Double Loop Podcast

Glenn and Eric are joined by Angela Hilliard to discuss her experiences with a cold case from the Pacific Northwest. Genetic genealogy provided a suspect's name from a cold case double homicide, and a latent palm print was left on the victim's van. Angela walks us through her initial erroneous exclusion, the subsequent identification, court testimony, and the resulting press coverage. A must-listen episode for examiners on how to handle erroneous conclusions, even in high-profile cases. (Apologies for the audio in this episode. We did not realize until later that some of audio was poorer quality than normal.)

This super-sized episode has the guys interviewing several people from a recent Expert Working Group on Human Factors in the discipline of DNA. Glenn starts by giving Eric his “Where in the Whorld” question and they catch up on some recent travels. Glenn also explains why this episode does NOT feature a continuation of the previous episode on the Peacemaker case, but instead pivots to a different DNA topic. In May 2024, NIJ/NIST released a Human Factors and Forensic DNA Interpretation report. (The) Niki Osborne, Ph.D., the project lead and contractor for NIST (Natl Institute of Standards and Technology) describes how the project came to be and how NIST selected the Expert Working Group (EWG). Then, two members of the EWG, Jarrah Kennedy, Assistant DNA Supervisor, Kansas City Police Crime Laboratory, and Michelle Madrid, DNA Technical Leader, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, discuss the various recommendations in the report. The group covers all sorts of fun topics within DNA discipline such bias, new software and computational approaches, activity level, implementation, enforcement, and so forth. The episode ends with Niki and Glenn discussing other disciplines and future reports.

Links to the free report:

Expert Working Group on Human Factors in Forensic DNA Interpretation (May 2024). Forensic DNA Interpretation and Human Factors: Improving Practice Through a Systems Approach. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, NIST IR 8503. http://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8503

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8503.pdf

Guests:

Nikola Osborne, Ph.D., NIST Contractor, and Project Lead for the Expert Working Group.

Jarrah Kennedy, Assistant DNA Supervisor, Kansas City Police Crime Laboratory

Michelle Madrid, DNA Technical Leader, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Eric and Glenn start the episode with a Where in the Whorld that leads to a little catching up. Glenn was in NYC recently (saw the Harry Potter show on Broadway, indulging his “magician” side) and Eric has been doing the conference circuit. Eric is also soliciting fingerprint experts for a research project on ‘estimating image resolution’ based on ridge density. The guys also got a listener voicemail that they discuss (and roundly disagree with). Finally they discuss the main topic for the show, a homicide case and trial that Glenn testified in: South Dakota v. Jeremiah Peacemaker. Glenn covers his involvement and the fingerprint evidence. In the second half of the show, the guys welcome Anjali Ranadive, who was the DNA expert for the defense, to discuss the DNA evidence and testimony in the case. Both Anjali and Glenn had an opportunity to witness the DNA testimony at trial and were astounded by the “scientific conclusions” drawn, and testified to, by the DNA analyst.

Contact Anjali Ranadive: [email protected]

Day 1 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-one/article_74b84328-d515-11ee-a210-8b7ef07e2631.html

Day 2 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-two/article_eb1531e4-d5e6-11ee-ac1c-f39cc7b07d9e.html

Day 3 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-three/article_6a7c27f2-d6b5-11ee-9124-3f5cf33a83bb.html#:~:text=The%20verdict%20is%20in%2C%20Jeremiah,on%20all%20counts%20of%20murder

Day 4 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-four---state-rests-its-case/article_46573850-d780-11ee-a368-573401987ead.html

Day 5 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-five/article_a1c7fbf2-d85c-11ee-8ef5-ef34bb7cdee9.html

Day 6 of Trial

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-six/article_29b37812-daa5-11ee-912e-9bf06a02bb89.html

Day 7 of Trial (Final Day)

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/murder-trial-of-jeremiah-peacemaker-day-seven---the-jury-is-out/article_b078ec24-db5e-11ee-bcfb-7b2eb5a1c73b.html

Verdict Announced

https://www.mykxlg.com/news/local/the-verdict-is-in-jeremiah-peacemaker-is-found-not-guilty-on-all-counts-of-murder/article_85ff1e54-db7d-11ee-b58d-27963af509b4.html

https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2024/03/05/jeremiah-peacemaker-found-not-guilty-death-kendra-owen/

Today Eric and Glenn finish Part 2 on the 2023 Report of the Texas Forensic Science Commission dealing with a latent print case. They continue to discuss the TFSC report that followed an investigation into a complaint filed against the latent print contractor(s) in the Joseph Webster case. In part 2, the guys focus on Glenn's examination which concluded that the Webster palm mark was a complex mark and that 3 critical things will shape the conclusion rendered by an examiner: 1) which images were used; 2) which features were relied upon; 3) how the examiner applied the ACE-V methodology. Finally, they discuss the over 2 dozen recommendations that the Commission made for fingerprint examiners in Texas to follow in latent print examinations.

