3 ms·
That's like saying if a witness says "he had brown hair, that's all I can say", and only one of "the suspects" had brown hair, that's reason to convict him.
by jrochkind1 4y ago
That's like saying if a witness says "he had brown hair, that's all I can say", and only one of "the suspects" had brown hair, that's reason to convict him.
- Eisenstein 4y agoYou are misrepresenting the odds of a group of people having an outlier hair color vs a group of people having one which matches sufficiently well to a piece of evidence which excludes the others. 'I remember a brown car' vs "I remember a brown 1976 Ford coupe with worn tires and a broken side window'.
- pas 4y agoplease don't forget all the databases that can search for fingerprints, and all the suspects brought before the detectives, and at that point if they did not have a good enough alibi, or good enough psyche to withstand interrogation, or ...
- dsfyu404ed 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 4y agoThat's a fair comparison, although I don't know if the numbers work out to a 1976 Ford Coupe or more like a 2005 Honda Civic. But the other thing is, fingerprint analysis is also usually expressed as more like "a 70% chance of being a 2005 Honda Civic with worn tires and a broken side window", the match is always partial (another thing that science doesn't support, those %'s given). But would a jury think someone having a 2005 Honda Civic with worn tires and a broken side window is alone reason to convict someone? Probably not? Would they think "A 75% match with [fingerprint equivalent]" is alone enough reason to convict someone? Usually. Because they are very misinformed about what fingerprint "science" can and does do.