Bertha Myers during a burglary. Two fingerprint experts testified for the prosecution that a latent print found on a jewelry box belonged to Loomis. Loomis won a new trial because the trial judge had prejudiced the jury against Loomis, and he won a third trial for the same reason. At Loomis's third trial, the prosecution admitted that Loomis was not the source of the latent print and declined to offer it into evidence. The record does not show what led the government to this conclusion. Loomis was acquitted and released in 1921.

Smith County, TX

Kerry Max Cook

June 10, 1977 (Tyler)

Cook was sentenced to death for the murder of Linda Jo Edwards, a 21-year-old secretary. Edwards was a college student who was having an affair with her married professor. Cook was arrested in a club where he worked as a bartender. The club was chiefly known as a gay bar, and police theorized that Cook was a degenerate homosexual who hated women.

Cook was convicted because: (1) A single fingerprint found on the outside of a sliding glass door of Edward's apartment was identified as Cook's. Cook had once been in Edwards’ apartment, but a fingerprint expert testified that it was 12 hours old at the time Edwards’ body was found, placing him in the apartment at the time of the murder. This testimony went unquestioned. (2) The victim's roommate testified that she had seen Cook in Edwards’ apartment, around the time of the murder. (3) A jailhouse informant testified that he heard Cook confess to the crime. At trial, the prosecutor branded Cook a "little pervert," telling the jury, "I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't eat [the victim's] body parts." At sentencing, Dr. James Grigson, who had helped send more than 100 defendants to death row, testified that Cook had an antisocial personality disorder, virtually assuring that he would kill again.

Later all the trial evidence was discredited because: (1) The fingerprint expert admitted that it is impossible to date a fingerprint. He said that prosecutors pressured him to give false testimony. (2) It was learned that the victim's roommate had originally said she saw Edwards’ professor in her apartment rather than Cook. (3) The jailhouse informant recanted his testimony that he heard Cook confess.

The state's highest court threw out Cook's conviction, ruling that the state's “illicit manipulation of the evidence permeated the entire investigation of the murder'' and that prosecutors had "gained a conviction based on fraud and ignored its own duty to seek the truth.” Cook was freed in Nov. 1997, but only after pleading no contest to a time-served sentence. Cook spent nearly 20 years in prison, most of them on death row. After his release Cook married and had a son he named Kerry Justice, saying, “After 23 years, Justice has finally arrived.”

Cook has written a 2007 book about his ordeal entitled Chasing Justice. The book notes that Cook was helped by Centurion Ministries, and that its founder went on a retreat to question his faith in God after attending one of Cook's trials. One is hardly surprised, as the book is one of the most harrowing tales of corrupt prosecution ever written. (CM) (NL) (TWM) [10/05]

California	John Stoppelli	1948
Stoppelli was convicted of drug trafficking in an Oakland federal court. Internal Revenue Agent W. Harold "Bucky" Greene determined that Stoppelli's fingerprint was on a package of heroin seized in an Oakland raid in which four men were arrested. Greene found fourteen matching ridge characteristics. The four men said he was not involved and, on the day of the raid, Stoppelli had registered with his probation officer in New York, 3,000 miles away. An FBI lab later determined the print did not match Stoppelli. Stoppelli then sought a new trial, but his request was denied, because the FBI analysis was not “new” evidence, just a reevaluation of “old” evidence. President Truman commuted Stoppelli’s sentence after he had served 2 years. (JusticeDenied) [1/07]

California

William DePalma

Nov 28, 1967

DePalma was convicted of on charges of being the sole gunman who robbed the Mercury Savings and Loan in Buena Park, CA. Following the crime, Sergeant James David Bakken, an Identification Officer for the Buena Park Police, identified a partial fingerprint purportedly lifted from the bank counter as the fingerprint of DePalma. A local warrant was issued, but it was subsequently dismissed and the case was tried in U.S. District Court.

At trial, Sergeant Bakken testified as a government witness. An FBI latent print examiner also testified, but only in regard to whether the lifted fingerprint matched DePalma’s fingerprint. He gave no testimony on the source of the found fingerprint. DePalma was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Some time later, presumably years, Sergeant Bakken was indicted in a completely separate matter for perjury and for manufacturing evidence. Since DePalma had been persistent in his claims of innocence, authorities re-examined the partial fingerprint in his case. They concluded that the partial fingerprint was not lifted from a bank counter, but from a photocopy of DePalma’s fingerprint. DePalma’s conviction was vacated in Feb. 1974. DePalma later sued the City of Buena Vista and in Aug. 1975 accepted “a sizeable settlement.” (Source) [12/07]

Oregon

Brandon Mayfield

Mar 11, 2004

On March 11, 2004, a number of bombs were detonated on trains in Madrid, Spain, which killed 191 people and injured about 2000 others, including American citizens. A bag containing detonation caps was found outside a train station through which all the bombed trains had left or had passed through. On March 17, digital images of fingerprints found on the bag were transmitted to the FBI and run through their AFIS database of fingerprints. When latent print #17 was run, the database produced 20 possible matches. FBI Senior Print Examiner Terry Green then manually compared the potential matches and found a 100% match with the fourth ranked print on the AFIS list. The FBI has long claimed that fingerprint identification is infallible. A top FBI fingerprint official had testified to a “zero error rate.”

Two other FBI print examiners purportedly confirmed Green’s match. The source of the matching print corresponded to the left index finger of an Oregon attorney named Brandon Mayfield. It is suspected that Mayfield’s Muslim religious beliefs and his activities as a lawyer influenced the match.

On April 2, the FBI sent a letter to Spanish authorities reporting the match. On April 13, the Forensic Science Division of Spanish National Police responded that the purported match was “conclusively negative.” On April 21, a representative of the FBI Latent Print Unit flew to Madrid and met with ten members of the same Division.

On May 6, the federal government applied for warrants to arrest Mayfield as a material witness and search his home, office, and personal vehicles. It represented that at the meeting with the Spaniards, the Spaniards felt satisfied with the FBI’s print match. However, that was not the Spaniards’ interpretation. The Spaniards later stated that at the conclusion of the meeting they refused to validate the FBI’s finding and maintained there was no match. The federal government’s warrant affidavits also mentioned that Mayfield had represented a Jeffrey Battle in Oct. 2002 in a child custody matter, noting that Battle had been subsequently arrested and convicted as a member of the Portland 7 on federal terrorism charges.

Mayfield was arrested the same day, May 6. Prior to his arrest, his home had been secretly searched under provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act. The intruder(s) had aroused his family’s suspicion by bolting the wrong lock on the door and leaving a footprint that did not match any family member. Following Mayfield’s arrest, FBI agents seized many personal belongings including what they termed “Spanish documents” -- apparently Spanish homework by one of Mayfield’s sons.

On May 20 it became known that the Spanish police identified an Algerian as the source of the latent fingerprint. Mayfield was released the same day. The FBI then appeared to blame the mismatch on not having the highest resolution of the fingerprint. Subsequently the FBI determined that the print was of “no value for identification purposes.” This point is difficult to understand since the FBI used it to identify Mayfield, and the Spanish police used it to identify an Algerian. Evidence indicated that the FBI simply overlooked discrepancies between the fingerprint sent to them and that of Mayfield. (Champion) (MSNBC) [3/08]

United Kingdom	David Asbury	Jan 1997
Asbury was convicted of murdering a 51-year-old woman and stealing a biscuit tin containing £1400. His conviction was reversed in 2002 after the fingerprint identification linking him to the crime was discredited. Asbury spent 3 1/2 years imprisoned. (FJDB) [11/07]