www.txcourts.gov/media/1457617/fi…-as-of-12623.pdf

Today Eric and Glenn start Part 1 of a two-parter on the 2023 Report of the Texas Forensic Science Commission dealing with a latent print case. First the guys do some catching up and play Where in the Whorld. They also discuss an email from Simon Cole and inquire on the impact of the recent AI paper on fingerprints. Then they discuss the TFSC report that followed an investigation into a complaint filed against the latent print contractor(s) in the Joseph Webster case. The webster case was a homicide cold case that eventually broke with a CODIS hit and a subsequent apparent bloody palm print at the scene of the crime. Initially the palm print was not identified to Webster, but then after the CODIS hit occurred to Webster and a second person, the latent print evidence was re-visited in 2013, and an identification was declared (pursuant to reviewing additional palm print exemplars of Webster). Testimony occurred in 2016 by a project manager, but not any of the original examiners. In 2020, a contractor for the defense was hired to review the case and several examiners were unable to verify the identification. This conflict, as well as a review of the testimony, sparked a complaint to the TFSC in the case. The guys review the facts and details of the case in Part 1.

Link to TFSC Report

https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1457617/fir-complaint-2216-rsa-latent-prints-as-of-12623.pdf

Eric Ray and Glenn Langenburg sit down for a chat with Steve Johnson about face examiners, face comparisons, and the IAI. Steve's background includes latent prints, forensic art, face comparison, crime scene, and many positions with the IAI. He shares the future of the face discipline and how the IAI is working towards a certification process.

Eric and Glenn host another guest from Australia in today’s episode. After another round of Where in the Whorld and a few stories from Eric’s childhood, the guys welcome Chloe George from New South Wales Police Force, Australia. Glenn saw Chloe present at IAFS, where her presentation on phalange pattern classification won best Oral (Presentation). Chloe introduces a system of phalange pattern classification first described by Marie Ploetz-Radmann in 1937. She walks us through the system and the 12 general pattern types in phalanges and then also shares her personal data and testing that she performed.

A copy of her IAFS presentation can be found here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yrUsOFM5alJV1rQcrTGXiQkDb-3DuWUO/edit#slide=id.p5

In this post-New Year’s Eve 2023-2024 episode, the guys start by discussing their New Year’s Eve and play another round of Where in the Whorld. They then introduce their guest from the New South Wales Police Force, Andrew Chapman. Glenn had the benefit of seeing Andy’s presentation at IAFS in Sydney. Andy presented on a fingerprint black box error rate study conducted with laypeople, trainees, and experts in New South Wales, Australia. The guys discuss various statistics in the study, especially when comparing across the participant groups. The Aussie data are very similar to U.S. examiner data and the guys draw some parallels to other research. The guys also discuss some novel aspects to the study design that make this one such a fascinating study.

Glenn and Eric start by talking about their Christmas plans, followed by a game of “Where in the Whorld”. They then welcome their guest, Dr. Bethany Growns, a lecturer and psychologist at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand. Bethany joins the show to discuss her research on matchers, super-matchers, and research she has conducted with novices (lay people), fingerprint, firearms, and facial recognition experts. She discusses the advantages of natural ability v. trained expertise and how it impacts one’s ability to perform matching tasks in the expert’s domain v. other domains. The guys ask questions about how to utilize this research to impact training programs. Finally, they discuss more aspects of the IAFS conference where Glenn met Bethany.

Growns B, Dunn JD, Mattijssen EJAT, Quigley-McBride A, Towler A. Match me if you can: Evidence for a domain-general visual comparison ability. Psychon Bull Rev. 2022 Jun;29(3):866-881. doi: 10.3758/s13423-021-02044-2. Epub 2022 Jan 7. PMID: 34997551; PMCID: PMC9166871.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9166871/

Other publications by Growns https://www.bethanygrowns.com/publications

Are you a super-matcher? Test your skills!

Sign up to participate in studies by Dr. Growns:

https://canterbury.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_038MorkGlc9SDoW

Eric and Glenn respond to the recent allegations that a computer science undergraduate at Columbia University, using Artificial Intelligence, has “proven that fingerprints aren’t unique” or at least…that’s how the media is mischaracterizing a new published paper by Guo, et al. The guys dissect the actual publication (“Unveiling intra-person fingerprint similarity via deep contrastive learning” in Science Advances, 2024 by Gabe Guo, et al.). They state very clearly what the paper actually does show, which is a far cry from the headlines and even public dissemination originating from Columbia University and the author. The guys talk about some of the important limitations of the study and how limited the application is to real forensic investigations. They then explore some of the media and social media outlets that have clearly misunderstood this paper and seem to have little understanding of forensic science. Finally, Eric and Glenn look at some quotes and comments from knowledgeable sources who also have recognized the flaws in the paper, the authors’ exaggerations, and lack of understanding of the value of their findings.

Gabe Guo et al. ,Unveiling intra-person fingerprint similarity via deep contrastive learning.Sci. Adv.10, eadi0329(2024). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adi0329

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adi0329

https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/news/ai-discovers-not-every-fingerprint-unique

https://for-sci-law.blogspot.com/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/12/world/fingerprints-ai-based-study-scn/index.html