The minimal number of
points of similarity required in more demanding jurisdictions varies
wildly and arbitrarily from one jurisdiction to another.
It was Francis Galton, a 19-century statistician, who pegged, in 1892,
the probability that the prints of two individuals would match at 1:64
billion. This calculation was based on 35-50 "Galton details" -
features related to ridges in the fingerprint.
In forensic practice, only 8-16 such points are used. No one knows to
calculate the probability of matching fragments of two individual
fingerprints - though most fingerprints recovered from crime scenes
are partial.
In the case of Byron Mitchell, in 1998, two latent prints were said to
substantiate his guilt. The FBI sent the latent prints and Mitchell's
inked fingerprints to the laboratories of 53 state law enforcement
agencies. Of the 35 that bothered to respond, fourteen failed to find
a match for one of the two latent prints. America's National Institute
of Justice (an arm of the Department of Justice) is conducting a study
of the reliability of fingerprinting - finally.
http://www.crimelibrary.
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