Fingerprint & Footprint

Fingerprint and Footprint Analysis

The presence of a person’s fingerprint at a crime scene does not necessarily demonstrate that they were the offender, however, many people have been charged on this basis alone. Fingerprint Experts are Forensic Scientists who scrutinise and evaluate all the factors pertinent to the fingerprint evidence, not just the ‘identification’ reported by the police Fingerprint Expert.  It is this wider, more thorough, approach that has previously shown some prosecution allegations cannot be sustained by the evidence and in some cases has proved the defendant’s innocence.

One of the great strengths of the UK’s Criminal Justice System is the ability of the Defence to view and question the evidence of the Prosecution, and if your case is based around the identification of an individual through a fingerprint, how can you be assured that the evidence offered is fair, unbiased and above all else, accurate.

Fingerprint Expert evidence and identification errors came under the spotlight in 2011 with criticism by Judges in the Court of Appeal case of R-v-Smith and numerous recommendations made by the Chairman of the Fingerprint Inquiry Scotland, the most thorough review of fingerprint methodology the UK has known since the evidence was first adduced over 100 years ago.

Our experts go above and beyond the required standard and produce high-level reports.

Click on the names below to read the profiles of our fingerprint experts

David Goodwin