I. Introduction
Fingerprint identification, long regarded as "the gold standard for identifying criminals,"1 might be better analogized as an "emperor with no clothes."2 The reliability of fingerprint identification has never been comprehensively tested. The foundational premise on which fingerprint identification rests-that no two individuals have the same fingerprint-has never been proven. Nor has the fingerprint-identification process's error rate been established or even estimated.3 Yet for the better part of a century, fingerprint identification has been accepted and admitted in court, remarkably without question.
This article starts with a brief overview of fingerprints themselves and ...