FINGERPRINTS ONLY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 10

FINGERPRINTS ONLY.

SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE. TWO BROTHERS CONVICTED. BURGLARY IN HASTINGS. When a Hastings shopkeeper on the morning of April 12 foxind that a rear window of his shop had been removed and £10 worth of goods stolen, he informed the police. Detective Farquliareon discovered that the broken glass of the window had been stacked below, and on the glass there were fingerprints. The glass wae sent to Wellington for investigation, and it was found that the prints were identical with those of the fingerprints of two brothers, Francis William Max Juet and Lionel Bernard Just.

When the brothers came up for trial in Napier this week evidence was given by Edmund Walter Dinnie, senior sergeant in charge of the criminal registration brunch at Wellington. He said he examined the prints and compared them with the prints of a number of persons, identifying them with certain records in the office of the prints of the two accused. There were record's in the office of the prints of f<o.ooo persons and it was usual to be able to pick out the correct corresponding prints in five minutes. The oaas. Answering the Chief Justice, witness said he had studied the fingerprint system for 29 years. It was an exact science and it had never been found that the prints of any two persons in the world or even two fingere of the same person agreed. It was stated by authorities that where there were four or five points of resemblance between the record and the impression one could justifiably state that the impressions were identical.

If there were five points of resemblance the odds were calculated at 31,000 to one against a mistake. In one of the present cases there were 14 points of reeeniblance and the odds were 6,000,000,000 to one against a mistake. In the other case there were 45 points of resemblance, but witness had not worked out the figures.

Counsel for the defence said there was no corroboration of the expert's evidence, by which the Crown's case must stand or fall. He said many experts became obsessed by their occupations, and he suggested that the jury were entitled to disagree with the views of the expert. An Exact Science.

Summing up, his Honor said that this was not by any means the first case which had depended solely on fingerprint evidence. It was for the jury to decide the matter, but it eeemed to him that the persons whose prints were on the glass were the persons who committed the crime. It was true that some theoretical experts became obsessed and their evidence had to be ecrutinised closely because the science was not an exact one. The fingerprint eystem stood on a different basis. Fingerprinte remained the same from birth till death, subject to the result of accidents, and during all the years the system had been in use no two persons in the world had been found whose prints corresponded. Tho jury returned after an absence of ten minutes with a verdict of guilty in each case.