Professor Imwinkelried Comments for Media on Fingerprint Evidence
Professor Edward Imwinkelried commented for The Verge on changing attitudes regarding the ways in which fingerprint evidence is used in court.
"In the past, fingerprint testimony has been badly overstated in court, but now we are working in the right direction," said Imwinkelried, who has written about the need for fingerprint matching technique reform. Imwinkelried explained that although in the past some examiners had claimed that they could identify the source of a print to the exclusion of every other person on the face of the earth, today many examiners acknowledge that that sweeping claim is unjustifiable. Moreover, following the example of the DNA field, the fingerprint community is now attempting to develop a probabilistic model for its analysis.
Professor Imwinkelried is a world-renowned evidence expert and has published extensively in the field.