In May 2004, FBI agents arrested an Oregon lawyer named Brandon Mayfield, and claimed he committed an incomprehensible crime.
Mayfield ? the agents alleged ? was involved in the terrorist bombings of Spanish commuter trains in Madrid in March.
They were sure he was the guy.
Positive.
Confident.
After all, they had fingerprint evidence identifying Mayfield from the crime scene.
But there was one problem with the FBI?s case ? the fingerprint evidence wasn?t from Mayfield. It was from an Algerian halfway across the globe.
The failure in the FBI?s misidentification of Mayfield in the internationally important terrorism case embarrassed the agency and the science of fingerprints generally.
“We found a series of systemic issues, particularly in the FBI laboratory, that helped cause the errors in the Mayfield case,” U.S. Department of Justice investigators wrote in a lengthy report on the case.
Now, its ramifications are being felt in Maryland.
Citing the Mayfield case, a Baltimore County judge last week threw out fingerprint evidence in a death penalty case against a man charged with a 2006 carjacking and murder at Security Square Mall.
“It was not until the infamous erroneous fingerprint identification of Brandon Mayfield in 2004 by top FBI latent print examiners, however, that deficiencies in the latent print field received serious attention,” Circuit Court Judge Susan Souder wrote.
Prosecutors are incensed by the ruling ? saying it flies in the face of 100 years of good work by police and prosecutors.
Caught off guard by the ruling, Baltimore County prosecutors received a postponement Tuesday in the death penalty case against Bryan Rose, 23, of Baltimore, who is charged with first-degree murder and attempted armed carjacking in the January 2006 killing of Warren Fleming, 31, outside the mall. The trial is rescheduled for April 7.
Patrick Kent, the head of the Maryland Public Defender?s Forensics Division, said he hopes other judges? take notice of Souder?s “courage” and discount what he considers to be an unreliable science.
“Yes, they?ve been used for 100 years, but there?s been no serious scrutiny of them for 100 years,” he said.
His sentiment was echoed by Douglas Wood, a Maryland defense attorney who has successfully defended clients in the past by challenging fingerprint examiners.
“It really depends on who the examiner is,” he said of the reliability of fingerprint evidence. “I?ve seen good ones from the FBI and terrible ones not from the FBI. Peoplethink that fingerprints are foolproof, but that?s sort of a myth. Many times, they?ve never been challenged.”
