FINGER-PRINTS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 June 1932, Page 6

FINGER-PRINTS

evidence for conviction

BURGLARY IN HASTINGS

NAPIER, June 5

When a Hastings shopkeeper on the morning of April 12 found that a rear window of his shop had been removed and £lO worth of goods stolen, he informed the police. Detective Farquharson discovered that the broken glass of the window had been stacked below, and on the glass there were fingerprints. The glass was 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 Just and Lionel Bernard Dust. When the brothers came up for trial in Napier evidence was given by Edmund Walter Dmjnie, senior sergeant in charge of thf. Criminal registration branch at Wellington. He said he examined the jn'ints and compared them-Yvith the Sprints of a number- of persona, identifying them with certain records in the office of the prints of the two accused. There were records in the office of the prints of 50,000 persons land it was usual to be able to pick out the correct corresponding prints in five minutes.

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 fingers of the same person agreed. It wa.s 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 their were five points of resemblance the odds were calculated at .31,000 to one against a mistV. In one of the present cases there were 14 points of resembance 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 become obsessed by their o ecu pa" tions and he suggested that the jury were entitled to disagree with the views of the expert.

Summing up his Honour said that that v r as not by any mans the first caee which hacl depended solely on fin-' gerprint evidence. It was for the jury to decide the matter, but it seemed to him that the persons whose prints were on the glass wore the persons who committed the crime. Tt was true that some theoretical expert- became obsessed and their evidence bad to be scrutinised closely because the science was not an exact one. The fingerprint system stood on a different basi«s. Fingerprints 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 print sc-orresponded.

The Jury returned after an absence of ten minutes with a verdict of guilty in" each case.