Request for Information About Similar Cases & Procedures

On May 12, 1999, an Illinois Appellate Court accepted, in People v. Davis, No. 2-97-0725, the uncontroverted testimony of two state police experts (a fingerprint examiner and a questioned document examiner) that:

- lip print identification is generally acceptable within the forensic science community as a means of positive identification because it appears in the field literature;

- lip print identification methodology, although seldom used, is very similar to fingerprint comparison and is a known and accepted form of scientific comparison;

- there is no dissent in the forensic science community with regard to either the methodology used or the fact that lip prints provide a positive identification;

- the F.B.I. and the Illinois State Police consider that lip prints are unique like fingerprints and are a positive means of identification; and,

- that the fingerprint examiner, working her first lip print case, was able to verify and testify to these facts, and that the questioned document examiner found at least 13 points of SIMILARITY between a standard and the partially blurred questioned print and determined that they matched.

While there are a few mentions of lip print identification cases in the occasional law enforcement literature, the editor of Forensic-Evidence.com is not aware of any published studies in peer reviewed journals: (1) that provide empirical proof of the study of lip characteristics showing their individuality; (2) that show the manner in which lip prints are like fingerprints in that no friction ridge characteristics--the basis for fingerprint individuality--exist on human lips; (3) describe the methodology to be used in lip print comparisons which has supposedly been accepted in the forensic science community; (4) that describe characteristics of lip prints which are to be used in comparing known standards and crime scene prints; and (5) a source that confirms the positions of the F.B.I. and the Illinois State Police as endorsing the principle of lip print uniqueness as a means of positive identification.

Since the editor is currently in the process of preparing a new edition of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL CASES [by Moenssens, Starrs & Henderson] to be published next year, and concluded in the Fourth Edition (1995, Foundation Press) at page 611, that lip prints are not a viable means by which an investigator may identify an individual, any information on the subject that might warrant a different approach or conclusion would be most appreciated.