Yep, Brandon Mayfield. A scary case. I had forgotten what city--I just knew it was the Pacific Northwest. We show a documentary to our Innocence Project students about this case. The FBI examiners called it a match. They were looking at a smudged partial print and the print they had on file for him from an arrest several decades earlier. He was held for two weeks by the FBI as a material witness, without being charged with a crime. And he'd never been to Spain. But hey, he was a convert to Islam after meeting his wife, who was from Egypt. So obviously a terrorist.
His attorney consulted an outside examiner, and Mayfield felt certain their expert would exonerate him. Instead, he also called it a match.
The problem is that there are no standards whatsoever, or scientific studies that back this "science." DNA came to the criminal field by way of medicine and has tons of peer-reviewed research backing it. None of the other so-called forensic disciplines have that. They were all created to catch criminals, and the proof that they work is that people get convicted. No scientific scrutiny. It's all self-fulfilling prophecy. It works because they get convictions and they get convictions because people think it works.
When you study fingerprint analysis scientifically, the flaws become obvious immediately. In one study, fingerprint analysts were given a set of prints that they had already deemed to be a match previously. They weren't told that fact, and 80% of the time, they reached a different conclusion.
This all may seem a little off-topic for the NFA section, but my point is that we've suddenly got a new regulation requiring fingerprints to be submitted for tons more people. And ultimately, there's zero scientific evidence that it is an accurate way of identifying criminals. Instead, we have both anecdotal evidence (Mayfield) that prints are not unique, and scientific evidence (the study mentioned above) that trained analysts can't reliably replicate their results. I'd absolutely prefer not to give the federal government the ammunition they need to wrongfully convict me of crimes I didn't commit.
the seller does the NICS check
Just FYI, though, they don't. Look at box 22 on the 4473. It reads "No NICS check was required because the transfer involved only National Firearms Act firearm(s)." The dealer just checks that box and sticks the 4473 in his files.
Aaron
