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ournal by a group of scientists [9]. Although published articles on fingerprinting do exist, they certainly have not been peer-reviewed properly. They are now commonly reviewed by fingerprint examiners, who may only be considered as a fingerprint technician, but not fingerprint experts [9]. They are considered as technicians because they are trained only on the process fingerprint comparison and identification, and not on the understanding of the underlying principle of fingerprinting [9].

In concerning the error rate, it divided into two aspects: the examiner’s errors and the methodology errors [9]. The examiner’s errors refer to the probability that the examiners find a correct or wrong match between two individuals. The latter one refers to the probabilities that matching the fingerprints from two unrelated individuals. It is found that the error rate should never be zero, as it is only the case when there is 100% match between the two prints [9]. It is rarely happened, due to environmental disturbances, and the distorted prints left in the crime scenes, examiners usually only confirm a match by getting a small number of similar points.

Secondly, there is no clear standard for fingerprint examiners to follow when deciding whether a match is achieved. Each examiner compares and identifies fingerprints subjectively, so they all adopt different standards. The expert in Harvvard did provide an explanation to it, by stating an experienced fingerprint examiner would be able to determine at which level of fingerprint comparison that a match should be confirmed, and standards were actually not required [1]. It is clear that the lacking of a single standard of fingerprint identification does not fulfill the requirement of having a standard under Daubert. Nowadays, confirmation of a match is usually achieved by getting a minimum number of points satisfied between them. This is called the Galton Points [9]. Different countries required different number of points, for example in United Kingdom, seven is the minimum, but in France, sixteen points are required to confirm a match [9]. In United States, no fixed number of points is required for a match [9]. Each examiner can adopt their own standards according to their own experience or based in different cases.

5. General acceptance

In United States v. Crisp, the court stated that fingerprint identification is generally accepted in both the scientific community and the court, satisfying the Daubert’s test of being generally accepted [1]. A number of studies have been done in fingerprinting by fingerprint experts. In fact, they all come to a negative conclusion. For example, David Stoney stated that the theory behind fingerprinting has not been scientifically validated [10]. Michael Saks has also stated that fingerprinting identification process is subjective [10]. Both of them have also stated that no clear standards for fingerprint identification. It is clearly shown that the fingerprint identification has not been generally accepted in the scientific community, but only generally accepted by the fingerprint technicians.

6. Recent cases on the admissibility of fingerprint evidences

The above ambiguous court’s statement in both cases leads to a more vigorous criticism on the admissibility of the fingerprint evidences. A few years later, two cases: Brandon Mayfield [11] and Maryland v. Rose [1] do change the co