Miscellaneous

Maryland Finds Prints Not So Charming

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Like a feminist princess, one Maryland trial court will not wait for prints to come to the rescue...(hey, it's Friday!)

The fact that it was a capital case may have made all the difference. "Death is different," opined the court. So it's not clear whether the rejection of partial latent fingerprint evidence as not establishing a reliable factual foundation would apply in other types of cases, or whether it could be one of many factors in a case with different facts.

One commentator (see below) noted that the so-called Frye court seemed "extraordinarily Daubertesque." But in fact, jurisdictions have a difficult time defining their evidentiary standards. Check out this NCSC survey to see how jurisdictions self-report. The distinctions are fuzzier than a caterpillar.

The team at Science & Law Blog has several posts relating to the case: Exclusion of Fingerprint Evidence, And More on Fingerprints..., and Additional Thoughts on Maryland v. Rose (Fingerprints).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).