Fingerprints and Personal Identification of Murder Suspects

Fingerprints and Personal Identification of Murder Suspects
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Fingerprints and Personal Identification of Murder Suspects
This course has significantly helped a person understand how detectives use the fingerprint evidence from crime scenes to solve murder cases. Before taking it, one knows that fingerprint evidence has helped police officers to identify and apprehend suspects and solve numerous criminal cases. However, an individual did not know the various techniques that forensic experts use to collect fingerprint evidence without damaging them and analyze them to know the criminal suspect. In particular, every person has unique fingerprints that never change even when one gets old. Even identical twins with similar deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) have distinctive fingerprint patterns. The paper focuses on “A Complicated Murder Case Solved with the Aid of Fingerprints” by Almehiri et al. (2019) to see how the fingerprint is crucial in solving murder cases within a short period.
For many decades, fingerprints have been the benchmark in the legal community for personal identification. The course enabled one to learn about the law of individuality. Specifically, the law of individuality posits that no two individuals possess exactly the same fingerprint patterns. After detectives collect fingerprints from the crime scene, dactyloscopy is used to identify the victim, witness, or suspect. On April 26, 2016, Dubai police officers received a call that reported a dead body in a specific apartment (Almehiri et al., 2019). When the detectives arrived, they found a body lying on the floor with strange red marks on the victim’s nose. The dead body was tied with distinctive adhesive tapes (Almehiri et al., 2019). In addition, there was a piece of paper that had red powder on it and a water bottle beside the body. The forensic experts gathered all relevant materials they found with precaution and diligence to avoid destroying the evidence left behind by the perpetrators.
Dubai police officers used different methods to capture latent, plastic, and patent fingerprints from the crime scene. The initial strategy was using oblique lighting to detect latent fingerprints. Notably, detectives must select the methods to use in collecting fingerprints from the crime scene carefully. Powder methods and chemical techniques are usually destructive, and once used, no other method would be applicable. Dubai police officers used cyanoacrylate to collect latent fingerprints from the water bottle. The red powder found on a piece of paper was removed carefully, and the Ninhydrin technique was used to preserve fingerprints. After cyanoacrylate, a fluorescent dye stain, Ardox, was used together with ultraviolet light. Afterward, a digital camera was used to record t...