Law & Order (TV Series)
Myth of Fingerprints (2001)
David Green: FBI Agent Foster
Quotes
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FBI Agent Foster : I found seven false positives out of the twenty that I tested.
Serena Southerlyn : It's over a third.
FBI Agent Foster : Statistically, it's impossible that she just kept making that many mistakes. And it gets worse.
Serena Southerlyn : How?
FBI Agent Foster : The original forensics team recovered over a dozen partial prints from inside the car where the victim had been shot. Now, fortunately, those prints were kept in a file at another location. At the time, this examiner declared them all unidentifiable. That wasn't true.
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FBI Agent Foster : The methodology is based on the premise that no two sets of fingerprints are alike.
Mr. Rowan : Yes, but no one really knows what the error rates are, do they?
FBI Agent Foster : No.
Mr. Rowan : Which means you can't sit here today and tell us that print is not Campbell's?
FBI Agent Foster : Well, I don't think it is...
Mr. Rowan : But you cannot absolutely exclude him, can you?
FBI Agent Foster : No.